Pacific Affairs: An International Review of Asia and the Pacific

Volume 72, No. 3

 

The "Haze" Over Southeast Asia: Challenging The Asean Mode Of Regional Engagement
By James Cotton

 

Abstract

Southeast Asia's "haze" crisis has posed a severe challenge for ASEAN. Despite a record of more than two decades of cooperation on environmental issues, and even given the costs of the haze which have been estimated at more than $4.5 billion so far, ASEAN modalities have proved a severe disappointment. In 1997-98 around eight million hectares of forest and grassland, mostly in Indonesia, were ravaged by fires largely originating from wasteful forestry and plantation clearing practices. However, the Indonesian regime proved unwilling or unable to put the interest of the neighborhood ahead of those of its closest associates, overriding environmental regulations and ignoring resource managing bureaucracies. The effect on the self-image of ASEAN has been corrosive, and the likelihood that its modalities will fail when tested by a crisis of a different kind has increased. Accordingly, alternative approaches have been the desperate resort of policy makers, a strategy that has had major implications. Prominent in these alternatives has been the positive role accorded to NGOs and transnational opinion groups. This has posed a challenge to the character of ASEAN, given that a number of regimes within the group have been reluctant to accept the legitimacy of such political activity, and also in light of the fact that the accord and consensus of ASEAN has been largely the creature of élite agreement rather than popular opinion.