Evaluate the effectiveness of the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution. Can South Asia adopt a similar framework for transboundary air pollution?

The ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution was signed in 2002 and entered into force in 2003. It is a regional treaty aimed specifically at haze from land and forest fires [1]. Its record is mixed. It built strong institutions but has been weak at enforcement, as Indonesia's 2026 fire crisis shows.

Strengths

• Institutions: it created the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Transboundary Haze Pollution Control and led to regional peatland management strategies [1].
• Shared responsibility: it made haze a regional concern, and national action followed. Examples are Singapore's 2014 haze law and Indonesia's peat-restoration agency (BRG, 2016; now BRGM), which blocks drainage canals to re-wet peat [1][4].

Weaknesses

• No teeth: ASEAN works by consensus and non-interference, so the agreement has no sanctions or binding way to settle disputes. Indonesia, where most of the fires start, ratified it only in 2014.
• Crises keep coming back: the 2015 fires burned about 2.6 million ha and cost Indonesia about US$16.1 billion (~1.9% of GDP) [2]. In 2026, more than 1.9 million ha had burned by September, and CREA estimated 5,310 deaths in that month alone [3].
• Agencies working against each other: public-works departments drain peat in the same areas BRGM is re-wetting [4].

Verdict: the agreement works as a platform for cooperation but has failed to prevent fires. The root cause is domestic: clearing land with fire is cheap for plantations [2].

Can South Asia adopt it?

• The need is real: crop-residue burning across the Indo-Gangetic Plain creates winter smog that drifts across the India–Pakistan border.
• There is a base to build on: the Malé Declaration (1998, under SACEP; eight members including India) is non-binding. A UNEP-supported feasibility study in 2011 recommended turning it into a legally binding instrument [5].
• Hurdles: SAARC is largely inactive, and India and Pakistan distrust each other. South Asia's pollution also comes from many sources (vehicles, industry, stubble), while ASEAN's problem comes mainly from fires.
• How to adapt it: start with joint monitoring and early warning. Then add agreements covering shared airsheds (areas that share the same air), and give farmers financial reasons to stop burning. This would fix the enforcement gap ASEAN has.

ASEAN's experience shows that a regional framework can build cooperation, but it only works when domestic enforcement and economic incentives back it up. South Asia should turn the Malé Declaration into a binding compact based on shared airsheds. That would advance the right to clean air under Article 21 and the targets of SDG 3.9.