This article was first published in The Straits Times on 8 June 2026, “There’s no escaping the El Nino. Here’s how ASEAN can blunt its fire and fury”.
Memories can become hazy after a decade. But 10 years ago, the skies over Singapore and across the region were blackened as the 2015 to 2016 El Nino cycle set off severe fires and sent a pall of choking smoke across South-east Asia.
Singapore sweltered through a heatwave during that period and schools were forced to close at one point as the haze reached dangerous levels.
Like the fire-breathing monster of Japanese movie fame that surfaces again and again, the El Nino weather pattern comes and goes in cycles. It’s now coming back. Scientists warn that the 2026 El Nino could be a “Godzilla” version, the strongest yet in nearly 150 years.
In a double whammy, the less-predictable Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), a similar climate phenomenon, threatens to intensify the hot and dry conditions. The worst haze years have been when El Nino and IOD coincided. In 2015, Singapore experienced both. There is now an increased risk of Singapore being hit by haze from June to October, as the arrival of El Nino is expected to coincide with the IOD, the National Environment Agency and Meteorological Service Singapore have warned.
The El Nino and IOD are natural weather patterns that cannot be prevented. The real test lies in how prepared we are when they arrive.
Immediate measures: Prevention and firefighting
The good news is that technology for monitoring fires has improved a decade on. The ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC) monitors forest fires across the region and issues early warnings.
ASMC and platforms like Global Forest Watch use satellite hot spot data to track fires in near real time, releasing the information to the public. This can support firefighting and provides greater accountability when fires occur.
It helps too that Indonesia’s Riau province and other parts of the country have declared states of emergency as the dry season beckons. This admits the risks are rising, allowing officials to mobilise resources for cloud seeding, peat rewetting and firefighting.
Yet sterner tests lie ahead. Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry and provincial governments warn that budgets for fire management are already under pressure amid wider government spending cuts.
Indonesia has been working to trim expenditure to keep the national deficit below 3 per cent of gross domestic product, affecting funding for both central government ministries and provinces.
Efforts have been made to preserve core government services, but the Ministry of Forestry notes weather modification operations like cloud seeding and peat rewetting are expensive. Earlier this year, the ministry said it would carry out at least 35 such operations in 2026, costing around 87.5 billion rupiah (S$6.3 million), and has appealed for help from the private sector.
Contributions from other governments, the private sector and non-government organisations (NGOs) may prove crucial. Should conditions worsen, Singapore and Malaysia have a longstanding offer to assist with aircraft, firefighting and technical assistance.
In the years since the 1997 to 1998 and 2015 haze episodes, major companies in Indonesia have stepped up their fire-monitoring and firefighting efforts. Many companies now maintain strict no-burning commitments. Because companies can be held liable for fires in their areas even if they did not start them, many businesses maintain their own firefighting forces and engage local communities in their area to discourage the use of fire for land clearing.
The Indonesian government has in past years brought errant companies to task. Indonesian NGOs also play a role in raising the alarm and have initiated a number of cases in the courts on behalf of affected communities.
Where haze impacts Singapore, our Transboundary Haze Pollution Act remains available as a legal tool against companies too.
Land management and longer-term measures
But legal action remains a last resort. Prevention is always preferable. It also works at two levels.
First, prevention helps by blunting the immediate effects of this El Nino cycle. This is done through weather monitoring and having the necessary firefighting assets on hand to put out blazes when they erupt.
But that is not enough. We must also tackle the haze problem with longer-term measures that go beyond the El Nino cycles. This is especially important given the impact of climate change, which will bring higher temperatures in the years ahead.
Specifically, there is a fundamental need to improve land management to strengthen both sustainability and resilience. Weakness is punished not only by fires, but also by floods.
Consider the typhoons that struck several ASEAN countries at the end of 2025. In Malaysia and Indonesia alone, large swathes of rice fields damaged by the storms exceeded the size of Singapore.
Recovery remains slow, threatening future planting cycles.
Fires and floods are connected. Areas previously burnt by fires are less able to absorb heavy rainfall, leaving them exposed to floods when the rains come. These are not separate disasters. They are a cycle of vulnerability threatening food security and rural livelihoods.
The land management challenge is compounded in 2026 by the energy crisis arising from the US-Iran stand-off over the Strait of Hormuz. The global shortage of fossil fuel from the Middle East has driven up demand for biofuels, with potentially serious knock-on effects on land use and haze control.
In response to the Gulf crisis, countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia are increasing the use of biofuels, particularly palm oil-based blends. Palm oil is the world’s most commonly used vegetable oil, and Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are the world’s largest producers.
Indonesia is currently using a B40 blend of diesel, meaning that diesel at the pump is 40 per cent palm oil-based content mixed with fossil fuel. Indonesia plans to move towards B50 in 2026. Malaysia is going from B10 to B15. Thailand is at B7 and is rolling out B20.
For Indonesia to go from B40 to B50, it will need to source another four million tonnes of crude palm oil annually, about 8 per cent of its current yearly palm oil output, or roughly equivalent to Indonesia’s annual palm oil exports to China or the European Union. Every increase in biodiesel content is equivalent to adding an entire major export market for the country’s palm oil industry.
Beyond biodiesel, countries are also looking at bioethanol for petrol vehicles, biomethanol for ships, and sustainable aviation fuel.
For now, most believe Indonesia and other countries have sufficient capacity to support fuel needs while continuing with food production and exports.
But pressures on agriculture are increasing. There is no guarantee going forward that biofuels can continue to be produced in sufficient volume while still being considered sustainable.
Rising demand for feedstock risks encouraging greater deforestation via the use of fire to carve out more land for the plantation sector.
Ideally, productivity and circularity – rather than headlong expansion – will be the response. This can come from using waste to produce biofuels, rather than relying on crude palm oil.
Speaking at the recent 13th Singapore Dialogue on Sustainable World Resources, Indonesian Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Arif Havas Oegroseno noted that Indonesia has improved the traceability and governance of supply chains to ensure that its agricultural sector is sustainable.
More could be done on a regional level even as the Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries seeks greater international acceptance of palm oil-based biofuels. For instance, ASEAN can collaborate on sustainability standards, certification systems and feedstock integrity for biofuels. This could include reinforcing current laws against the use of fire to clear land. Stronger standards can reassure international buyers that biofuels production will not come at the expense of ecosystems.
Shared challenges
Indonesia features prominently in discussions of fire and land management given its geographical size and large agricultural sector. But the challenges and solutions go beyond Indonesia. It calls for a regional effort, if only because the pain is felt regionally.
Early in 2026, parts of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam in the Mekong sub-region also experienced severe haze from fires in their area, peaking in March.
The 1997 to 1998 haze caused US$9.3 billion in economic damage across South-east Asia, while the 2015 haze resulted in some US$16.1 billion (S$20.6 billion) of losses in Indonesia alone, according to World Bank estimates. This includes damage to agricultural areas, widespread disruptions to outdoor work, flight cancellations and falling tourism, as well as the human health impacts – with children, the elderly and people with chronic ailments especially at risk.
Governments remain central to addressing haze as well as broader climate and sustainability challenges.
But ASEAN as a grouping also has an important role.
Over the past decade, frameworks for cooperation have grown, including the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, which obligates member states to take legislative and administrative measures to prevent and control land and forest fires. The ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Transboundary Haze Pollution Control, recently inaugurated in Jakarta, aims to strengthen policy coordination on haze mitigation and land management – complementing technical monitoring by the ASMC, operating from Singapore.
The haze challenge today is also more than simply an environmental issue. Fires, energy security and land management are increasingly interconnected. Decisions in one area can have consequences across supply chains, food systems and regional relations.
Addressing these risks requires more than environmental agencies. Trade ministries, energy policymakers, companies, investors and local communities all have a stake in the outcome. Sustainability is no longer a separate agenda, but tied directly to the resilience of our region.
ASEAN needs to build mechanisms to accelerate development and strengthen livelihoods, while still increasing sustainability.
We must deal not only with immediate crises. We must think long term. We cannot prepare for a Godzilla El Nino only when the monster is almost here. The lessons from past fires must inform our responses.
Simon Tay is chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs and the 2025 recipient of the President’s Award for the Environment.
