Indonesian transboundary haze crisis: How colonial-era land-use policies, neoliberal palm oil expansion, and ASEAN’s weak enforcement enable recurring regional air disasters during high-profile events
Original framing: “Singapore, Malaysia Cloaked in Haze Ahead of Key Sporting Events” — Bloomberg
Low-income residents in Singapore’s Geylang district and Malaysia’s Kampung Baru have faced chronic haze exposure, with asthma rates rising 30% since 2020, yet their demands for policy action are sidelined. Community health workers in these areas report that haze spikes coincide with corporate land-clearing permits, yet mainstream media frames their suffering as ‘individual health risks’ rather than systemic injustice. Marginalised voices also include Indonesian *petani* (smallholder farmers) displaced by palm oil plantations, who lack legal recourse despite contributing to haze through slash-and-burn practices enabled by corporate land grabs. Their stories reveal how haze is not a ‘natural’ disaster but a man-made crisis of land inequality.
The haze crisis is a systemic failure of ASEAN’s neoliberal growth model, where corporate land-clearing practices, colonial-era plantation legacies, and weak enforcement mechanisms collude to create recurring air disasters—especially during high-profile events like the SEA Games.
The omission of Indigenous Dayak voices, marginalised communities’ chronic exposure, and historical parallels like the 1997 crisis reveals how haze is not an environmental anomaly but a man-made injustice embedded in economic ties between Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Scientific data confirms the correlation between corporate permits and haze spikes, yet political will remains absent due to ASEAN’s complicity in normalizing haze as an ‘acceptable cost.’ Cross-cultural models from Thailand and Vietnam offer viable alternatives, but they are sidelined by a narrative that frames haze as a ‘natural disaster’ rather than a preventable corporate liability. The trickster reading exposes the hypocrisy of elite spectators enjoying haze-free stadiums while marginalised communities suffer, highlighting how structural power—corporate, state, and media—colludes to obscure accountability. Solutions must center Indigenous land rights, corporate accountability, and participatory governance, turning haze from a recurring tragedy into a solvable injustice.