ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (AATPH)

Technical Representative
       FOR. RICARDO L. CALDERON
       Director
       DENR - Forest Management Bureau
       Tel. Nos. - (632) 928 9313 / 927 4788

Focal Division
       Forest Resources Conservation Division (FRCD)
       Tel. No. - (632) 927 2491

At the 14th Informal ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on the Environment and 9th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution held in 25 September 2013, the Ministers reaffirmed their commitment to the objectives and principles of the Agreement and agreed to step up cooperation to effectively implement it in its entirety.
ASEAN Member States (AMS) agreed to share information, subject to respective national laws and policies and international obligations. The Ministers also agreed to institutionalize possible activation of international assistance by AMS early in the haze season at the appropriate alert level.
Furthermore, they agreed to:
(i) cooperate in developing and implementing measures to prevent, monitor, and mitigate transboundary haze pollution by controlling sources of land and/or forest fires, development of monitoring, assessment and early warning systems, exchange of information and technology, and the provision of mutual assistance;
(ii) respond promptly to a request for relevant information sought by a State or States that are or may be affected by such transboundary haze pollution, with a view to minimizing the consequence of the transboundary haze pollution; and
(iii) take legal, administrative and/ or other measures to implement their obligations under the Agreement.

The Ministers responsible for environment from AMS held their 11th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution on 29 October 2015 in Ha Noi, Vietnam. The Ministers reviewed regional cooperation on a number of haze-related issues, in particular actions taken under the AATHP, and discussed new initiatives to further promote regional cooperation in addressing transboundary haze pollution.

Significant achievements under COP11 are: 
1) commitment to develop an ASEAN Haze-Free Roadmap which is an action-oriented and time-bound framework for AMS to achieve the vision of Haze-Free ASEAN by 2020;
2) endorsement of the revised Standard Operating Procedure for Monitoring, Assessment and Joint Emergency Response under the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, where the Alert Levels, Trigger Points and Actions on Fire Suppression adopted by COP-10 was incorporated;
3) endorsement of ASEAN Guidelines on Peatland Fire Management; and
4) note of the substantive progress of the development of the successor ASEAN Programme on Sustainable Management of Peatland Ecosystems - APSMPE (2014-2020).

11th Meeting of Conference of Parties to Haze Agreement (COP-11), October 26-31, 2015 Hanoi, Vietnam
[Attended by Undersecretary Demetrio L. Ignacio, Jr., For. Raul M. Briz (FMB), Teresita Blastique (BMB), Merva Arapo (EMB) and Sevillo D. David Jr. (NWRB)]

6th ASEAN Peatland Forests Project (APFP) Project Steering Committee Meeting ; 5th SEApet Project Coordination Meeting; Closing and knowledge workshop on ASEAN Programme on Sustainable Management of Peatland Ecosystem ( 2014-2020), 10-12 November 2014, Pekanbaru, Riau , Indonesia (Attended by Ms. Armida P. Andres Chief, Biodiversity Policy and Knowledge Management, Division (BPKMD), BMB)

Next Schedule of Meeting: The 12th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP-AATHP) will be on 2016 in Malaysia.