Aww snap. Presumably fed up by the repeated snubs by Indonesia’s government over the transboundary haze issue, Singapore did what they did best — complain about it to the higher ups.
As the Senior Minister of State for the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resource, Dr. Amy Khor represented the country during an event convened by the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, Kenya, last week. Over 120 environment ministers and other leaders were present, totalling to some 2,700 delegates at the meeting.
It was on this platform that Dr. Khor articulated Singapore’s grievances about #SGhaze.
“I highlighted the transboundary nature of environmental issues, in particular, air pollution,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “I was heartened to hear that many were supportive of more bilateral, regional and international cooperation on this front. Governments, civil society, businesses, as well as non-governmental organisations all need to work together to solve the problem of transboundary air pollution, and the other pressing environmental issues that face our world today.”
Surely that’s a jibe at her Indonesian counterparts, who’ve repeatedly been vocally disobliging to Singapore’s efforts to crack down on the haze-causing forest fires. Indonesian officials have gone on record to essentially say that Singapore should shut up about the haze. Efforts to suss out the very people behind haze-linked Indonesian firms were also protested.
In any case, Dr. Khor sure seems to have garnered a lot of friends during the United Nations meeting.
“I also took the opportunity to meet counterparts from other countries such as Japan, Maldives, Norway, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, and the United States of America, as well as NGOs such as the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF),” she said. “During the meetings, we discussed the importance of encouraging greater corporate responsibility, and sustainable production and consumption practices to tackle the issue of transboundary pollution.”
The Senior Minister — who once said that Singaporeans unhappy with the way things are run here should pack up and leave — said that she felt encouraged at the level of “commitment and determination demonstrated” at the UN meeting. Careful there, such sick burns could start another forest fire.
We await the Indonesian government’s brusque reaction to the matter.
