Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong held a press conference on the haze situation yesterday afternoon at the Istana, together with Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen and Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan. Here are the extracts.

What is the tipping point before the Government issues stop-work orders? In Malaysia, for example, once the PSI crosses 300, they close schools. Is there any possibility of that happening here?

Mr Lee: I don’t think there is any single point where we turn action on or action off on stop work. Because it depends on what people are doing, what their exposure is, what our assessment of the situation is for the past 24 hours and the outlook.

And we will have to calibrate our response as we go along. If the haze gets more dense, we will take a gradually escalating series of steps — ask people to work for shorter periods outdoors, put off doing more strenuous work outdoors, take breaks if they are working outdoors, wear masks — we have enough masks for this purpose — and eventually ask for certain categories of work to stop.

There is no hard line where we say everything comes to a stop. And indeed it’s not possible for everything to come to a stop because life must go on.

We should approach it like that, each day, we should assess what the position and outlook looks like for the next 24 hours and then give guidance.

The broad guidelines were included in the annex to the statement which the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources put out late (Wednesday) night, but how to interpret them day to day, (the Government) will give more guidance as we go along.

What levers does Singapore have, and what is in Singapore’s powers to ensure things are done on the ground? And if there are such levers, when can we apply those levers? What confidence do we have now in the Indonesian government’s ability to take action?

Mr Lee: We have been talking to the Indonesian government ... There is no mechanism by which Singapore can cause another country to do something. You can influence, encourage, persuade, request, but finally it is within each country’s authority and responsibility to deal with the problems within their own country.

There are certain obligations which each country has, such as under the Rio Declaration, which goes back to ’92. Countries have a responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other states.

So there are certain international obligations, but it is up to each country to comply with them. We have to continue talking to the Indonesians and cooperating with them. Which is why I do not think it is fruitful for us to exchange harsh words. We want to solve the problem.

What commercial pressures can Singapore apply (with regard to the haze)?

Mr Balakrishnan: There has been a very successful, non-government effort to encourage sustainable logging.

And in the case of logging, with DNA analysis, it has been possible to identify the origin of timber. It has led to a competitive advantage being conferred on companies which behave responsibly and manage natural resources accordingly.

The key point here is that consumer pressure is brought to bear and the choices that people make in terms of what to purchase has a salutary effect on companies. Even in our local stock exchange, we do have sustainability reporting, but it is still on a voluntary basis.

We would like to encourage more of such efforts and this is an example where activism on the non-government front, transparency, and sharing of information and enabling people to make informed choices can have a beneficial effect on the ground.

It is not just laws and penalties, but making it in their own interests to behave in a responsible way.