Eleven years after one of Southeast Asia's most devastating wildfire seasons, the region finds itself once again enveloped in hazardous smoke, as Indonesia endures its worst fires in over a decade. The crisis—measured in 170,000 respiratory infections, shuttered schools, and millions of lives disrupted—arrives not in the absence of reform, but in spite of it, revealing the distance between policy and practice. What persists beneath the haze is a structural tension: the economic logic of cheap land clearing and global commodity demand has outlasted every agreement signed to contain it. The ques
Southeast Asia's Recurring Haze Crisis: Eleven Years of Promises, Little Progress
Over 170,000 acute respiratory infections recorded in Indonesia between August-September 2026, including 40,000 cases in young children; millions exposed to hazardous smoke across Southeast Asia.
The underlying problem hasn't gone away, and neither has the driver.
Mark
So eleven years passed between 2015 and now, and they're still having massive fires. What actually changed in those eleven years?
Mimi
Indonesia did move on several fronts. They created a restoration agency, imposed a moratorium on new development in vulnerable areas, and courts started holding companies financially accountable for fire damage. ASEAN created new strategies and finally opened a coordinating center for haze pollution.
Luke
But here's the thing—the restoration agency just shut down at the end of 2024. Its work got handed off to other ministries. That's not nothing, but it's also a signal that the institutional commitment may have weakened.
Mimi
Right. And the underlying problem never went away. Peatlands are still drained and degraded. Cleared land sits unused and becomes combustible during drought. The fires this year burned because of a long dry season and El Niño, but also because the conditions that make fires possible were never fully addressed.
Mark
So what would actually stop this from happening again?
Luke
That's the hard part. Experts say ASEAN needs to operationalize its existing emergency mechanisms before dry season starts—not during it. But ASEAN has limited power to compel member states to act or punish them if they don't.
Mimi
And there's a global dimension. The real driver is demand for cheap palm oil and pulp and paper. So long as consumers elsewhere want these products cheaply, there's economic pressure to convert peatlands and forests into plantations.
Mark
So the fires are, in a sense, a symptom of global consumption patterns?
Mimi
Exactly. One expert said we're all responsible for this demand. The fires won't stop until either that demand changes or the economics of sustainable production become competitive.
Luke
Which means this year's crisis—170,000 respiratory infections, 1.4 million students in remote learning—is likely to repeat unless something shifts at a much larger scale than regional policy.
Mark
And that seems unlikely to happen soon?
Mimi
The reporting doesn't suggest it. The focus has shifted from creating new agreements to making existing ones work, but the capacity and political will to do that across ASEAN remains unclear.
Der Puls
- Hazardous smoke from Indonesia's worst wildfire season in over a decade has blanketed Sumatra, Borneo, and parts of Malaysia and Singapore, triggering a public health emergency with over 170,000 respiratory infections—40,000 of them in young children.
- The crisis exposes a painful irony: a decade of institutional reform, court rulings, and regional agreements has not prevented the fires from returning, as degraded peatlands remain tinderboxes and the economic incentives for burning persist.
- ASEAN's legal frameworks exist on paper, but the bloc lacks meaningful enforcement power, and Indonesia's own Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency was quietly dissolved at the end of 2024, raising fears that hard-won institutional focus is already eroding.
- Experts are pressing for a fundamental reframe—treating haze as a regional disaster rather than a national embarrassment—and calling on governments to deploy emergency coordination before fire seasons begin, not after smoke has already crossed borders.
- The longer horizon is darker still: as climate change intensifies drought cycles, severe haze seasons may become the norm, and no amount of regional diplomacy will hold unless global consumer demand for unsustainably produced palm oil and pulp is also confronted.
Eleven years after one of Southeast Asia's most devastating wildfire seasons, the region finds itself once again enveloped in hazardous smoke, as Indonesia endures its worst fires in over a decade. The crisis—measured in 170,000 respiratory infections, shuttered schools, and millions of lives disrupted—arrives not in the absence of reform, but in spite of it, revealing the distance between policy and practice. What persists beneath the haze is a structural tension: the economic logic of cheap land clearing and global commodity demand has outlasted every agreement signed to contain it. The question the region now faces is not whether it knows what must be done, but whether its institutions can act before the next dry season arrives.
Eleven years after fires consumed millions of hectares and cost Indonesia an estimated $16 billion, Southeast Asia is choking on smoke again. This year's wildfire season—Indonesia's worst in more than a decade—has sent hazardous haze across Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua, drifting into Malaysia and Singapore as it has so many times before. Between August and mid-September, Indonesia's Health Ministry recorded more than 170,000 acute respiratory infections, including over 40,000 in young children. Hundreds of schools closed in Malaysia; more than 1.4 million Indonesian students shifted to remote learning. El Niño stretched the dry season long, and the familiar crisis returned.
What makes this year particularly troubling is not that the fires happened, but that they happened despite a decade of reform. After 2015, Indonesia established a Peatland Restoration Agency, imposed a moratorium on new concessions in primary forests, and began holding companies legally accountable for fires on their land. At the regional level, ASEAN adopted new peatland strategies and a Haze-Free Roadmap extending to 2030. The ASEAN Coordinating Center for Transboundary Haze Pollution Control finally opened its secretariat in Jakarta this past April—more than two decades after the original 2002 agreement was signed.
Yet the underlying problem persists. Vast areas of peat remain drained and degraded, becoming tinderboxes during drought. More troubling, the Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency ceased operating at the end of 2024, its responsibilities dispersed back to other ministries—raising questions about whether institutional focus can survive political transitions. ASEAN's agreements are legally binding in name, but the bloc has few tools to compel governments to act or punish inaction.
Experts point to a driver no agreement has yet addressed: global demand for cheap commodities. Converting peatlands to palm oil and pulp plantations remains economically attractive as long as consumers elsewhere demand these products at low cost. Researchers argue that farmers and companies need alternative land-clearing methods and financial incentives to adopt them—and that consumers need to understand whether the products they buy involved burning in their production.
The fires of 2026 have shifted the conversation from writing new agreements to making existing ones work. Whether ASEAN can operationalize its mechanisms before the next crisis—and whether the world's consumers will reckon with their role in the smoke—remains an open and urgent question.
Eleven years after fires consumed 2.6 million hectares of Southeast Asian forest and cost Indonesia an estimated $16 billion in economic losses, the region is choking on smoke again. This year's wildfire season—Indonesia's worst in more than a decade—has sent hazardous haze across Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua, drifting into Malaysia and Singapore as it has done so many times before. Between August and mid-September, Indonesia's Health Ministry recorded more than 170,000 cases of acute respiratory infection in affected areas, including over 40,000 involving young children. Hundreds of schools closed in Malaysia. More than 1.4 million Indonesian students shifted to remote learning. The dry season stretched long, El Niño intensified the heat, and the familiar crisis returned.
What makes this year's fires particularly troubling is not that they happened—fire has been a tool of land clearing in Southeast Asia for decades, a cheap way to prepare soil for agriculture—but that they happened despite a decade of promises and policy reform. After 2015, Indonesia moved decisively. The government established the Peatland Restoration Agency in 2016, later expanded to include mangrove rehabilitation. A permanent moratorium on new concessions in primary forests and peatlands was imposed. Courts began holding companies accountable: last year, an appeals court ordered palm oil company PT Banyu Kahuripan Indonesia to pay roughly €14 million in environmental damages for fires that burned more than 3,300 hectares of its concession. At the regional level, ASEAN adopted a new Peatland Management Strategy and a second Haze-Free Roadmap extending to 2030. The ASEAN Coordinating Center for Transboundary Haze Pollution Control finally opened its secretariat in Jakarta in April—more than two decades after the 2002 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution was signed.
Yet the underlying problem persists. Extensive areas of peat remain drained or degraded, including cleared land never put to productive use. These poorly managed peatlands become tinderboxes during drought. There is disagreement among environmentalists about how much restoration Indonesia has actually achieved. More troubling still, the Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency ceased operating at the end of 2024, with its responsibilities returned to other government ministries and institutions—a shift that raises questions about whether institutional focus can be maintained. ASEAN's agreements are legally binding in name, but the regional bloc has few mechanisms to compel governments to meet targets or punish failure. Most implementation depends on national governments acting independently.
Experts point to a deeper driver that no agreement has yet addressed: global demand for cheap commodities. Palm oil and pulp and paper production require vast plantations, and converting peatlands and forests to plantations remains economically attractive so long as consumers elsewhere demand these products cheaply. Paruedee Nguitragool, an associate professor at Chiang Mai University, told researchers that haze, once mainly a problem in maritime Southeast Asia, has become a concern for most countries in the region. She emphasized that farmers and companies need alternative methods of land clearing and financial incentives to adopt them. Consumers, she added, need awareness of whether the products they buy come from sustainable practices or involved burning in their production.
The question now is whether ASEAN can operationalize existing mechanisms before the next crisis. Helena Varkkey, an associate professor at Universiti Malaya, noted that Indonesia, despite its efforts, does not have the capacity to manage fires alone. Emergency response mechanisms should have been arranged before the haze season began—meteorological reports made clear that a severe El Niño was coming. Mohd Talib Latif, a professor at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, argued that Southeast Asian governments must implement stringent laws to stop peat and forest fires and use all available technologies to prepare for dry conditions. He called for haze to be treated as a regional disaster, not a national problem. The fires of 2026 have shifted focus from creating new agreements to making existing ones work. Whether that shift comes in time remains uncertain.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
Haze, which used to be mainly a problem in maritime Southeast Asia, has become a concern for most countries in the region.— Paruedee Nguitragool, associate professor at Chiang Mai University
The ultimate driver for all of this is the global demand for cheap, plantation-grown commodities, such as palm oil and pulp and paper, which most of us are responsible for.— David Mark Taylor, professor of tropical environmental change at the National University of Singapore
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