Indonesia uses water bombing to contain wildfires near future capital

Thick smog has blanketed parts of Indonesia as fires burn across large areas of Borneo and Sumatra. Authorities are using water bombing to help contain the wildfires near the country’s future capital, while hazardous smoke has increased respiratory problems and forced schools to close.

The haze has also drifted into neighboring Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. Nearly 300,000 hectares have burned in Indonesia this year, according to an independent estimate from the Nusantara Atlas portal. Carbon emissions rose from late July, and by the end of last month they were comparable to levels recorded during the strong El Niño years of 2015 and 2019, said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

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We’re seeing already now... really extreme fire emissions comparable to those previous strong El Niño years, and also the extent of the smoke and the haze and the air quality impacts

“We’re seeing already now... really extreme fire emissions comparable to those previous strong El Niño years, and also the extent of the smoke and the haze and the air quality impacts,” Parrington told AFP. CAMS’s Fire Emission Watch portal recorded more than 23 million metric tons of carbon emissions from fires between Aug. 28 and Sept. 3, above the 20.7 million metric tons recorded during the same period in 2015.

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El Niño does not ignite fires. It creates the dry conditions that allow human-started fires to escape and become very large

Most of the fires are concentrated on Borneo, which Indonesia shares with Brunei and Malaysia, and on Sumatra. Analysts say El Niño has dried conditions and made it easier for fires to spread, but they also point to slash-and-burn land clearing. “El Niño does not ignite fires. It creates the dry conditions that allow human-started fires to escape and become very large,” said David Gaveau, founder of Nusantara Atlas.

Peatlands make the fires especially difficult to extinguish. More than 210,000 hotspots were detected in peatland areas between January and August, according to the NGO Pantau Gambut. Its spokesman Wahyu Perdana said drained peat turns stored organic material into fuel. More than five million people across Borneo and Sumatra face direct health risks from the haze, while over 1.4 million students were attending classes remotely or affected by school closures. Malaysia declared an emergency in a region of Sarawak after pollution levels surged.

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Peat is a naturally wet ecosystem and stores large amounts of organic material. When peat is drained, this organic material is converted into fuel