IN the ongoing haze crisis, most of the blame is placed on Indonesian parties.
However, could there also be Malaysian entities involved?
Malaysian-owned plantations in Indonesia cover some 3.7 million ha by some estimates, equivalent to about 22% of Indonesia’s total oil palm plantation area.
How can we be assured that these plantations are not contributing to the problem?
One way to establish accountability would be to obtain the GPS coordinates of plantations owned by Malaysian companies in Indonesia and overlay them with maps showing the locations of fires occurring in the country.
If fires are detected on those lands, the Malaysian plantation companies involved should be singled out and notified.
They would then need to explain the situation and possibly be given a strict timeline within which to extinguish the fires.
Failure to do so should result in some kind of penalty.
Perhaps the Malaysian government could impose hefty fines on such companies.
This approach would also give companies that are not implicated a straightforward way to demonstrate that their plantations are not involved.
However, the idea of imposing fines on Malaysian companies is not new.
The key question concerns the legality of such penalties.
Hence, the priority should be to establish a clear legal framework that allows companies whose concessions are found to contain fires to be held accountable.
There is much more at stake than just hazy skies.
Forest fires that destroy wildlife habitats further damage the palm oil industry’s environmental credentials and provide ammunition to anti-palm oil campaigns in the West.
They could also provide further justification for European countries to tighten environmental and sustainability requirements on palm oil imports, potentially creating greater barriers for Malaysian producers.
Such developments would be detrimental to the industry as a whole.
Malaysian plantation companies therefore have a vested interest in ensuring that fires on their land are prevented and dealt with swiftly.
Greater accountability is ultimately about protecting not only the environment, but also the market access and long-term competitiveness of Malaysia’s palm oil industry.