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Malaysia urges neighbors to help prevent haze Reuters September 21, 2005 MANILA, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Malaysia urged its neighbours on Tuesday to ratify an agreement to control air pollution in southeast Asia, a month after forest fires in Indonesia caused some of the worst haze in the region in eight years.
"Every member country should ratify the agreement," Dato S. Sothinathan, Malaysia's deputy environment minister, told reporters during a meeting in Manila of Association of South East Asian Nation (ASEAN) environment ministers. "If it's ratified by all, I think it can be given its full force". He said only seven of ASEAN's 10 member states had ratified the June 2002 region-wide agreement to prevent and control transboundary haze pollution as a result of land and forest fires. Indonesia has yet to ratify the accord. In a joint communique issued on Tuesday, the final day of a two-day informal meeting, the ASEAN environment ministers agreed to form a regional panel of experts on fire and haze assessment to strengthen cooperation among affected countries. "We want better cooperation," Sothinathan told reporters, adding his government would support efforts by Jakarta to prosecute companies and individuals causing land and forest fires, including Malaysian companies. "What we would like to see is to prevent this from happening. There should be no burning of plantation for cultivation purposes". ASEAN also launched a European Union-funded regional biodiversity centre near Manila that will study how to protect the region's diminishing flora and fauna species. The region, covering only 3 percent of the world's land surface, is home to about 25 percent of all known animal and plant species that are increasingly threatened by deforestation and economic development. The ASEAN area is losing 1 percent of its forest cover every year, almost four times more than the world average, said Luc Vandebon, acting head of the EU delegation to the Philippines. "The flora and fauna of the region are increasingly threatened," he said in a speech. Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines were ranked as having the highest number of threatened plants and animals due to deforestation, conversion of land for agriculture, population growth and trafficking in animals. The EU is providing about 6 million euros ($7.2 million) to help run the biodiversity centre for the next three years under an agreement signed in April 2005. REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ARTICLE CONTENT COPYRIGHT the Reuters. THIS CONTENT IS INTENDED SOLELY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. mongabay.com users agree to the following as a condition for use of this material: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental issues. This constitutes 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. If you are the copyright owner and would like this content removed from mongabay.com, please contact me. News index | RSS | News Feed Advertisements: Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing |
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