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Building on the 2002 agreement, ASEAN has since declared the right to a clean and healthy environment and is now working on an action plan that may finally provide access to legal recourse for the region’s citizens harmed by transboundary haze pollution.
A group of women crosses a street in front of Perdana Putra, the office of the prime minister in Malaysia’s administrative capital Putrajaya, shrouded in haze from regional wildfires on Aug. 13, 2026. (Reuters/Hasnoor Hussain)
Forest and peatland fires are once again burning across Kalimantan and Sumatra. Forest Watch Indonesia counted 8,918 hot spots nationally through August, more than half of them inside extractive concessions. On Aug. 26, the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre raised its transboundary haze alert to Level 3, its highest tier.Around 5.5 million people have been directly exposed, according to the government. In Malaysia, asthma cases rose to 1,811 in the last week of August, up from 219 the week before. The government has responded with aircraft, personnel and cloud seeding, all of which deserve sustained investment. However, none of it answers a separate question: What is owed to the people who are already sick?
