As severe transboundary haze returns to Southeast Asia, SIIA Chairman Simon Tay and World Resources Institute (WRI) Indonesia Country Director Nirarta Samadhi examine the immediate priorities and longer-term lessons in a new commentary for The Jakarta Post.
The authors note that the latest haze crisis was entirely foreseeable, with earlier warnings pointing to acute fire risk.
With communities across the region now facing severe air pollution, they stress that the immediate priority is to suppress active fires, prevent new ignitions, and strengthen cooperation across companies, communities, and borders, while accountability must follow once the immediate crisis is brought under control.
“This El Nino cycle serves as a live stress test of the systems built over the past decade: Where they function, reinforce them; where they fail, dismantle the bottlenecks. But for now, the priority is clear: extinguish the blazes, prevent new ones and cooperate across companies, communities and borders,” they write.
“When the air clears, establish what went wrong and act on the lessons.”
Read the full commentary: The Jakarta Post, 12 October 2026.
