FIRES and haze are not uniquely Indonesian but occur throughout the region where forests and peatlands occur.

Unfortunately for Indonesia, because of its large extent of both, the unfavourable wind direction blows the haze over and discomfits its neighbours. But the people of Indonesia are the ones who suffer the most and it is in the country’s interest to solve the problem.

To better understand the complexity of the problem, one needs to appreciate the primary source of the haze, the root causes, and the multiple actors and vested interests that collide and collude to make simple solutions complex and intractable.

…Raman Letchumanan is a senior fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University. He was the person-in-charge of fire and haze issues at the Asean Secretariat for 14 years, and prior to that in the Malaysian government.