Effectiveness Of The ASEAN Haze Governance Regime:From A Process Perspective

Transboundary haze pollution has plagued Southeast Asia for decades. Despite continued efforts made by the ASEAN community, no significant improvement of the environment has been observed. The ASEAN haze governance regime has been widely criticized for its inability to resolve the haze problem.This dissertation aims to complement the existing outcome-focused literature on regime effectiveness and attempts to assess the effectiveness of the ASEAN haze governance regime from a process perspective. The agenda-setting, negotiation, and implementation processes are systematically examined, with a view to evaluating the capabilities of the regime to set meaningful agenda, facilitate negotiation, and promote implementation.The regime is considered effective in agenda setting, due to the fact that it has provided sufficient platforms for actors to raise new ideas and experiment with different approaches. Concerned actors are able to capitalize on all levels of meetings under the ASEAN haze governance regime in order to push for new ideas and measures. With regard to negotiation, the regime has a moderate impact on the signing and ratification of the regional haze agreement, but with a considerably less impact on further negotiations of specific measures to combat transboundary haze pollution. The effectiveness of the regime in the implementation process paints a more mixed picture. On the one hand, the regime appears to be effective in advancing the implementation process by developing or encouraging a multitude of measures at national, sub-regional, and regional levels. On the other hand, the regime has so far demonstrated consistent failure in overcoming national sovereignty concerns and domestic political barriers. Effectiveness of the measures taken has been substantially crippled by Indonesia’s overriding concern about sovereignty and limited actor capacity.In addition, an in-depth comparison is conducted between the ASEAN haze governance regime and the UNECE regime on long-range transboundary air pollution. Attention is accorded to some specific areas of regime management, i.e. science-policy interaction, decision making, cost sharing, and capacity building. The aim of such comparison is to identify conditions that are necessary for the ASEAN haze governance regime to make positive transitions toward its stated goal.The comparative study finds that strategic interaction between science and policy is key to policy innovation and effective policy implementation. Policy-makers must constantly pay attention to the knowledge and technology made available by scientists/experts, in order to develop policies that are sound and feasible. The participation by policy-makers in this interactive process will deepen their beliefs in the soundness of the policies proposed, and in turn provide more incentive for them to promote and implement those policies. The interaction between policy-makers and scientists/experts under the ASEAN haze governance regime is yet to be significantly strengthened in order to realize the various benefits proposed above.The ASEAN consensus-seeking decision-making style is frequently criticized for obstructing the adoption of decisions or generating lowest common denominator outcomes. However, the fact that the UNECE regime adopted the same decision-making style for most of its history indicates that the decision-making style per se may not have as much impact on the regime effectiveness as most scholars have suggested. As a matter of fact, the consensus-based decision-making style has been a rather standard practice in many international environmental regimes. Majority voting, as an alternative of consensus seeking, has yet to prove its superiority in the CLRTAP regime. Given the current confidence-building stage of the ASEAN haze governance regime, making decisions through consensus may be a virtue to some extent, as it ensures a high level of agreement among the regime participants and encourage state participation in the follow-up measures. At this point, divergence of actor interests and limited actor capacities are the primary reasons why few meaningful decisions have been made under the regime.The comparative study subsequently finds that cost sharing and capacity building are necessary efforts to realign actor interests and enhance actor capacities. Compared to the European regime, the ASEAN haze governance regime has demonstrated a stronger awareness of cost sharing and capacity building since its inception. Unfortunately, the performance of these projects has so far been mediocre. The problematic design of the fund contribution mechanism and domestic barriers within Indonesia are much to the detriment of realizing the full potential of these projects. Therefore, the regime must direct increased efforts to overcome these barriers in order to ensure effective implementation of the well-intended projects.