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Malaysia declared an emergency in Serian district of Sarawak on 4 September 2026 after the Air Pollution Index touched 519.
Malaysia treats an API above 300 as hazardous and uses a reading of 500 as the threshold for declaring an emergency.
The haze was blamed on forest and land fires in the neighbouring Indonesian part of Borneo.
The emergency covered only Serian district, roughly a 20 km radius, and essential services stayed open.
Authorities carried out cloud seeding to induce rain, and 647 schools were shut.
Serian is a district in Sarawak, Malaysia's largest state by area, on the island of Borneo. Borneo is shared by three countries: Malaysia (Sarawak and Sabah), Indonesia (Kalimantan) and Brunei. Because Sarawak and Kalimantan sit on the same landmass with no natural barrier, smoke from fires on the Indonesian side crosses the border whenever winds are favourable.
Regional grouping through which Southeast Asian states coordinate on transboundary haze; it adopted a dedicated haze agreement in 2002
Requested the emergency declaration once pollution crossed the statutory threshold and coordinates the state-level response
The regional treaty adopted after severe haze episodes in Southeast Asia, committing member states to prevent and monitor land and forest fires and to cooperate on response. Recurring emergencies like the one in Serian are the standard illustration of how weak enforcement of this agreement remains in practice.
GS Paper III > Environment: Pollution and Conservation; GS Paper II > International Agreements
General Awareness > World Geography and Current Events
Malaysia's air quality scale. Readings above 300 are hazardous and 500 is the threshold at which an emergency may be declared.
Pollution generated in one country whose effects are felt across an international border, requiring cooperative rather than purely domestic solutions.
Dispersing particles into clouds to induce rainfall, used here to wash suspended particulate matter out of the air.