'Diplomacy alone won't solve haze': Greenpeace pushes for Clean Air Act

 

Greenpeace has urged the Malaysian government to draft a Clean Air Act aimed at holding local individuals and companies accountable if they contribute to haze pollution abroad.

The call came amid a recent move by Singapore’s Parliament to toughen its anti-haze law with arrest powers, bigger fines, and potential restrictions on companies linked to transboundary air pollution from wildfires.

The proposed amendments, meant to empower the city-state’s Transboundary Haze Pollution Act 2014, followed heightened concern from neighbouring countries over unhealthy air quality due to intense haze from fires in Indonesia’s Sumatra and Borneo.

Acknowledging Malaysia’s insistence on tackling haze-related issues via diplomatic channels, Greenpeace Malaysia’s interim representative Heng Kiah Chun argued that such an approach can work hand-in-hand with improved legislative measures.

“We have been using the Asean way of working for more than 20 years - we need to do more than that,” he said during a virtual press conference with other environmental groups and researchers today.

“Singapore has shown that both (methods) can coexist - we can enact a law while continuing with cooperation within Asean nations.

“If we only focus on diplomacy, we cannot solve the problem,” he insisted.

The Clean Air Act, he added, should ensure that companies based in or connected to Malaysia disclose information on beneficial owners, corporate structures, concession locations, fire incidents, and compliance with environmental commitments.

Asserting that such a law would afford companies a platform to dispute allegations of their role in haze-causing forest fires, Heng further called for authorities to conduct due diligence on plantation and forestry companies that were previously identified as having allegedly contributed to the crisis.

He acknowledged that while Malaysian government figures have repeatedly claimed there is no conclusive evidence linking local companies to the fires in Indonesia which caused months of transboundary haze, independent research findings have consistently indicated otherwise.

Diplomacy-first approach

Malaysia has no Clean Air Act, with the Environmental Quality Act 1974 prohibiting open burning while providing for fines and jail terms.

Under the Environmental Quality Act, the Environmental Quality (Clean Air) Regulations 2014 govern emissions from industrial and trade premises.

Neither, however, is designed to reach the conduct of Malaysian-linked companies abroad.

In affirming Malaysia’s diplomacy-first approach, Deputy Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability Minister Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh told the Dewan Rakyat last week that moves by Singapore have resulted in “some slight strain” on their bilateral relations with Singapore.

Deputy Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability Minister Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh

While the deputy minister did not refer to any specific move by Singapore, the island nation had earlier warned major Singapore-based agribusiness firms under investigation for their links to haze-causing fires.

However, Syed Ibrahim also acknowledged in Parliament that the Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution has “limitations”, as it does not provide mechanisms for inter-country enforcement or compensation claims. - Mkini