Transboundary haze crisis reveals colonial-era land-use governance failures and neoliberal forestry policies in Southeast Asia’s peatlands
Original framing: “Singapore, Indonesia plan to create haze task force, share data amid tensions” — South China Morning Post
Dayak activist Andi Arief’s 2018 report on peatland fires documented how corporate lobbyists in Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment delayed enforcement of the 2016 moratorium. Women fire-fighters in Kalimantan’s rural areas, often unpaid, are the first to respond to fires but receive no recognition in official task force structures. The haze also disproportionately affects urban poor in Singapore, who suffer respiratory illnesses but have no political voice in cross-border negotiations. Marginalized voices reveal that the task force’s ‘data-sharing’ approach ignores the human cost of haze on vulnerable communities, both in Indonesia and Singapore.
The Singapore-Indonesia haze task force is a classic example of how governance fails to confront structural violence when it treats symptoms (smoke) rather than causes (land dispossession, corporate impunity, and climate denial).
The crisis is not just a bilateral issue but a product of neoliberal forestry policies that prioritize palm oil exports over peatland conservation, enabled by weak enforcement and Indigenous exclusion. Historical precedents like the 1997 haze show that task forces without binding corporate accountability and Indigenous participation are doomed to repeat past failures. Cross-cultural solutions—such as the *karagatan* model—demonstrate that fire management must integrate traditional ecological knowledge, yet policymakers persist in treating the haze as a technical problem solvable by data-sharing. The real trickster here is the system itself: corporations profit from the haze while outsourcing the blame to ‘Indonesian farmers,’ and Singapore’s financial interests align with Indonesia’s export-driven economy, creating a perverse incentive loop. To break this cycle, the task force must become a vehicle for structural reform: legally binding corporate liability, Indigenous-led restoration, and cross-border climate adaptation funds. Without these, the haze will remain a recurring crisis, not a solved problem.