People in Singapore are willing to cough up nearly 1 per cent of their annual income in order to guarantee the absence of transboundary haze for a year, researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have found.
The haze that affected Singapore from Friday to Sunday was caused by forest fires burning in Rokan Hilir in Sumatra's Riau province, Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) said yesterday.
Singapore has raised concerns over transboundary air pollution at a United Nations ( UN ) meeting involving some 120 environment ministers in Africa last week, the Ministry for the Environment and Water Resources ( MEWR ) have announced.
With economic integration finally looking like a sure thing by yearend for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, perhaps the grouping can deal decisively with the forest fires that each year spawn choking haze not only at the points of origin in Indonesia but also in neighboring countries.
A humanitarian crisis looms in Indonesia as the prolonged dry spell, coupled with waterbombing aircraft getting nowhere near fires seething deep below peatlands, all but ended any hope of a real respite from the haze in the weeks ahead.
The local station of the Philippine weather bureau finally admitted that the thick haze that enveloped General Santos City last week and is still hovering over the city may be caused by the forest fire in Indonesia.
Supermarket chains NTUC FairPrice, Sheng Siong and Prime Supermarket have pulled all Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) items off their shelves, including popular brands such as Paseo.
Indonesia is facing uphill to deal with forest fire that massively engulfing forest areas in at least eight provinces in Sumatra and Kalimantan as the El Nino weather continues to ensue across the country, risking the health of millions of people.
Both the outlying and downtown areas of Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City have been covered with opalescent haze over the past two days.
Higher levels of air pollution were recorded in Malaysia and Singapore as a result of forest fires in neighboring Indonesia, local media reported on Wednesday.
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 head of Singapore's National Environment Agency expressed concern to his Indonesian counterparts over the sudden spike in the number of forest fire hotspots in neighboring Sumatra, the agency said on Monday.
Singapore has set up an inter-ministerial committee to coordinate the nation's effort to deal with the impact of the haze resulting from forest fires in neighboring Indonesia, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Thursday.
The transboundary haze as a result of bush burning in Indonesia pushed Singapore's three-hour pollutant standards index (PSI) to a record high of 290 on Wednesday evening.
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