OPINION

Schools close. Clinics fill with children and elderly people struggling to breathe. Air-quality maps glow unhealthy to hazardous across parts of Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand and Indonesia itself. Thousands of hotspots burn in Sumatra and Kalimantan. This is not a surprise. It is the same script that has played out for decades.

Asean signed the Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution in 2002. It built monitoring systems, issued alerts and drafted roadmaps promising a haze-free region by 2020, then 2030. The specialised meteorological centre raised the highest alert weeks ago.

...