Motivasi Singapura Meratifikasi ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution Tahun 2003

The purpose of this research is to find out why Singapore ratified the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (AATHP) in 2003. Forest fire became an agenda that happen almost every year in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia. It made Southeast Asia being covered by a haze during the fire occures, particularly Singapore. This research describes three things. First, what motivation which drives Singapore did ratify AATHP as a regional response in the fight against transboundary haze pollution under ASEAN. Second, the impact of transboundary haze pollution toward the whole life aspects in Singapore. Third, the condition of Singapore after ratification AATHP.This research theoretically has built with Pluralism as perspectives and The National State as the level of analysis in International Relations, and supported by Green Theory as well. The formulation of all arguments, facts, and theoretical framework in this research is guided by qualitative explanation methods. The technique of this research is the study of library. The collected data is gotten from journals, books, Thesis and website articles which related to the problems.This research noted that Singapore is a country that is highly vulnerable to the adverse effects of transboundary haze pollution, because haze potentially covered the entire surface area of Singapore. When this thing happened, all activities in societyis disrupted, safety is threatened, andthe impact on the economy of Singapore is quite significant. It encouraged Singapore to take a decisive stepby ratifying AATHP as a political response to overcome the transboundary haze problem. However, when AATHP was not run effectively, Singapore must take a more decisive action. Further, Singapore made a Transboundary Haze Pollution Act (THPA) which is designed to have an extraterritorial range and is expected to work effectively in addressing transboundary haze problem in Singapore.Keywords : Transboundary, Haze, Pollution, Singapore, Ratification, Impac

TRANSBOUNDARY HAZE POLLUTION IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW OF STATE RESPONSIBILITY

In recent decades the Southeast Asia Countries have been affected by haze pollution which is caused by human activities in burning land/forest for plantation and/or agriculture. Indonesia is one of the major sources of the haze pollution in the region. The pollution does not stop at national borders only, but also causing transboundary pollution to the neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. As a reaction of this environmental crisis, ASEAN Agreement on transboundary Haze Pollution was signed. The Agreement recognizes that transboundary haze pollution which resulted from land and/or forest fires should be mitigated through concerted national efforts and international cooperation. As of June 2013, all the ASEAN countries, except Indonesia, have ratified the agreement. However Indonesia hopes to ratify the haze agreement by 2015. The study is normative legal reserach with Statute Approach and Case Approach. By using the qualitative descriptive method, this study will discribe the ransboundary haze pollution in details which could be seen in some international laws concerning law of state responsibility as for Draft Articles on State Responsibility and 1997 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution. The result shows that Indonesia needs to do the action, not onlyin term of how to combat the forest fires with the deployment of personnel from ASEAN, but also preventing issue of it, namely by making the rule of law which effectively penalize the forest burning. Most of these problems can be overcome only if Indonesia ratified the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution

Variation of household electricity consumption and potential impact of outdoor PM2.5 concentration: a comparison between Singapore and Shanghai

The auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound testing approach was used to study the relationships between the monthly household electricity consumption and outdoor PM2.5 concentration with the consideration of ambient temperature and the number of rainy days for Singapore and Shanghai. It is shown that there are significant long-run relationships between the household electricity consumption and the regressors for both Singapore and Shanghai. For Singapore, a 20% increase in the PM2.5 concentration of a single month is in the long-run significantly related to a 0.8% increase in the household electricity consumption. This corresponds to an electricity overconsumption of 5.0 GWh, a total of 0.7–1.0 million USD in electricity cost, and 2.1 kilotons of CO2 emission associated with electricity generation. For Shanghai, a 20% decrease in the PM2.5 concentration of a single month is in the long-run significantly related to a 2.2% decrease in the household electricity consumption. This corresponds to a 35.0 GWh decrease in the overall household electricity consumption, 1.6–5.1 million USD decrease in electricity cost, and 17.5 kilotons of CO2 emission. The results suggest that the cost of electricity consumption should be included in the economic cost analysis of PM2.5 pollution in the future. A 1 °C increase in the monthly temperature is in the long-run significantly related to a 13.6% increase in the monthly electricity consumption for Singapore, while a 30 degree days increase in heating & cooling days (HCDD) is in the long-run significantly related to a 24.9% increase in the monthly electricity consumption for Shanghai. A 5-day increase in the number of rainy days per month is in the long-run significantly related to a 3.0% and 5.8% increase in the monthly electricity consumption for Singapore and Shanghai, respectively

Comparison of physical and chemical properties of ambient aerosols during the 2009 haze and non-haze periods in Southeast Asia

Recurrent smoke-haze episodes that occur in Southeast Asia (SEA) are of much concern because of their environmental and health impacts. These haze episodes are mainly caused by uncontrolled biomass and peat burning in Indonesia. Airborne particulate matter (PM) samples were collected in the southwest coast of Singapore from 16 August to 9 November in 2009 to assess the impact of smoke-haze episodes on the air quality due to the long-range transport of biomass and peat burning emissions. The physical and chemical characteristics of PM were investigated during pre-haze, smoke-haze, and post-haze periods. Days with PM2.5 mass concentrations of ≥35 μg m−3 were considered as smoke-haze events. Using this criterion, out of the total 82 sampling days, nine smoke-haze events were identified. The origin of air masses during smoke-haze episodes was studied on the basis of HYSPLIT backward air trajectory analysis for 4 days. In terms of the physical properties of PM, higher particle surface area concentrations and particle gravimetric mass concentrations were observed during the smoke-haze period, but there was no consistent pattern for particle number concentrations during the haze period as compared to the non-haze period except that there was a significant increase at about 08:00, which could be attributed to the entrainment of PM from aloft after the breakdown of the nocturnal inversion layer. As for the chemical characteristics of PM, among the six key inorganic water-soluble ions (Cl−, NO3 −, nss-SO4 2−, Na+, NH4 +, and nss-K+) measured in this study, NO3 −, nss-SO4 2−, and NH4 + showed a significant increase in their concentrations during the smoke-haze period together with nss-K+. These observations suggest that the increased atmospheric loading of PM with higher surface area and increased concentrations of optically active secondary inorganic aerosols [(NH4)2SO4 or NH4HSO4 and NH4NO3] resulted in the atmospheric visibility reduction in SEA due to the advection of biomass and peat burning emissions