Singapore will ratify an agreement to establish an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) haze coordination centre in Indonesia within days, and urge other members of the bloc to follow, Sustainability and Environment Minister Grace Fu told Parliament on Tuesday, ahead of the city-state’s chairmanship of the bloc next year.
The Asean Coordinating Centre for Transboundary Haze Pollution Control (ACC THPC), mandated under the bloc’s 2002 haze agreement to coordinate regional cooperation on fires and haze, has yet to become fully operational.
Although its secretariat office opened in Jakarta in April, the separate agreement governing its leadership, oversight and funding has yet to take effect. It will do so only 60 days after six member states have ratified it.
“Singapore will submit our instrument of ratification for the establishment agreement in the next few days, and we will strongly encourage other Asean member states to do so,” Fu said, in reply to MPs’ questions on regional efforts to tackle haze.
Singapore also plans to work with other members on the causes of the fires, through initiatives on sustainable land and peatland management and guidelines on crop burning. Fu highlighted the importance of prevention measures, noting that healthy peatlands do not catch fire on their own.
On bilateral assistance, Fu said Singapore had offered Indonesia civilian firefighting help and operational support for cloud seeding. Indonesia replied on 19 October that it could manage without foreign assistance.
The response came four days after Foreign Minister Arrmanatha Nasir said President Prabowo Subianto had approved foreign assistance. On 19 October, Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Dudung Abdurachman clarified that such help depended on a national-disaster declaration, which the government had not issued.
“Singapore respects Indonesia’s sovereignty and its assessment of its needs, including whether the establishment of a joint regional firefighting task force would be helpful,” Fu said.
She added that Singapore remained ready to provide assistance where needed and welcomed if preventive measures failed, in line with the memorandum of understanding on environmental cooperation the two countries signed in June.
A centre 24 years in the making
The 2002 haze agreement, in force since 2003, commits members to preventing, monitoring and mitigating fires and haze, but contains no punitive measures. Indonesia was the last member to ratify it, in 2014. That agreement is separate from the planned ACC THPC, which is not yet in force, as the centre’s founding treaty still requires six member states to ratify before it can begin operations.
The centre has taken longer still. Indonesia competed with Malaysia to host it in 2015, and won regional endorsement that October. Asean officials pledged in 2019 to speed up its creation. Members concluded the founding treaty in 2023 and finished signing it in May 2025.
Two ceremonies have not brought that treaty into force. Then President Joko Widodo launched the centre at an Asean summit in Jakarta in September 2023, before all members had signed. At the opening of its secretariat office this April, then environment minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq described a presidential regulation on ratification as being drafted, and the centre as operating officially only once ratification was complete.
In the meantime, the Asean Secretariat, the bloc’s administrative arm, is acting as an interim centre, according to a September statement by Indonesia’s foreign ministry. Asean’s statement after a ministerial meeting on haze in July thanked only Vietnam for submitting its instrument, and noted that Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand were still ratifying at home.
Even in force, the centre would not override national decisions. Under the treaty, national authorities act first to put out fires, and may ask the centre for help when they declare an emergency. Its listed functions include consolidating fire and haze data, coordinating offers of assistance and keeping rosters of experts, equipment and donors, but not enforcement.
Philippine talks and the haze law
Some Asean members have indicated they will raise the haze at upcoming Asean meetings, according to Fu.
“Singapore will support these discussions, and share how we intend to act against companies responsible for the haze,” she added.
Malaysia has urged the bloc to revisit the 2002 agreement. Its Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan has pledged to raise the issue at a foreign ministers’ meeting in Manila, on 12 November, arguing that Asean’s mechanisms for natural disasters do not cover haze.
The Singapore Parliament is due to table debate amendments to the Transboundary Haze Pollution Act on Wednesda, its domestic law against companies that cause haze. They would let the National Environment Agency direct companies to appoint assessors, at their own cost, to examine their operations and supply chains, with failure to comply an offence. No company has been fined or sued under the Act since it came into force.
Separately, Workers’ Party MP He Ting Ru is due to raise Singapore’s role in regional clean air in an adjournment motion, a short debate at the end of the day’s sitting.
