Who benefits from the burning?

From Nurul Anna Mausar As Sabah woke up today, the haze was still here. At 7am, Kota Kinabalu recorded an air pollutant index of 153, placing it in the 'unhealthy' category. The reading follows another difficult weekend for Sabah, with Kota Kinabalu and Kimanis recording unhealthy API readings of 157 and 151, respectively, on Sunday. Sabah's environment department has attributed the haze to transboundary smoke from forest and peatland fires in Kalimantan. For many Sabahans, however, haze is not simply a number on an air-quality application. It is the grey sky we wake up to. The outdoor plans we cancel. The children we worry about sending outside. The workers who cannot simply choose to stay indoors. It is the uncomfortable feeling of knowing that the air we breathe is polluted, even when we have done nothing to cause it. For Sabah, haze is not a distant environmental crisis. We breathe it, too. Yet, whenever transboundary haze returns, the conversation often devolves into pointing fingers across borders. It is easy to blame Indonesia. But that is neither sufficient nor particularly helpful. Communities in Kalimantan are breathing the same smoke. They, too, are losing access to clean air and suffering the consequences of the fires. Borneo's forests, peatlands and weather systems do not recognise the political borders between Malaysia and Indonesia. But recognising this shared vulnerability does not mean abandoning accountability. In fact, it should make us ask a much more uncomfortable question: who is actually benefitting from the burning? If forests and peatlands are deliberately burned to clear land for commercial purposes, Asean governments cannot afford to stop their investigations at the person who physically starts the fire. They need to follow the land. Follow the concession. Follow the ownership. Follow the money. Ultimately, they need to ask: where are the companies, directors and CEOs who profit from these operations? Indonesia has already identified 19 companies whose concession areas were affected by fires covering more than 11,000 hectares. Authorities are investigating whether the fires were accidental or deliberate, while maintaining that strict liability applies when a fire occurs within a concession area. Yet the companies have not been publicly named. This is where Asean's response needs to become more ambitious. If deliberate burning is taking place on corporate-controlled land, accountability should not end with a farmer, worker or contractor on the ground. The person holding the match may start the fire, but the people who profit from the land deserve scrutiny, too. That does not mean automatically declaring every company guilty. It means demanding transparency, proper investigations and consequences where evidence establishes responsibility. Civil society groups in Malaysia have already called for Indonesia to disclose concession maps, fire investigation findings and ownership information so that potentially implicated companies, including Malaysian-linked companies, can be investigated in Malaysia as well. This is precisely the kind of cross-border cooperation Asean should be strengthening. The Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution has existed for more than two decades. Yet every haze season, we seem to return to the same cycle: monitor the hotspots, issue health advisories, conduct firefighting operations, wait for the rain, and hope the problem goes away. That is not a long-term solution. Asean needs stronger mechanisms for sharing satellite data, identifying the ownership of affected concessions, investigating corporate actors and enforcing environmental responsibilities across borders. Malaysia must also continue looking inward. Sabah authorities have conducted hundreds of open-burning prevention patrols, and the latest patrols reportedly found no major fires around several Sabah districts. The same monitoring showed 182 active hotspots in Kalimantan and 370 in Sumatra, while no hotspots were detected in Sabah. That matters because Sabahans should not have to bear the consequences of fires we did not start. And this is ultimately what makes the haze issue more than an environmental problem. It is a public health issue. A governance issue. An accountability issue. For Sabahans, especially those living in areas repeatedly affected by haze, it is also a question of whether our concerns receive the same urgency as those elsewhere in Malaysia. Borneo should not be treated as an afterthought simply because it sits far from the federal administrative centre. The island is shared by countries, states, communities and ecosystems. What happens in Kalimantan can affect Sabah and Sarawak within days. What happens in our forests can affect our neighbours, too. Borneo does not recognise the borders we drew on a map. Perhaps our policies should stop pretending that it does. The haze will eventually clear. The skies will become blue again. But if our response remains reactive, we will simply wait for the next dry season, the next fire, and the next unhealthy API reading. The question is not whether Borneo will face haze again. It is whether, by then, our governments will finally have the courage to look beyond borders – and hold accountable not only those who light the fires, but those who profit from the land on which they burn. Because Borneo breathes as one. Our governments, our laws, and our accountability should, too. Nurul Anna Mausar is a Sabahan law student, youth activist and FMT reader. The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.