For months, Indonesia has been battling fires that have ravaged vast areas of forests and peatlands, mainly in Borneo, but also in Sumatra and Papua, regions where the population is suffocating under toxic smoke.
Smoldering slowly beneath the surface, peat fires are responsible for much of the dangerous haze that has spread as far as Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.
Peatlands, Indonesian specificity
Indonesia has more peatlands than any other country, around a third of the world's total. peat bogs are made up of organic matter which does not completely decompose in a water-saturated environment and which, by accumulating in layers over millennia, forms a substance similar to soil.
Healthy peatlands are home to a diversity of plants and trees as well as sometimes threatened animals such as the orangutan, Sumatran tiger, sun bear and tapir.
Peatlands can hold large amounts of water, making them essential for flood control.
Why do they burn?
Indonesia has around 24.2 million hectares of peatlands, of which 16.4 million hectares have been degraded and are vulnerable to fires, according to the NGO Pantau Gambut.
The main culprits: industrial-scale plantations for wood, pulp, rice and palm oil production, of which Indonesia is the world's leading producer.
To cultivate peatlands, they are drained using networks of canals which, in Indonesia, extend over approximately 285,000 kilometers, according to research by Pantau Gambut. Water flows into rivers or the sea, leaving dry peatlands vulnerable to fires.
What is the impact?
Although less than a third of Indonesia's wildfires occur on peatlands, according to Greenpeace, they cause most of today's pollution haze. This smoke contains harmful substances including formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, methalol and acetone.
The so-called “PM 2.5” particles present in this smoke are so fine that they can enter the lungs or blood. The World Health Organization (WHO) has associated them with increased morbidity and mortality related to respiratory conditions and cardiovascular diseases.
To protect children, hundreds of schools in Indonesia and Malaysia have closed their doors. More than 170,000 people have suffered acute respiratory infections since August in Indonesia, according to the Ministry of Health.
These fires also destroy the habitats and breeding and feeding grounds of wild animals, threatening already endangered species such as orangutans and the Sumatran rhino.
What about greenhouse gases?
As of October 6, fires in Indonesia had released 140.5 megatons of carbon atoms into the atmosphere, or about 13% of the global total, according to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS).
This is the highest total since 2019, another year marked by El Niño.
Indonesia is seeking to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, primarily focusing on forests, peatlands and other terrestrial ecosystems absorbing more carbon than they emit.
The solutions proposed
According to campaigners and experts, concession licenses for extraction activities on peatlands must be revoked and the land rewatered and replanted with local species. In addition, the canals draining water from peatlands must be blocked.
Indonesia has a moratorium on the granting of new land clearing permits for 66 million hectares of land classified as primary forests and peatlands.
Last year, the government announced that it had rewet 4.16 million hectares of peatlands, built 45,000 canal dams and replanted various native species.
However, Greenpeace has expressed doubts about the methods used. “Today, some of the hydrological units of peatlands which have been the subject of significant restoration efforts (...) have suffered fires and display one of the highest numbers of heat sources for the period from August to October 1,” Belgis Habita, head of the forests division for Greenpeace, told AFP.
Last month, the government announced the creation of a new national peatland and mangrove management agency, intended to replace a body whose mandate expired in 2024. But some are concerned about the absence of any mention of restoration or protection in the agency's name. “Does management, in this context, serve as a pretext for the State to grant new concessions on peatlands?” Mr. Belgis asks. The Ministry of Forests did not respond to AFP's request for comment.
