On Oct 8, 2026, Kuala Lumpur ranked as the most polluted major city in the world, Swiss air quality monitor IQAir reported. The haze from Indonesian fires that has blanketed Malaysia in recent months triggered a 259% increase in asthma cases in August.
How is it that after so many years we are still dealing with the haze? Transboundary haze was reported as far back as 1972. I wrote about it 30 years ago as a young journalist. We know the root cause – cheap slash-and-burn land clearing for agriculture, primarily oil palm. We also know peat fires generate the vast majority of haze, so peatlands need protection.
We’ve long had regional policies in place – namely the 2002 Asean transboundary haze agreement, along with road maps, mechanisms, and funds. Yet here we are. Still enduring asthma-inducing, eye-irritating smoky skies.
This year, by the end of August, the land area burnt in Indonesia was almost 900,000ha – about 30 times the size of Penang Island – marking a 34% increase from 2019, data from the Nusantara Atlas shows. While the strong El Nino weather cycle helped fuel this year’s fires, the recurring crisis is, fundamentally, a failure of governance.
“The agreements are there, but they are left for the governments to interpret and implement. This results in uneven operationalisation and ‘cherry picking’,’” explains Dr Helena Muhamad Varkkey, an associate professor of political ecology at Universiti Malaya.
Critically, what’s missing are enforcement mechanisms and punitive measures. Asean’s system favours sovereignty and diplomacy. The host country’s permission is required even for emergency assistance. Asean’s way of engagement “puts great importance on things like good neighbourliness and non-interference”, Helena says. “But when you think about it, exporting haze to another country can also be interpreted as ‘interference’.”
Malaysia has called for a review of the Asean agreement while reopening discussions on a domestic transboundary haze law. Helena welcomes a targeted approach of holding Malaysian companies operating overseas legally accountable for setting fires: “It would provide a stronger deterrence mechanism for Malaysian companies overseas and may reduce finger pointing,” she says.
(Indonesia has previously accused Malaysian-owned subsidiaries of illegal burning, but the companies routinely deny liability, blaming external factors, such as fires on adjacent land.)
Some activists concur that domestic accountability may be more effective than diplomacy. At an Oct 5, 2026, press conference in Kuala Lumpur, Greenpeace identified a Malaysian parent company connected to the 2026 Indonesian fire dataset, noting the firm was also linked with fires in 2019. Singaporean companies were also indentified.
“If we can push a regulation for every country to regulate its own companies operating abroad, this can serve as a deterrent and hold companies accountable overseas,” says Greenpeace Malaysia interim country representative Heng Kiah Chun.
“This is also an opportunity to push for responsible business practices and to highlight the importance of strong environmental governance and accountability throughout supply chains.”
Heng points out that companies revealed to have links to fires have previously suffered stock, reputation, and contract losses, which has pushed them to improve environmental practices. He calls for a strict “No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation” policy across supply chains, pointing to the Palm Oil Innovation Group as a benchmark for best practice.
Tracing corporate links involves untangling the industry’s notoriously opaque and complex supply chains. Large agroforestry conglomerates often obscure their operations through a labyrinth of shell companies, local suppliers, and shifting subsidiaries. Without local government support on data and concession maps, tracing who is culpable is incredibly difficult.
Ultimately, only a handful of agro giants have faced prosecution, while fines are very difficult to recoup – corporations drag out cases with appeals or simply shut down the fined subsidiary. There has been only one rare case of a Malaysian firm hit with a massive court fine through its subsidiary, after initially denying fault.
Compounding this is decentralised local governance: In Indonesia, district heads (bupati) hold immense power over land. An investigation by online environmental news organisation Mongabay into Indonesia’s Seruyan district showed how one unchecked bupati bypassed federal oversight to skyrocket oil palm licences from three to 37 in just two years, covering nearly 500,000ha, even encroaching into a national park. The district became a major hotspot in the catastrophic 2006 burning season and haze.
Given such loopholes, advocates and experts urge a focus on prevention, specifically to protect peatlands, where most haze originates. Indonesia holds the world’s largest tropical peatlands. These biodiverse ecosystems are critical for climate mitigation. Globally, peatlands store twice as much carbon as all forests. In their natural state, they are flooded swamps that rarely catch fire. But agro companies have aggressively expanded into peatlands, digging deep, kilometre-long canals to drain water. Once dry, this “young coal” is very fire-prone. Peat fires can smoulder underground for months, releasing hazardous PM2.5-heavy biomass smoke.
Indonesia has regulations to control water tables so peatlands do not dry out. But water sharing arrangements can complicate this, says Helena. Plantations retaining water for their needs may dry out community lands, driving up fire risks. Greenpeace and Indonesian watchdog Pantau Gambut call for compulsory rewetting, banning peat conversion, open digitalised concession maps, and “paludiculture” – cultivating native crops on rewetted peatlands.
Helena emphasises the need for science-based decision-making. She points to the Montreal Protocol, where an independent scientific committee – not politicians acting in their own interest – successfully led policies to address the ozone layer issue. Science shows our most powerful climate shields are not just forests but the subterranean carbon vaults of peatlands. Yet policy and action have profoundly failed to protect them.
