TO Alleviate HAZE, GET ON THE Earth
South Asian maritime haze pollution is recognized as a complex issue that necessitates multi-stakeholder engagement with local communities, municipal governments, corporations, and civil society.
Since the 1990s, ASEAN has been actively working to reduce haze, and in 2015, the Singaporean government passed a law prohibiting intergovernmental waste. Researchers have spent years carefully analyzing the haze’s underlying reasons, factors, impacts, and implications. But the issue keeps coming up every season.
It is now time to move beyond the realms of diplomacy and academia and engage the public to convince towns, businesses, and institutions that it is in their best interests to protect peat. Simply put, every effort we make to keep our coal reserves in our peatlands may contribute to the prevention of our climate and haze.
In this regard, the region’s current speed in using carbon prices tools and the creation of voluntary carbon emissions trading markets( as Indonesia has just done ) may provide a window of opportunity to encourage stakeholders to scale-up their conservation efforts and produce high-quality carbon credits that can be monetized.
For instance, the United Kingdom has developed the Peatland Code, a cutting-edge organic capital financing mechanism that uses an independent standard to provide independent validation and verification for projects involving the restoration of peatlands.
Through this, the UK has been using a combination of public and private funding to register about 200 peatland jobs in its nationwide registry and track the total amount of emissions reduced and the place restored. The need for individualized job reviews is replaced by the Code, which reassures investors of best practices.
Development toward these opportunities in the peatlands of Southeast Asia may be diverse. According to international standards, the results may be measurable, actionable, and factual.
In the current brass environment, this may be difficult, but the advantages are well worth it. For peatland populations, this might lead to better standard of living. The same could contribute to corporate conservation moves. They may improve national carbon products account for governments. It might eventually signify for the area the realization of the” Haze-Free ASEAN” perspective.
At the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s ASEAN Studies Centre, Sharon Seah serves as Senior Fellow and Coordinator. At the University of Malaya’s Department of International and Strategic Studies, Helena Varkkey teaches climate politics and leadership as an associate doctor. This article first appeared on the website Fulcrum of the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.