Regional cooperation, patronage and the ASEAN Agreement on transboundary haze pollution

Helena Varkkey ()

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 2014, vol. 14, issue 1, 65-81

Abstract: Transboundary haze pollution is an almost annual occurrence in Southeast Asia. Haze originates from peat and forest fires mostly in Indonesia, with Malaysia and Singapore suffering the worst of its effects. Most of these fires are man-made and linked to land-clearing activities of local and foreign commercial oil palm plantations. The regional nature of the haze has resulted in a concentration of haze mitigation activities at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) level. However, these initiatives continually fail to effectively mitigate haze. This article argues that this failure is due to the influence of patronage politics in the sector, which is linked to the ASEAN style of regional engagement that prioritises the maintenance of national sovereignty. States are compelled to act in their national interests, as opposed to the collective regional interests. The economic importance of the oil palm sector to the states involved, coupled with the political importance of the clients populating this sector to elite patrons in the governments, meant that the maintenance of the status quo, where clients could continue to clear land using fire, was of crucial national interest. Therefore, the ASEAN style of regional engagement has enabled political elites to shape ASEAN initiatives to preserve the interests of their clients, while the public continue to suffer the haze. This article demonstrates this through a close analysis of the negotiations, outcomes and the implementation of the ASEAN Agreement on transboundary haze pollution, with a special focus on Indonesia’s decision to withhold ratification of the treaty. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Haze; Association of Southeast Asian Nations; Southeast Asia; Transboundary pollution; Indonesia; Patronage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10784-013-9217-2 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ieaple:v:14:y:2014:i:1:p:65-81

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10784

DOI: 10.1007/s10784-013-9217-2

Access Statistics for this article

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics is currently edited by Joyeeta Gupta

More articles in International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().