Page 289 - Failure to Triumph - Journey of A Student

At the turn of the 21st century, issues shifted to involve a more environmental perspective. The
organisation started to discuss environmental agreements. These included the signing of the ASEAN
Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution in 2002 as an attempt to control haze pollution in
Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, this was unsuccessful due to the outbreaks of the 2005 Malaysian haze

and the 2006 Southeast Asian haze. Other environmental treaties introduced by the organisation
include the Cebu Declaration on East Asian Energy Security, the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement
Network (ASEAN-WEN) in 2005, and the Asia- Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and
Climate, both of which are responses to the potential effects of climate change. Climate change is of
current interest.

Through the Bali Concord II in 2003, ASEAN has subscribed to the notion of democratic peace,
which means all member countries believe democratic processes will promote regional peace and
stability. Also, the non-democratic members all agreed that it was something all member states should

aspire to.

The leaders of each country, particularly Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, also felt the need to
further integrate the region. Beginning in 1997, the bloc began creating organisations within its
framework with the intention of achieving this goal. ASEAN Plus Three was the first of these and
was created to improve existing ties with the People’s Republic of China, Japan, and South Korea.
This was followed by the even larger East Asia Summit, which included these countries as well as
India, Australia, and New Zealand. This new grouping acted as a prerequisite for the planned East

Asia Community, which was supposedly patterned after the now-defunct European Community. The
ASEAN Eminent Persons Group was created to study the possible successes and failures of this
policy as well as the possibility of drafting an ASEAN Charter.

In 2006, ASEAN was given observer status at the United Nations General Assembly. As a
response, the organisation awarded the status of “dialogue partner" to the United Nations.
Furthermore, on 23 July that year, José Ramos-Horta, then Prime Minister of East Timor, signed a
formal request for membership and expected the accession process to last at least five years before
the then-observer state became a full member.

In 2007, ASEAN celebrated its 40th anniversary since its inception, and 30 years of diplomatic
relations with the United States. On 26 August 2007, ASEAN stated that it aims to complete all its
free trade agreements with China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand by 2013, in
line with the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015. In November 2007 the
ASEAN members signed the ASEAN Charter, a constitution governing relations among the ASEAN
members and establishing ASEAN itself as an international legal entity. During the same year, the

Cebu Declaration on East Asian Energy Security was signed in Cebu on 15 January 2007, by ASEAN
and the other members of the EAS (Australia, People’s Republic of China, India, Japan, New
Zealand, South Korea), which promotes energy security by finding energy alternatives to conventional
fuels.

On 27 February 2009 a Free Trade Agreement with the ASEAN regional block of 10 countries and
New Zealand and its close partner Australia was signed, it is estimated that this FTA would boost
aggregate GDP across the 12 countries by more than US$48 billion over the period 2000–2020.