ASEAN HAHA

Founded on 8 August 1967, Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) is undoubtedly one of the most successful regional organizations in the world. It has been able to achieve its goals over the course of history. The five founding members of ASEAN managed to maintain its neutrality during the Cold War, taking side in neither bloc. ASEAN prevails and until now, it is well-established with ten committed members. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam have always envisaged ASEAN not only as an intergovernmental organization, but also a community of nations. The Bali Concord II serves as a proof to the level of the groups’ regionalization. The three pillars of ASEAN Community was agreed and adopted in 2003 ASEAN Bali Summit, namely the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC), and ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC), which came into force at the end of 2015.

APSC plays a crucial role in the realization of a dynamic, cohesive, resilient, and integrated ASEAN Community (ASEAN 2009). This concept, coined by the Indonesian government, seeks to promote democracy, good governance, and human rights while preserving peace and stability by strengthening existing regional ties and defense instruments such as ZOPFAN, SEANWFZ, and TAC (Weatherbee 2009). Nevertheless, ASEAN still finds difficulties in fending off the menace to its security, with adverse impacts suffered by citizens of multiple memberstates, as well as nationals of other countries outside ASEAN. South China Sea conflict aside, ASEAN is still mired with intra-regional threats such as terrorism, haze pollution, human rights abuse, and many others which are as important as one another. While focusing on haze pollution, this essay argues that the root of the problem to regional security is the prevailing ASEAN Way that maintains regional order, and the absence of legally binding instruments to sanction violating governments.

The haze pollution caused by forest and peat land fires is an annual occurrence in the region, given the vast area of land covered by rainforest. Overtime, there have been political economic changes in the region that also altered mode of production, marked with industrialization, increase of consumption, increase of urban population, as well as energy demand (Elliott 2003). Hence, the adverse impact of environmental degradation in the form of haze pollution caused by human agency, along with natural process of forest fire. Regardless of the cause of the fire, the result is air pollution with implication on various aspects of public well-being in the region. Southeast Asia is home to 5% of total rainforest on the planet, yet 25% of global deforestation take place in the region (Weatherbee 2009), mostly done by large-scale burning. All ASEAN memberstates are confronted with this problem, but the biggest source of the catastrophe is Indonesia. Since 1985 to 1997, Indonesia saw a depletion of its forest area from 119 million hectare to 100 million hectare, while 1997-1998 went on as the worst haze incident in the 20^th century. During this period, the fires burnt approximately 1.7 million hectare of land in Sumetera, 6.5 million hectare in Kalimantan, 1 million hectare in Papua, and 0.4 million hectare in Sulawesi  (Jones 2004). Consequently, the haze spreads to neighbouring countries, namely Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, as well as Australia. The same haze accident took place again the first 16 years of the 21^st century.

The haze pollution has caused environmental degradation, deterioration of air quality, which leads to declining human health, as well as massive economic losses. Along with the depletion of total forest area, haze pollution in 2013 from Indonesia pushed pollution index in Singapore well above the dangerous level (401), while that of Malaysia reached a worrisome 746 (Heilmann 2015). This prompted the emergence of anti-Indonesian demonstration in Malaysia, while the Singaporean government had to send a formal letter to Indonesian government as an expression of disappointment over the bad management of forest fire.

It is understood that haze pollution has caused several respiratory diseases, such as bronchial asthma, respiratory tract infection, and so on. Up until 2012, approximately 40.000 people reportedly needed treatment from such diseases and 70 million ASEAN citizens were implicated by the haze (Acharya 2012), hence the upshot of public spending in health sector. The haze also disrupted the region’s economic activities with declining timber production and harvest from agriculture sector. The ensuing erosion also came at a cost, while air traffic was suspended, hence the sluggish performance of tourism in the region.

            With individual national efforts seeming to be futile, in 2002 the ASEAN governments came up with Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (AATHP) as a solution to the common problem. AATHP serves as the basis of joint effort to tackle haze pollution and for policy harmonization. It came into force after six memberstates ratified it. The AATHP offers a more structured platform under the auspices of environment ministers. Coordination through Conference of the Parties (COP) and implementation by the Committee (COM), with the help of its instruments, allow memberstates to obtain information on weather and hotspots, building capacity in fire prevention, and ask for assistance by other memberstates. AATHP also stipulates the pooling of funds by memberstates to ease the financial burden through ASEAN Haze Fund. Therefore, AATHP can serve best to prevent and monitor transboundary haze pollution resulting from land or forest fires through concerted effort, both in national, regional, and international level. However, the enactment of AATHP did not have an instant impact, while leaving Indonesia as the worst source of haze “at large”, unbound by ratification of the agreement. As a result, the Indonesian government had to deal with international backlash in the wake of another episode of haze pollution in 2006.

Indonesia finally became the last memberstate to ratify the AATHP in early 2015, but this move was tainted by another forest fire in Riau, costing 2% of its GDP. It shows the ineffectiveness of AATHP in compelling states’ behavior. This is deep-rooted in the text of the agreement itself. Article 27 on Dispute Settlement stipulate that dispute between cooperating parties are to be settled amicably through consultation and negotiation. In effect, there is no sanction whatsoever that can be subjected to any violating state. This could be the reason why the frequency of forest fire in Indonesia remains high, with recurrent incident each year.

Of course this stems from the very principle of ASEAN Way as the benchmark of memberstates’ behavior towards one another. The principle of non-interference, conceived in the ASEAN Way, does not allow memberstates to meddle in one another’s domestic jurisdiction. Sovereignty is non-negotiable. But, this principle is against the spirit of APSC, which is to create a dynamic, cohesive, resilient, and integrated community. The concept of security has expanded to include human security as a goal of the international community (Weatherbee 2009), while security community is defined by the level of integration as the attainment of a sense of community, accompanied by formal or informal institutions that are strong enough and widespread to assure change among members (Acharya 2001). The AATHP clearly finds hard time being such institution that protects human security, while the APSC sidelined from playing more significant role than mere indication of integration.

So long as the principle of noninterference and sovereignty kept non-negotiable, the creation of a well-integrated community will not be attained in the near future. As Weatherbee (2009) puts it, human security is a condition in which individuals are safe in their economic and societal circumstances in a setting of equality and justice. The recurring haze pollution each year is a sign that shows the failure of governments to create this condition for citizens of ASEAN.

It should be kept in mind that the APSC is not a defense arrangement. It does not have a peacekeeping role. It does not have a common foreign policy. Although claiming to enshrine democracy and human rights, because of the ASEAN way, it cannot guarantee them. That is why memberstates still find difficulties in overcoming other pressing issues such as terrorism by extremist groups in the Philippines and Indonesia, and human rights abuse as we have witnessed in Myanmar. ASEAN needs to give up proportionally on principles and start serious integration.

References

Acharya, Amitav. Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order. London: Routledge, 2001.

—. The Making of Southeast Asia: International Relations of a Region. Singapura: ISEAS, 2012.

ASEAN. ASEAN Political-Security Community Blueprint. Jakarta: ASEAN, 2009.

Elliott, Lorraine. “ASEAN and environmental cooperation: norms, interests and identity.” The Pacific Review 16, no. 1 (2003): 29-52.

Heilmann, Daniel. “After Indonesia’s Ratification: The ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution and Its Effectiveness As a Regional Environmental Governance Tool.” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 34, no. 3 (2015): 95-121.

Jones, David Seth. “ASEAN Initiatives to combat Haze pollution: An assessment of regional cooperation in public policy‐making.” Asian Journal of Political Science 12, no. 2 (Desember 2004): 59-77.

Weatherbee, Donald E. International Relations in Southeast Asia: The Struggle for Autonomy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009.