Indonesia's complex rules on land use and the difficulty in prosecuting foreign businesses mean Singapore has its work cut out bringing companies to book under its new cross-border air pollution law.
The bill, approved by parliament on Tuesday, has won praise from politicians and environmentalists as a bold move to tackle a decades-long problem of smoke from forest fires in neighboring Indonesia choking the city state.
Indonesia has failed to tackle the problem, despite repeated vows to do so, so Singapore decided to take matters into its own hands after acrid smoke blanketed the island last year, posing a danger to health and a worry to the tourist industry.
The law sets out the possibility of fines for companies that cause haze pollution regardless of whether they operate in Singapore. But making it work in practice will be tough.
The haze is caused by forest clearing in Indonesia during the annual dry season, particularly when fires are set to clear undergrowth which then spark fires in layers of peat.
Some of the clearing is believed done by palm oil plantation companies with Singapore connections.
The bill makes those who cause haze both criminally and civilly liable, and it is written to provide law enforcers with a relatively low threshold to prove that a company outside Singapore has polluted the air.
Singapore authorities will be able to rely on a "causal link" such as satellite images or weather maps pin-pointing where smoke has come from.
Singapore can then impose fines of up to S$100,000 ($80,000) per day of smoke, up to a maximum of S$2 million, on companies or individuals that are found to cause Singapore's air pollutant standards index to rise to the "unhealthy" level.
(Photo: Office workers wearing masks make their way to work in Singapore's central business district)