The Association of Southeast Asian Nations was established on 8 August 1967 through Bangkok
Declaration. One of the main concerns of ASEAN is the environmental security in this region.
Transboundary haze has been an annual occurrence in Southeast Asia region since 1980’s and
the disastrous events in 1997-1998 episodes had marked severe impacts to Indonesia and
neighbouring countries. Thus, ASEAN has been active in the control of haze pollution from
peatland and forest fires. The core study will focus from Malaysia perspective on the challenges
or obstacles to the unresolved transboundary haze issue in Southeast Asia region. The objectives
of this study are to study the impacts of non interference principle, to analyse the regional
cooperation in ASEAN member countries and last but not least, to evaluate the effectiveness of
implementation of laws, policies and Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution in tackling
the transboundary haze issue. The sample of this study are representatives of each organization
such as Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Centre of Environment, Technology
and Development, Malaysia and academician from Universiti of Malaya who experts on
transboundary haze in Southeast Asia region. This study employs qualitative research method
where interviews are being used in order to investigate the key objectives. The non interference
principle that has been practicing by ASEAN gave impacts in tackling the transboundary haze
issue. Besides that, there is lack of regional cooperation in ASEAN member countries and poor
implementation of laws, policies and ATHP in which aborted the efforts to curb this matter.
Hence, this study suggests that since the haze does not only affects Indonesia solely but the
impacts spill over to neighbouring countries particularly on Malaysia and Singapore thus,
Indonesia and ASEAN play major roles in addressing this issue and pragmatic solutions are
needed to this transboundary issue.
