Indonesia needs to fight fires, not its neighbors
Weaponizing gas pipes and subsea cables won’t clear Southeast Asia’s skies; genuine leadership means putting out the fires together before burning down ASEAN unity.
Indonesia is grappling with a severe environmental crisis as the 2026 El Niño season exacerbates a looming public health emergency. Smoke from devastating peatland fires has plunged the region into a toxic atmosphere, with particulate matter levels far exceeding safe limits set by the World Health Organization. Concentrations have reached up to 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter, 65 times higher than the WHO's 15 micrograms threshold.
This extreme pollution is causing a surge in heart attacks, strokes, and respiratory illnesses across Indonesia and neighboring countries. The root cause of this catastrophe lies in decades of deforestation, land management practices, and peatland drainage that have transformed historically fire-resistant lowland tropical forests into highly flammable ecosystems.
When drought conditions intensify due to El Niño, these changes make it easier for fires to ignite and spread, consuming centuries-old carbon stored in peatlands and releasing it into the atmosphere. The 2026 fire and haze crisis marks a setback in Indonesia's progress toward reducing regional fire activity, which had been showing a promising downward trend.
With more than 120,000 fire hotspot detections detected by satellites, the scale of the current crisis is unprecedented, with the potential to cause millions of premature deaths worldwide. While better detection technologies and fire suppression efforts can help, restoring and rewetting drained peatlands is crucial to prevent future disasters.
Written by urgent.news from Phys.org's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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