简体中文
ASEAN environment senior officials agreed to propose to the ASEAN environment ministers to support the recommendation of the 15th Meeting of the Sub-Regional Ministerial Steering Committee on Transboundary Haze Pollution regarding the Haze Monitoring System, the city-state's National Environment Agency (NEA) said Thursday.
The agreement was achieved at the 24th Meeting of the ASEAN Senior Officials on the Environment held in Indonesia, which is part of an annual series of ASEAN meetings that discuss issues of environmental cooperation among all 10 ASEAN member states.
At the meeting, Singapore also emphasized the need for continual swift response actions by Indonesia to prevent the number of hotspots in the region from increasing, said the NEA.
The Indonesian authorities also provided updates on their efforts to respond to fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan that cause transboundary haze.
The NEA said during the 15th Meeting of the Sub-Regional Ministerial Steering Committee on Transboundary Haze Pollution ( MSC) held in Malaysia in July, the environment ministers of the five MSC countries agreed to recommend adopting the Haze Monitoring System as a joint haze monitoring system among MSC countries with digitized land-use maps and concession maps of fire- prone areas that cause transboundary haze to be shared on a government-to-government basis, subject to the ASEAN leaders' approval at the ASEAN Leaders'Summit in October.
The number of hotspots in Indonesia which is monitored by Singapore had increased nearly six-fold from 86 last Saturday to 488 on Monday. This had made the city-state worry another round of haze.
Singapore had experienced serious hazy days in June, pushing up its air pollution index to a record high. It was led by the transboundary haze resulting from forest fires in neighboring Indonesia.
