Can Singapore solve Indonesia's haze problem?

As of today, Singapore has experienced almost 7 consecutive weeks of haze in 2026, carried by southeasterly winds blowing through the burning forest plantations and peatland in Sumatra and Kalimantan, in Indonesia.

Once more, the quality of life in Singapore and Malaysia are threatened by this "transboundary haze". And once more, certain voices have been urging Singapore to take certain punitive action against plantation owners in Indonesia. This time, these voices say, Singapore can easily solve the haze problem with this one easy solution. Some of them might even say it's Singapore's moral duty.

But is it really that simple? Haven't we all been here before in 2015 and 1997? What happened to that other one really simple trick that everyone (us at Illusio included) recommended in 2015?

Getty Images, 2026

Why did boycotts fail?

As noted on our blog previously: In 2013, the Indonesian administration announced a plan to double palm oil production by 2020. Did the national plan succeed? As it turns out: Indonesia's palm plantations increased by 25%, and production increased by 50%. More than half of Indonesia's palm oil (and by-products) are consumed by its domestic market, and much of the remainder is exported to just three nations in order: China, Pakistan, India). Domestic demand and key sizeable export markets drive Indonesia's palm oil production. Not Singapore's "palm oil addiction", a typification that is not backed by the reality of the numbers of Indonesia's palm oil exports or Singapore's energy imports. It is a misguided appeal to emotion at best.

Driving domestic demand is Indonesia's deliberate energy policy. It's not just Pres Widodo's targets, but each successive president's adherence to that policy. Since the mid-2010s, and accelerating under successive administrations, palm oil has been deliberately channelled into the national biodiesel programme. Starting from 2016, the Indonesian government mandated 20% blend of palm oil in diesel. The mandate increased to 30% in 2020, 35% in 2023, 40% in 2025, and 50% in 2026. This is an energy independence policy.

When demand and national policy coincide, external pressures fail. And so too will Bloomberg's suggested solution. Legal and financial sanctions are more of the same external pressures coming up against severe structural limitations.

Toho Co. Ltd.

Why are the threats of action by Singapore and Malaysia backfiring?

Both Singapore and Malaysia's public communications read off the same score: First, affirm Indonesia's right to resource sovereignty. Then treat haze as a tort by business entities, announcing financial and legal sanctions against them. This is a diplomatic blunder. Affirming Indonesian resource sovereignty while simultaneously threatening sanctions is incoherent and weakens the position of Malaysia and Singapore.

Both nations have failed to engage with the energy independence character of Indonesia's palm oil policy, or recognise that the self-reinforcing feedback between Indonesia's local elites, plantation interests, and patronage systems is stronger than attempts to change the system by smaller states in finger-wagging mode. From Indonesia's point of view, the response comes across as a toxic combination of foreign interference, rejection of its energy independence policy, and extraterritorial overreach.

Making Singapore capital more expensive or harder to access simply accelerates diversification away from Singapore to alternative financing in BRICs, China, and other Asian financial centres rather than alter land-use practices on peatlands. Singapore will occupy the moral high ground for decades to come but still choke on the haze every El Nino year.

Is the haze a continuous problem or an episodic one?

Air quality historical data: Not every year is a haze year
Not every El Nino year is a haze year

Data confirms that the problem of transboundary haze arises during El Nino years, with very bad cases during "super El Nino" years where the effect is extreme. Climate scientists have vetted the data and verified the trend several times in the recent past.

In ordinary years, Singapore does not suffer from the impact of haze. In ordinary years, the effect is brief and limited. Interestingly, the impact of haze is not related to Indonesia's increase in palm oil production or the expansion of its palm plantations. Whatever response Singapore's leaders eventually choose should be proportionate and timely, only limited to the El Nino cycle. Bloomberg's proposed legal and financial sanctions for Singapore are neither. It is disproportionate and ineffective, and provably so given Singapore's previous failed attempts to prosecute "rogue companies".

But is the haze even a problem of rogue companies?

But here's the bigger problem with the tort framework of Singapore and Malaysia: the haze is not caused by rogue companies at all. The decisive factors to the repeating pattern of transboundary haze are the specific implementations of Indonesia's energy policy: large-scale drainage canals and dense plantation development on peatlands. It is a systemic development path choice.

Brazil has extensively developed its tropical peatlands but has not produced the same severity of haze compared to Indonesia. The difference lies in method and scale: Brazil has not adopted the same combination of large-scale drainage canals and dense industrial plantations that characterises Indonesian peat development. The Congo Basin and Malaysia show a similar pattern.

Indonesia's actions suggest it doesn't treat the problem as one of rogue companies. Indonesia has sought Brazilian support for the International Tropical Peatland Center (ITPC), maintains peat partnerships with Congo Basin countries and Peru, and this year, trialled an experimental Brazilian fire-suppressant liquid on peat and forest fires in South Sumatra and Kalimantan.

Any lasting solution to transboundary haze will largely have to be developed inside Indonesia, as it operates the world's largest, densest, most developed plantation systems.

What should Singapore prioritise?

Knowing that transboundary haze is tied to the El Nino cycle, that Indonesia is unlikely to abandon its energy independence policy even in the medium term, that Indonesia is contemplating technocratic solutions to combat and manage its palm oil plantations, and that Indonesia is likely to interpret legal and financial threats as a last resort of those lacking in effective enforcement or problem-solving: these should inform Singapore's leaders in their response to the haze problem.

When the haze is this predictable and Indonesian solutions are decades away, where is the preparedness of the leaders of Singapore and Malaysia? Bjørn Lomberg would argue that local adaptation and mitigation is the rational, affordable, and sustainable response in such conditions.

Singapore households received hundreds of millions in Climate Vouchers to buy more efficient fans, fridges and lights in recent, ordinary years. Ahead of a prolonged super El Nino haze season that sent air quality into the unhealthy range for weeks, the government should have offered households Haze Vouchers for the single appliance that would have most directly protected people indoors — air purifiers. The haze is something that can be reliably predicted, vouchers can be planned for, announced, and implemented in advance with far less cost to the quality of life to the people of Singapore than belated threats of legal and financial action, after the fact.