A government bus outfitted with emergency oxygen tanks. Firefighters collapsing to the ground in sheer relief at the very first sign of rain. Dozens of vulnerable orangutans rescued from encroaching flames. And hundreds of Indonesian students marching in sharp defiance through the suffocating haze, some donning gas masks while others hoisted bold placards bearing the stark message: “If we burn, you burn with us.”
These are the harrowing, visceral scenes defining Indonesia’s worst wildfire season in a decade. More than 4.6 million acres have scorched across the archipelagic nation since August, blanketing massive island regions like Kalimantan and Sumatra in an opaque, toxic smoke that has routinely drifted across borders to plague neighboring countries. Millions of residents are forced to breathe in the hazardous air, and official government data reveals that more than 300,000 Indonesians have already sought urgent medical treatment for acute respiratory problems, coughing fits, and cardiovascular strain.
On certain days during this relentless crisis, local air quality conditions have plummeted to staggering levels, registering more than 13 times worse than the established global threshold considered safe or healthy. Compounding the public health emergency is the architectural reality of the region: much like in many tropical countries, buildings across Indonesia are intentionally designed to maximize natural airflow and cross-ventilation, rather than seal out external pollutants or filter indoor air.
“This is a public health catastrophe,” said Robert Field, an expert fire researcher at Columbia University who has studied the region for decades. While acknowledging that the fires carry a multitude of pressing, interconnected consequences—ranging from massive carbon emissions to devastating blows against local wildlife and irreplaceable forest habitats—Field noted that the immediate human toll overrides everything else. “It’s hard to think much past the air quality issues,” he said.
The unfolding disaster is only the latest in a relentless wave of environmental emergencies inundating Indonesia. As one of the world’s most populated nations, it is also widely recognized as one of the most disaster-prone. Just last year, approximately 1,200 residents of Sumatra tragically lost their lives during catastrophic, cyclone-induced flooding and subsequent landslides that ripped through local communities. Simultaneously, the nation’s sprawling capital city of Jakarta already partially sits below sea level, and as a warming global climate pushes sea levels steadily higher, the government is engaged in a high-stakes race against time to construct an entirely new capital city on higher ground.
These compounding disasters are fundamentally wrought from a dangerous intersection of human urban sprawl and rapid climate change. However, scientists note that the exact degree to which higher ambient temperatures influenced this specific ongoing wildfire disaster remains complex. By contrast, severe wildfire outbreaks in other parts of the globe that are warming at a faster pace than Indonesia—such as recent devastating fire seasons recorded in Canada and parts of Europe—bear the unmistakable, direct signature of human-induced climate change, researchers emphasize.
The primary human and environmental culprits behind Indonesia’s fires, meanwhile, are no mystery to scientists or officials. A superstrong El Niño weather pattern has plunged large swaths of Indonesia into a severe, prolonged drought, drastically drying out the vast peatlands that blanket much of the country. Peat is a unique, highly organic soil type packed densely with centuries of partially decayed plant matter, making it exceptionally flammable, particularly when parched of moisture. When smallholder farmers or industrial agricultural companies resort to using fire as a quick, inexpensive method to clear away unwanted vegetation and agricultural debris—a deeply entrenched traditional practice in Indonesia—these peat fires can rapidly spiral completely out of control, maintaining a stealthy, smoldering presence underground for months at a time.
“This is a crime against humanity, because what they have done endangers the health of millions of our people,” declared Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto during a high-level Cabinet meeting, according to an official government press release. Seemingly responding to a mounting tide of public fury, Prabowo vowed to aggressively investigate who was ultimately responsible for setting the blazes, condemning the illegal clearing tactics as a form of environmental terrorism. Frustration over the choking smoke, combined with broader economic pressures like high living costs and government spending priorities, has already ignited numerous large-scale protests across various urban centers in recent weeks.
The central government had actually been bracing for the year’s anticipated fire season for months, mobilizing contingency plans ever since international meteorological agencies and domestic scientists first began forecasting the arrival of the potent El Niño. “This year, we must be much more careful,” Raja Juli Antoni, Indonesia’s minister of forestry, warned during a United Nations address in May. “The potential for a longer dry season due to El Niño demands heightened vigilance from all of us.”
Unfortunately, despite these high-level warnings and official preparations, the fires were lit anyway. According to Field, who collaborated closely with the Indonesian government to help design sophisticated fire prevention and monitoring strategies back in the 2000s, many of the recent blazes appear to be concentrated on unmanaged lands directly adjacent to working agricultural plantations. These commercial operations frequently grow oil palm, which stands as the primary economic driver behind Indonesia’s historically high rates of deforestation and staggering biodiversity loss. This spatial pattern strongly suggests that the fires were deliberately deployed to illegally clear overgrowth and prepare marginal land for new crop planting, Field explained.
Indonesia has grappled with catastrophic peat fire outbreaks since the 1990s, but the nation began making notable, systematic strides to address the systemic crisis over the past decade. In a major policy shift in 2014, the government officially banned the construction and use of drainage canals that had long been utilized to dry out waterlogged peatlands, making them artificially suitable for farming. A couple of years later, following another particularly punishing wildfire season, authorities sharply curbed nationwide deforestation rates and initiated sweeping efforts to restore large areas of already degraded peatland ecosystems. Consequently, the rate of national deforestation continued to fall steadily for five consecutive years. Although clearing rates began creeping back upward in 2022, they remain substantially below historical highs.
“I was optimistic that the drought was inevitable, but the fire was not,” Field said, reflecting on the institutional progress made over the years. He added that Indonesia was undeniably far more prepared for this year’s fire emergency than it had been during previous historic outbreaks. “I don’t think there was a lack of sincerity from officials not wanting this to happen, and the fact that it did just points to how hard it is to manage fire in such a large and complicated country.”
Peat fires present an exceptionally challenging form of wildfire for a multitude of scientific and logistical reasons, explained Israr Albar, Indonesia’s former deputy director of forest fire management, in an emailed statement. The dense accumulation of underground organic material allows fires to burn steadily beneath the surface for months, making them notoriously difficult to detect via satellite imagery, even as they silently release massive quantities of carbon dioxide and thick particulate smoke. In many cases, the resulting surface smoke becomes so dense that it completely obscures satellites from detecting active fire lines on the ground. “Just because we cannot see a fire does not mean it is not there,” Albar noted.
This complex subsurface dynamic makes the flames exceptionally difficult to locate, target, and extinguish. Even fires that appear to be successfully put out will frequently reignite without warning as heat lingers deep within the peat layers. Furthermore, fire crews often struggle to secure the vast quantities of water necessary to saturate and drown a deep-seated peat fire during the severe water-stressed conditions of the dry season. While the country has recently experienced some welcome rainfall, experts warn that the reprieve is temporary. “That doesn’t mean the danger has passed,” Albar said. “Even when the rainy season begins, fires may continue underground.”