Development and Environment Dilemma in ASEAN Politics

The thick smoke clouds that have been affecting the north and south of the Strait of Malaka for days continue to affect the countries in the region intensely. People living in Singapore, Malaysia and Sumatra Indonesia's Sumatra Island Riau Province, which has been exposed to the densest smoke emission in the last sixteen years, especially due to forest fires, have been trying to maintain their daily lives with masks for days, while the number of patients admitted to hospitals due to asthma and respiratory complaints has increased. Some flights to and from Riau have been grounded, while fishermen on both sides of the Strait of Malaka have suspended their activities. On the other hand, teaching has been suspended in various states and cities to prevent students from being exposed to further health problems. Due to its geographical proximity and weather conditions, the heavy smoke emissions that first affected Singapore caused the island nation of about five million people to run out of protective masks. After neighboring Cohor, a stone's throw away from Singapore, the same problem manifested itself in all settlements towards the West and East coasts of Malaysia, including the States of Malaka, Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Pahang.

As visibility drops to the hundreds due to the increase in smoke emissions, authorities are repeating their warnings not to go outside unless absolutely necessary. The Air Pollution Index has long since surpassed the 'unhealthy' level of 101-200. So much so that the scale, which reached 400 in Singapore, is now between 400-750 in some areas, such as downtown Malaka and Bukit Rambai, Muar and Bukit Rambai in Cohor, and it will be understood what kind of an environmental problem the masses are facing.

This environmental problem, which is repeated every year but without a permanent solution and which has come to the agenda in a much more impressive way this year, is also adding to the already existing diplomatic problems between the countries in the region. While the people of Singapore, who have 'experienced' air pollution from previous years, have been demanding a solution to the problem from the very first days, it is difficult to say that Singapore authorities have been able to get results from their visits to Jakarta.

In a region where no one is innocent of environmental carnage, it would not be fair to blame Indonesia alone. Considering that the root of the problem, as will be discussed below, is linked to the capitalist developmentalist forms of governance initiated by Westerners several centuries ago, neither the activities of individual country governments nor those of national and international companies operating in these countries, especially in the agricultural sector, can be ignored.

Aside from the air pollution caused by farmers burning post-harvest debris and small-scale forest fires set by forest villagers to clear agricultural land in Riau Province in East Sumatra, neighboring the Strait of Malaka, it has once again emerged that international companies are behind the current danger. In the northern and eastern provinces of Sumatra Island, vast tracts of forest land are causing international company executives, especially those involved in the production of forest products and palm oil, to wring their hands. Oddly enough, there are companies registered in countries such as Singapore and Malaysia, and all of these companies have stated that they do not allow any kind of burning in their production centers, making it impossible to determine who is guilty and who is innocent. On the other hand, given that the problem has been going on for decades, the Indonesian authorities' recent announcement that they will take "necessary sanctions" by naming a few of the organizations involved cannot be taken as an expression of sincerity.

This environmental and health problem, which recurred in the relatively dry month of June, especially in the central parts of Sumatra Island, seems to have become a political issue. In the face of media reports that some international companies operating on Sumatra Island are linked to Singapore and Malaysia, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has demanded "proof" from the Indonesian authorities, suggesting that the issue is likely to escalate into some kind of political spat. The first signs of this are that, unlike in previous years, the Indonesian authorities have not even apologized to the authorities and people of Singapore and Malaysia. On top of that, it has blamed companies registered in these two countries...

It remains to be seen how Malaysian Prime Minister Najib's visit to Jakarta will be received. The reason is simple. Because Indonesia has not yet signed the "Transboundary Air Pollution Agreement", which was opened for signature by ASEAN in 2002. Could it be that Indonesia, which hosts the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta, prefers to 'skip' this important agreement because of its contribution (!) to environmental pollution?

Therefore, it is certain that this issue will be voiced loudly within ASEAN in the coming period. Political showdowns aside, it remains to be seen how ASEAN member states will theorize and put into practice an approach based on respect for nature and then for their own people and neighboring peoples across borders.

Of course, it is not just Singaporean and Malaysian agribusiness companies or ordinary Indonesian farmers who need to be addressed here. It should not be forgotten that international economic power centers are behind the forests in Kalimantan/Borneo and the Philippines, which have been devouring the rainforests of Southeast Asia for decades and have been the site of the worst nature destruction. In Kalimantan/Borneo Island in 1997, for similar reasons.
smoke emissions from fires showed a coefficient of 860. As Benedict Anderson pointed out in a work published in 1998, at that time, the Philippines was the country with the biggest environmental disaster, followed by Thailand due to illegal logging.

It is also known that political instability, conflicts and administrative incompetence in countries in the region, including Myanmar and Laos, have led to environmental disasters, especially the conversion of large and rich forests into agricultural land and illegal logging. The actors of these 'illegal endeavors', which are considered in the field of corruption in the context of supplying goods to international markets, include local administrators, politicians as well as the military and police, and even the close circles of the elites at the top level of the country's administration, as well as multinational companies that use these natural riches to fuel the consumerist spirit to satisfy the material hunger of the upper and middle classes of developing countries, especially Western countries and developing countries in the race to get rich.

In the run-up to last month's elections in Malaysia, after the massive deforestation in the state of Saravak was brought to the agenda, the Prime Minister's statement that "we have to do this for economic development" for new projects signed by the state's Prime Minister in the face of environmental groups was in fact the latest example of the 'progressive developmentalism' advocated in all countries of the region. On the contrary, starting from the colonial period, it is the Dutch and British colonial administrations and the European agricultural and mining investors who collaborated with them that played the primary role in the transformation of the region's forests into giant plantations. Although colonialism ended, the transition to modern developmental economies in the new nation-states under the 'consultancy' of multinational corporations led by the descendants of the former colonial masters opened the door to a wide range of natural problems, from forest clearing to dams, from plantations to housing estates and unhealthy urbanization. On top of that, while some 'developed countries' in Europe are sailing ships to remote islands in Indonesia to keep their own populations away from the poison of technological waste, there are still reports of high-tech fishing fleets of East Asia's 'leading economies' such as Japan and South Korea attempting to destroy marine life in the region's waters.

It should be questioned what has survived from the perspectives of indigenous peoples who have been living in touch with nature, respecting nature and caring for this natural wealth as a product of their faith traditions since the early periods of history, and how these masses of people have been reduced to thoughts and actions that would reduce them from sensitivity to all the beings around them to "environmental colonialism". The extent to which the nature-sensitive approaches of Hinduism, Buddhism and ultimately Islam, as well as the indigenous animist religions in the belief systems of the peoples of the region, have permeated the development policies of modern states and the practices of local administrators and have the power of sanction deserves to be considered. There is no doubt that changing modes of production and economic structures have transformed lifestyles and belief systems, which today correspond to a secularized perception of nature in these peoples. From the Singapore government, which cannot tolerate the presence of a single natural animal in the island city in the name of development, to other countries in the region that allow the slaughter of forests and illegal mining by using the public offices they occupy as a tool for corruption for their personal enrichment, every political structure must be responsible for the developments.