A decade after Indonesia’s worst fires, the haze is back. Why does the problem still persist?

By The Straits Times | Created at 2026-09-19 21:16:35 | Updated at 2026-09-19 22:53:44 1 hour ago

JAKARTA - A helicopter hovered over a reservoir in South Kalimantan, dipping a bucket suspended from a long cable into the water before heading back towards the fires.

On the ground, two men dragged a hose through dry woodland, spraying water at flames moving through the undergrowth. One wore a motorcycle helmet.

Scenes like these have returned across parts of Indonesia in 2026, sending smoke towards neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia and reviving memories of the country’s worst haze crises.

But this is not 2015.

At the height of that crisis, then President Joko Widodo promised Indonesia would solve the haze problem within three years.

Some 2.6 million ha burned in 2015, followed by another 1.65 million ha in 2019. In 2026 alone, nearly 900,000 ha had burned by late August, according to independent forest monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas.

But the 2026 fire season is far from over. Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni said on Sept 16 that the wildfires could continue until early November, with the rainy season expected to arrive later than previously forecast.

The scale of burning over the past decade suggests that the measures introduced after 2015 – from tougher enforcement to peatland restoration and earlier detection – have helped reduce the extent of burning.

But the return of fires in 2026 also exposes where those reforms remain vulnerable.

In South Kalimantan, The Straits Times found that clearing land without fire can still cost considerably more than burning it.

Hotspots have returned to concessions. And Indonesia is facing a major fire season without the government body created after 2015 to restore and monitor its fire-prone peatlands. Its mandate ended in 2024.

The consequences are already being felt. Health Ministry data showed 113,336 wildfire-related respiratory infections across seven affected provinces as at Sep 9, more than double the 50,891 recorded on Sept 1. Some 12.5 million people had been exposed to haze.

This is the central tension a decade after 2015: Indonesia is better at fighting fires once they start, but the incentives to burn – and some of the weaknesses in preventing fires – remain.

Burning still pays

In South Kalimantan, Fitria Khairani, who heads Syamsudin Noor village, explained why burning remains attractive.

Hiring an excavator costs around 1.25 million rupiah (S$90) to 1.5 million rupiah a day, including the operator. She estimated that it could clear roughly one hectare a day.

“If it is burned (instead), it is indeed fast, especially when the land is dry,” she said.

Some people believe burning makes the soil more fertile, Fitria said, although established farmers in the village generally use excavators or clear land manually.

Fitria Khairani, who heads Syamsudin Noor village, said some people believe burning makes the soil more fertile, although established farmers in the village generally use excavators or clear land manually.

A World Bank study released in February 2021 found a similar cost gap. Small-scale operators in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua spent about 3.5 million rupiah per ha clearing land with fire, compared with 4.6 million rupiah manually, 6.6 million rupiah using semi-mechanical methods and 7.7 million rupiah mechanically.

Higher upfront costs could be offset by better returns when non-burning methods were combined with improved agricultural practices, the study found.

In some cases, authorities suspect people are being paid to start fires.

National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) chief Suharyanto said on Sept 7 that a suspected fire-setter caught in Jambi, on Sumatra island, had allegedly been paid 500,000 rupiah to set fire to forest land.

In West Kalimantan, officials found recently burned land already being prepared for oil palm cultivation while fires were still burning elsewhere, he said.

“There are indeed deliberate efforts in the field to burn,” he added.

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto ordered authorities to investigate who was behind the fires and how burned land could be converted into plantation land so quickly.

Jakarta-based think-tank Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) estimated on Sept 2 that forest and land fires between January and August could cost Indonesia between 39.29 trillion rupiah and 123.1 trillion rupiah in economic and health losses.

When punishment does not deter

In Syamsudin Noor, community leader Hendri Wibowo said the threat of punishment had changed behaviour among farmers.

“The farmers do not dare to do it. Even burning now, in conditions this dry, they really do not dare,” he told ST.

Across Indonesia, police have launched 219 criminal investigations relating to forest and land fires and named 162 suspects, National Police specific crimes director Mohammad Irhamni said on Sept 17. Police are also investigating 95 companies, although it’s unclear how many are suspected of criminal offences.

Prabowo has also called for tougher punishment for those responsible for forest and land fires, saying there would be “no tolerance” for offending companies.

“And perhaps we should ask the House of Representatives to stiffen the law, so that we classify this as “ecological terrorism”. This is very serious,” he said in a Cabinet meeting on Sept 16.

Prabowo also instructed regional governments to immediately revoke regulations allowing land to be cleared by burning, and ordered that companies found responsible for fires have their licences revoked and face criminal investigation.

Yet the ultimate sanction – taking away a company’s right to operate – remains rare.

Environment and Forestry Ministry figures show three licences were revoked in connection with forest and land fires between 2015 and 2017, all in 2015. Other companies received lesser administrative sanctions, including licence suspensions, government orders and warning letters. A consolidated official tally for subsequent years is not publicly available.

Meanwhile, environmental group WALHI said it detected 33 high-confidence hotspots in August within the concession of PT Bumi Mekar Hijau, which was previously ordered by an appeals court to pay about 78 billion rupiah in compensation over an earlier fire. A hotspot within a concession does not establish that a company started a fire or is legally responsible for it.

The Forestry Ministry has also imposed sanctions on concession holders this year, including suspending PT MPK’s business permit in August.

Prevention under strain

After the 2015 disaster, Indonesia also turned to preventing fires before they became uncontrollable.

Peatlands make up less than 10 per cent of Indonesia’s land area but accounted for about a third of the area burned in 2015. Once drained, peat dries out and can burn underground, making fires difficult to extinguish and producing large amounts of haze.

In 2016, Widodo appointed Nazir Foead to lead the newly created Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG).

Nazir told ST the agency mapped vulnerable peatlands and installed hundreds of monitoring stations across seven provinces. Sensors tracked groundwater levels, moisture and temperature, sending data to a central server every hour.

Combined with weather forecasts, the data allowed authorities to identify areas becoming dangerously dry and decide where to send patrols or rewet peat.

When satellites picked up a hotspot, teams could check it on the ground or with drones and dispatch the nearest firefighting unit. Catching a fire while it was still on the peat surface made it much easier to extinguish than after it had penetrated deeper.

Nazir said community patrols also needed equipment, fuel and other support.

“If we train the community already, but we don’t provide them assistance in resources, it’s difficult for them to move because who would pay? They are full-time farmers,” he said.

In 2026 alone, nearly 900,000 ha had burned by late August.

Nazir recalled regular coordination among ministries, local governments, security agencies, scientists and other partners ahead of dry seasons. Senior officials would repeatedly press those involved: “What do you need? Have you done your homework? If not, why?”

Widodo could convene as many as three limited Cabinet meetings a year focused specifically on fires and preparations for dry weather, Nazir said.

BRG later became the Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency (BRGM), whose temporary mandate ended in 2024.

Nazir said the agencies had never been intended to exist permanently. Their equipment, software and expertise were handed over so other government agencies and local authorities could continue the work.

“You need to maintain that, and of course you need people and money to maintain it,” he said.

The environment and forestry ministries now have broader responsibilities amid budget cuts. “The priorities of the current government are very different. There are big budget cuts,” Nazir said.

Environmental group Pantau Gambut said in a July study that 70 per cent of canal blocks it observed were damaged, while 52 per cent of intervention sites still had groundwater levels below the safe threshold.

CELIOS has called for an integrated ecosystem-restoration team, saying restoration efforts had not been running optimally since BRGM ended.

BNPB’s disaster-resilience programme, meanwhile, was allocated 250 billion rupiah in the 2026 state budget, down from a 1.77 trillion rupiah outlook for the same programme in 2025.

Simon Tay, chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, cautioned against allowing anger over the haze to descend into finger-pointing.

“The anger is real not only in Malaysia and Singapore but among Indonesians themselves. That’s very understandable but not the best response,” he told ST.

“Anger and apportionment of blame can trigger bickering and finger pointing. Right now, (the focus is) firefighting and prevention – with cooperation between companies and government officials in the provinces and Jakarta, and between governments (in the region),” he added.

Nazir said he did not know how much of the coordination established under BRG and BRGM remained. Nor did he argue for recreating the agency.

Instead, he said the government should examine what had failed this year and put someone clearly in charge of preparations for the next dry season. That could be through existing ministries or a task force, but whoever was responsible needed enough authority to coordinate ministries and governors.

“Someone has to lead from the palace,” he said.

Visibility in Banjarbaru is low when the smoke thickens due to nearby fires.

Fighting fires, not preventing them

Indonesia can mobilise substantial resources once fires start. BNPB said on Aug 21 that 39 air assets were operating across six priority provinces, including patrol helicopters, weather-modification aircraft and water-bombing helicopters.

The contrast was visible in South Kalimantan.

While helicopters carried water overhead, local volunteers tackled fires from the ground with much more basic equipment.

“How are we supposed to extinguish fires if we do not have the equipment? Never mind equipment, some of them do not even have PPE, and that could endanger their lives,” Fitria said.

For Hendri, the problem did not end when the flames were extinguished.

He estimated that almost 40 per cent of his neighbourhood consisted of vacant plots, many belonging to owners who lived elsewhere. Fires frequently started on such idle land, sometimes, he believed, as a way of clearing vegetation.

The plots were often left untouched after they burned. Vegetation grew back, recreating the same fire risk the following dry season.

Before farmers began cultivating some of the vacant plots, Hendri said, fires could spread through them “right up behind people’s houses, up to their kitchens”.

Farmers’ groups have since begun cultivating some of the previously idle land. That had helped because cultivated land, he said, “breaks the path of the fire”.

“As long as these vacant, idle plots are not maintained, this will definitely happen again every year,” he said.

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