Civil society groups have urged the governments of Asean member states to enact stronger laws to hold businesses accountable for the negative impacts they have on the environment and people.
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Campaigners at the Asean Peoples Forum 2025, hosted in conjunction with the 46th Asean Summit in Kuala Lumpur last week, highlighted the urgent need to uphold environmental justice in Southeast Asia as the region’s people are increasingly exposed to the brunt of climate change and the consequences of environmental pollution.
Theiva Lingam, a public interest lawyer and legal advisor to independent non-profit Friends of the Earth Malaysia, said the voluntary nature of current climate commitments is the biggest barrier to holding corporations accountable for environmental harm and human rights violations in Southeast Asia.
“We must have binding regulations for corporations. Without that, nothing is going to work,” she said, cautioning that a business-as-usual approach will lead to environmental destruction and put people at immediate risk of pollution and health impacts.
Transboundary water pollution from rare earth mining, along with recurring haze from agricultural burning, continues to highlight Asean’s ongoing struggle to manage cross-border environmental and health crises.
Gold and rare earth mining operations in Myanmar’s Shan State, for example, are located within the Greater Mekong Subregion, just 20 kilometres from the Thai border and 2 to 3 kilometres from the Kok River.
Greenpeace Thailand’s food and forest campaigner, Rattanasiri Kittikongnapang, said toxic heavy metals released from these mining activities are accumulating in the environment and spreading downstream into the Mekong River Basin, contaminating water sources and threatening fish populations that local economies depend on. These activities are increasingly endangering ecosystems and communities in Thailand’s Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai provinces.
She also pointed out that agricultural burning for maize farming in northern Thailand has caused persistent transboundary haze for over 20 years, affecting millions in Thailand and neighbouring Laos and Myanmar.
Provinces in Northern and Southern Thailand regularly experience dangerously high levels of PM2.5 air pollution, which poses serious risks to public health and the tourism sector.
In the past decade, nearly 1.9 million hectares of forest have been cleared in Thailand to grow maize for animal feed, according to Greenpeace. Maize is one of the Thailand’s most valuable cash crops, supported and promoted by the government both for domestic usage and for export. It plays an important role in the manufacturing of feeds used in livestock, a rapidly growing industry.
“Asean can no longer remain silent in the face of public outcry over transboundary air pollution,” Kittikongnapang said at the panel discussions, adding that implementing strict laws on the basis of “polluter pays” are crucial to hold transnational corporations accountable for the environmental damage they cause across borders.
Similar challenges have also been reported in Indonesia, where the burning of peatlands for pulpwood, timber and oil palm plantations have caused transboundary haze pollution in neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore.
Sekar Banjaran Aji, an environmental lawyer and forest campaigner at Greenpeace Indonesia mentioned how forests in South Sumatra are persistently burned for agricultural expansion by major corporations like Sinar Mas, one of Indonesia’s largest conglomerates with significant interests in pulp and paper through its subsidiary, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP).
Greenpeace Indonesia reported that approximately 314,000 hectares burned within APP Sinar Mas’s pulpwood concessions between 2015 and 2019, of which about 174,000 hectares were on peatlands. In 2023, an additional 12,749 hectares were burned within these concessions, indicating ongoing challenges in fire prevention and land management.
Despite the company’s 2013 Forest Conservation Policy (FCP) to halt deforestation and peatland conversion, it has failed to fulfil its promises to restore peatlands and nature because there’s more profit in destruction, Sekar said. APP recently had its net zero targets approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), although this was met with skepticism from Greenpeace.
Sekar urged Asean leaders to make a stronger commitment to protect human rights by “strengthening enforcement mechanisms to promote data transparency” and supporting legal initiatives brought by citizens affected by the fires.
She is currently pursuing a court case in Indonesia’s civil courts, in which several residents impacted by the South Sumatran fires are suing three pulpwood companies over the toxic haze.
Legally binding environmental rights framework
The right to a clean, healthy and safe environment is increasingly being recognised in countries across Southeast Asia. Such rights are already enshrined in the constitutions of countries like Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, forming the basis for implementing stronger environmental laws in the region.
So far, all Asean member states except Cambodia have voted in favour of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment at the United Nations General Assembly in 2022.
As Asean’s chair, Malaysia is also pushing for the bloc to sign the Declaration on Environmental Rights this year, although such rights have yet to be explicitly stated in the country’s federal constitution.
The Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) said in February that advancing environmental rights is among its main priorities, along with ensure ensuring inclusive growth and sustainable development when it convened for a meeting in Langkawi, Kedah.
This begins with member states committing to enact domestic laws to hold their companies accountable for any transboundary pollution that they cause or contribute, said sustainability lawyer and secretary of civil society coalition, Cerah Malaysia, Kiu Jia Yaw.
The Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (AATHP) was signed in 2002 and has been ratified by seven members: Brunei, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.
However, the agreement has not been effective to prevent haze pollution in the region as it lacks provisions to penalise countries for non-compliance.
To address such gaps in regional law, Kiu said countries must start recognising environmental rights at the local level and have enforceable laws in place.
Like other countries in the region, Malaysia is working to amend its environmental laws such as the Environmental Quality Act 1974. The Department of Environment has invited public feedback until 16 June on the proposed amendments to the Act, which governs pollution control, environmental licencing, and enforcement mechanisms.
Both Kiu and Theiva said that Malaysia, as the current Asean chair, must lead the way to legislate laws that ensures compliance across the region.
“I want to stress that there needs to be better cooperation among the Asean governments. Without it, we will not be able to uphold anything,” she said highlighting that the non-binding nature of the Asean Declaration on Environmental Rights is not sufficient to yield tangible results for climate action in the region.
