Overview

ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Haze/Regional Haze Action Plan

Ministers from countries affected by the haze come together to meet and come up with solutions to solve the haze problem that is caused by the Indonesian forest-fires. The Action Plan introduced during the meeting calls for specific measures to prevent forest-fires from being set by drawing up and enforcing better policies. Educating the public on the haze is also essential. Technology is used to monitor the forest fires. The fire-fighting force of the region is also strengthened. The ministers of different countries agreed that they would continue work together to solve the haze problems by enforcing the preventive measures.(http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/ACOS-64D3Q5?OpenDocument)

ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre

This centre was established in January 1993 to enhance the benefit from the advances made in meteorological science and technology. It is also to strengthen the support provided to weather-sensitive segments of their economies. The centre also provides relevant information on the weather and also to conduct forecasts. This would serve as an early warning service for storms and climate-related occurrences over the South-East Asian regions. The forecasts can then be handed over to each individual country for review, where the government can then inform the citizens about the current climate condition of the region and take appropriate actions. During the haze period, this would in turn help a lot as it provides the haze-affected countries an essential reference of their current air quality so that the government of the countries can know what actions they should take. (http://intranet.missinet.gov.sg/asmc/asmc.html)

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Haze Technical Task Force

According to "Association of Southeast Asian Nations" (http://www.aseansec.org/8943.htm), the Haze Technical Task Force (HTTF) was "established to operationalize and implement the measures recommended in the ASEAN Cooperation Plan on Transboundary Pollution relating to atmospheric pollution". It was created to "demarcate critical areas of forest fires", identify the periods whereby the smoke haze occurs, to "develop a system for National Focal Points to alert ASEAN Senior Officials on the Environment (ASOEN) on impending haze", "facilitate the proper collection and effective dissemination of meteorological data to the haze-affected countries", to develop a proper system to monitor the actions taken on ground to tackle the forest fires and also to "report on the status of projects relating to the control of the transboundary haze pollution involving international organizations and developed countries".

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Sub-Regional Firefighting Arrangement

Main priority is to ensure that fires do not economic or environmental threat. The arrangements will ensure that fires triggered off be quickly extinguished. THE SRFA is funded by contributions from sources all over the world. (http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/ACOS-64D3Q5?OpenDocument)

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