ST Explains
Why is it difficult to identify companies linked to fires? How can S’pore’s haze law be strengthened?
- It has been hard to name haze-linked firms because organisations lacks up-to-date plantation maps and full company data, making satellite evidence alone unreliable.
- The Transboundary Haze Pollution Act can fine firms up to "$100,000 a day" and "$2 million" total, but cross-border probes make enforcement difficult.
- Experts want stronger rules, including disclosure of plantation, supply chain and ownership data, plus earlier fire prevention and possibly tougher penalties.
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SINGAPORE - As South-east Asia faces its most severe haze crisis in over a decade, governments and environmental organisations are starting to identify the companies that could be responsible for the widespread burning.
Singapore has for instance served legal notices to 10 companies under its Transboundary Haze Pollution Act, asking them to provide more information on their fire prevention and suppression strategies.
Companies were identified by analysing satellite imagery and meteorological data on regional hot spots and smoke plumes, including open sources and concession maps.
Other environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Indonesian non-government organisation Pantau Gambut have also done their own analyses of satellite data to identify firms linked to starting haze-belching fires through slash-and-burn practices.
For instance, in an Oct 5 report, Greenpeace identified fires and smoke in concessions linked to two Singapore Exchange-listed companies First Resources and Bumitama Agri.
But as the blazes continue and the region grapples with bad air, the lack of action taken against errant firms have prompted questions about why prosecution is so challenging.
Addressing this issue about enforcement in a media interview on Oct 19, Senior Minister K. Shanmugam said the Republic will consider legal, regulatory and economic measures to exert pressure on companies linked to the haze.
These include targeting their bottom lines, access to financing, government grants and standing with investors. He also said Singapore will consider changing existing laws or introducing new ones on an urgent basis to ensure further cooperation.
The Straits Times speaks to environment groups and legal experts to find out why it has been tricky to hold polluting firms accountable, and how Singapore could potentially strengthen its haze laws to ensure the culprits take responsibility for the fires.
What are the challenges in pinpointing haze culprits?
The main challenge is the lack of access to up-to-date maps of plantation companies.
Such maps are needed to identify and verify the locations where fires were started, and monitor if companies are taking measures to restore peatlands on their land, if they had previously claimed to do so.
Greenpeace Indonesia’s forest campaigner Belgis Habiba said the Indonesian government has never disclosed full information on fires by corporations, and its data usually shows only areas by administrative boundaries, such as provincial or district ones.
Not all companies disclose the boundaries of the suppliers they source pulpwood or oil palm from.
Without such information, it is difficult to determine a fire’s origin through satellite images alone, as flames can spread across land plots, said Tomi Haryadi, programme director for food, land and water at WRI Indonesia.
“Improving data transparency from both government and companies, including access to updated concession maps and relevant fire prevention and fire management data, is essential to strengthen independent monitoring and accountability,” he said.
On Oct 16, The Jakarta Post reported that Indonesia’s Forestry Ministry had restricted people from retrieving information from its mapping platform Sigap without written approval. It had threatened criminal charges against those who allegedly using geospatial data without the government’s authorisation.
Not all firms provide information on their fire history, inspection findings, and links to larger conglomerates and shareholders, added Wahyu Perdana, advocacy, campaign, and communications manager of Pantau Gambut.
Such data is necessary to determine if a firm is genuinely responsive to complaints about fire hotspots emerging on its supplier’s plantation, Wahyu added.
Companies should share such information to help observers and environmental groups monitor their efforts at fire prevention and ecosystem restoration, and whether they take steps to ensure that suppliers meet environmental standards.
Without access to concession maps, environmental groups say they build their own databases through other means.
For instance, WRI Indonesia and WALHI said they rely on satellite imagery, the government’s fire monitoring platform and concession data from Global Nature Watch when conducting their own investigations.
Greenpeace Indonesia also has a database of concessions maps established from various “reliable sources” , it said.
What are the limitations of Singapore’s Transboundary Haze Pollution Act?
The Act targets those responsible for causing or condoning fires. It can be triggered if the haze causes the Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) – a measure of air quality here – to stay in the unhealthy range in any part of Singapore for 24 hours or more.
Those guilty under the Act can be fined up to $100,000 a day, capped at a total of $2 million.
This law has been wielded twice so far - in 2015, during the last major haze crisis to affect Singapore, and again in 2026. But no fines have been meted out so far.
Lawyers say enforcement is limited by the cross-border nature of investigation and difficulties in collecting evidence of haze-causing fire sources outside of Singapore.
In 2015, preventive measure notices were issued by Singapore’s National Environment Agency (NEA) to six firms. These notices request the firms to stop burning on their land, and to submit plans on how they plan to prevent the fires from recurring.
Two cases were eventually closed, while investigations into the remaining four are still open.
This year, as at Oct 19, 10 plantation firms in Sumatra and Kalimantan have been served preventive measures notices.
Four of them are listed as pulpwood suppliers to one of Indonesia’s largest pulp and paper companies, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), which has a presence in Singapore. Three of these four are repeat offenders who had been served notices in both years.
Under the section in the law which allows the NEA to issue these notices, there are no penalties if firms do not comply, said Sean Tseng, an adjunct senior research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Law at the National University of Singapore.
Gary Beh, a corporate and environmental, social, and governance partner at law firm Withers KhattarWong, said that being served a notice does not, by itself, establish that a company is liable for causing haze pollution in Singapore.
Cross-border investigations and identifying culprits have practical challenges such as the opaque nature of land ownership, according to a 2025 paper by the Singapore Management University’s associate professor of law Adeline Chong.
Indonesia has refused to share concession maps, citing its freedom of information law, stated the paper published in the Chinese Journal of Transnational Law.
How can Singapore’s anti-haze law be improved?
Obtaining information needed to identify companies responsible for fires overseas is a major challenge to enforcing the law, said Tseng.
Tseng said it is most critical to close such information gaps.
One way of giving Singapore more regulatory teeth is to introduce new regulations that will require companies to disclose certain information when seeking to get listed in Singapore, or sell to the market here, suggested Tseng.
This could involve getting plantation and forestry businesses with a presence here to provide information such as maps of their plantation operations, their supply chains and sourcing, and the subsidiaries or other entities that they control, suggested Tseng.
“It is worth considering whether (these rules) could be incorporated into existing legal and regulatory frameworks governing corporate disclosures, access to capital markets, financing or other conditions for doing business in Singapore,” Tseng said.
“The objective would be to equip investigators with reliable information before the next haze crisis arises, rather than having to seek that information from overseas authorities when the crisis is already unfolding,” he said.
Michelle Lim, an associate professor of law at SMU, added that Singapore-linked companies operating in fire-prone areas should be required to implement precautionary, fire prevention measures on land they have authority over.
“Prevention needs to start far earlier (before haze)... Restoration of peatlands is a further measure which would also have important co-benefits for communities and nature,” she added.
It is also worth asking if the existing penalty capped at $2 million remain appropriate, added Withers KhattarWong’s Beh.
“Parliament could conceivably consider whether that level of penalty continues to provide an appropriate deterrent,” he said.
According to APP’s financial statement for 2025, it recorded an operating profit of US$1.65 billion (S$2.1 billion).
Shanmugam’s warning that the country will use regulatory and economic measures to exert pressure on errant companies show that the Government recognises that the THPA may not be able to operate effectively in isolation, and need additional levers, noted Tseng.