Anti-haze body eyes launch of tracking portal

Singapore

WITH the recent resurgence of haze in Singapore visible through the conference room's clear windows on Thursday, it seemed quite the appropriate setting for non-governmental organisations and agri-businesses to convene for a roundtable discussion to seek ways to end the region's pollution crisis.

The event was organised by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), an independent body on a mission to tackle regional and international issues - including the regional haze crisis that is primarily caused by Indonesia's forest fires. A major point of discussion revolved around SIIA's proposal to set up a Haze Tracking Portal (HTP).

Gunning for an early-2015 launch, the portal aims to fill in the gaps left by the Haze Monitoring System (HMS), which was adopted by Asean leaders in October 2013 to clamp down on errant parties causing the haze.

But due to contestations over customary rights and hazy - no pun intended - concessionary areas, there is still no one definitive map of Indonesia published that marks the country's land bank by ownership, putting HMS to a standstill.

Until Asean governments can move things forward with the joint HMS, there is a need to plug an information gap, said SIIA chairman Simon Tay, who is also associate professor of international law at the National University of Singapore.

To gather more information about the causes of the haze and sites where the fires burn, SIIA will seek input from non-governmental organisations with relevant expertise, such as the World Resources Institute which is running the Global Forest Watch platform to monitor deforestation rate in Indonesia.

When armed with the necessary information, SIIA will then aim to combine real-time thermal hotspots, wind direction, land use and, where possible, concession maps on its online platform. SIIA hopes that this will allow law enforcers, environmental activists, commodity buyers and traders, and society at large to analyse the source of the haze.

If successful, HTP will reinforce the effectiveness of Singapore's Haze Law, which was passed in August this year, to take legal action against errant parties once the local Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) hits 100 and stays there for 24 hours or longer.

The key to persuading agri-businesses (which are often pegged as the instigator behind Indonesia's forest fires) to cooperate in this initiative is to engage them in a positive way, according to Prof Tay, which is to treat them not as an enemy, but neither serve as their public relations arm.

"Like any positive relationship, we have to justifiably criticise them, which I hope they will accept," he said.