JAKARTA: Smog is choking parts of Indonesia’s Borneo, home to pristine rainforest and vast plantations, but the worst is yet to come, officials and experts warned Thursday.
Nearly 95,000 hectares of land across Indonesia burned in July alone, the government said this week, as dry conditions driven by a powerful El Nino weather pattern take hold. The fires have created thick smog that is blanketing areas like Palangkaraya, capital of Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan in Borneo.
“It is tough,” said forestry ministry official Yudho Shekti Mustiko, adding that all 767 of his colleagues across Borneo were deployed dealing with fires.
“There are no officials on standby in the office,” he said.
Fires have now burned through over 200,000 hectares since the start of the year, the government said this week — an area around three times the size of the sprawling capital Jakarta. But fire season has only just begun.
“We have to maintain our stamina, September, October will be very dry,” said Yudho.
The area burned is already larger than during previous El Nino seasons in 2019 and 2023, but has not yet caught up to the country’s devastating 2015 losses, during a particularly strong El Nino.
Those blazes burned through millions of hectares and created a regional haze crisis.
Experts also point to human factors contributing to the Indonesian fires.
“The scale of the fires burning today is also the legacy of four decades of deforestation, which has turned vast landscapes into degraded tinderboxes,” said David Gaveau, founder of deforestation monitoring site Nusantara Atlas.
“Only rain will stop the fires, but that is unlikely before November,” he said.
