Malaysia To Host Meeting On Transboundary Haze Pollution

KUALA LUMPUR, July 11 (Bernama) -- The 15th Ministerial Steering Committee (MSC) Meeting on Transboundary Haze Pollution, which is scheduled to be held on July 17 in Kuala Lumpur, will be hosted by Malaysia's Natural Resources and Environment Ministry. Its minister, G. Palanivel said the meeting will be attended by five Environment Ministers, from Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. He said the meeting was of utmost importance in the light of the current haze episode in the region to strengthen regional collaboration in dealing with the haze matter that remained a transboundary and transnational problem. "The MSC forum shall take stock of what has been achieved and what are the immediate needs. "In the forum, Malaysia will continue to urge Indonesia to urgently ratify the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution which came into force in 2003," he said in a statement, Wednesday. He said during the forum, MSC member countries will also be urged to put greater emphasis on the long-term solutions in preventing haze episodes in the sub-region such as through integrated peatlands management particularly in peatlands with high risk of fires, as well as continuously building manpower capabilities to manage peatlands in a sustainable manner. Palanivel said, following the 2006 haze episode in the region, the Sub-Regional MSC on Transboundary Haze Pollution comprising of five Environment Ministers of Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand convened a meeting in Pekanbaru, Sumatra, Indonesia on Oct 13, 2006. "The objective of MSC is to oversee the implementation of enhanced measures to prevent the recurrence of the smoke haze from land and forest fires in fire-prone provinces in Indonesia as underlined in Indonesia's Plan of Action (POA) to deal with land and forest fires and haze," he said. He said, since its formation in 2006, the MSC had been a sucessful forum and mechanism under the overall Asean regional cooperation framework and has held 14 meetings. "Among the sucessful implementation to-date was the operationalisation of the POA to reduce the number of hotspots in the fire-prone districts in Sumatra and Kalimantan Provinces, bilateral collaboration on preventing land and forest fires (between Malaysia and Riau Province and between Singapore and Jambi Province), efforts by Thailand in the Mekong Sub-Region and as well as the strategic review of MSC programmes and activities since 2010 to further improve the mechanism in tackling the transboundary haze issue, " he said. -- BERNAMA