GNV News, 27 August 2026
Across Indonesia, forest and land fires are once again surging. In Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, forest fires have raged for weeks, and the region continues to be shrouded in hazardous haze. The fires are also causing transboundary haze, which now poses a threat to Malaysia and Singapore. Health impacts are rapidly spreading as well. According to data from the Ministry of Health, since July about 5,000 people per week have been visiting medical facilities with respiratory symptoms in West Kalimantan province. This is a substantial increase compared to the weekly average of 500 in the first half of 2026, a stark jump. In the same province, fires have also approached dangerously close to an orangutan rehabilitation center. More than 60 critically endangered Bornean orangutans are being protected at the facility, and the forest fires are disrupting crucial conservation efforts.
What, exactly, is driving these increasingly intense forest fires? According to authorities, the “super El Niño”* of 2026 may be amplifying the blazes. Forest fires in Indonesia typically peak during the dry season, roughly from July to October, with the most serious damage occurring in September and October. This tendency becomes especially pronounced in El Niño years, when rainfall almost disappears. Research on Indonesia’s peatlands shows that, particularly during El Niño periods, falling groundwater levels are a major driver of peatland degradation and fires. It has also been demonstrated that fires reduce organic matter and weaken soil stability, making the soil less permeable to water. As a result, the increasingly dry soil becomes further fuel for fires, trapping the region in a vicious cycle.
But that is not the only cause. Large-scale fires occur when dry weather coincides with the loss of the soil’s water-retention capacity due to the expansion of industrial plantations, such as oil palm. In Borneo and Sumatra, land has been illegally burned to clear areas for plantations, and on August 23 Indonesian police arrested 72 suspects in connection with such activities. In addition, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has ordered the authorities to revoke the business licenses of companies suspected of instructing the clearing of land. Indonesia’s unique tropical rainforests contain peatland ecosystems that, under natural conditions, should be highly resistant to fire. However, the drainage networks built to secure plantation land have stripped the soil of its original ability to retain water.
To prevent fires, it is essential to halt the development of peatlands and restore degraded areas starting from the soil itself—but can this be achieved? Emergency response teams are still working to extinguish the fires.
Learn more about forests in Indonesia → “Indonesia: The world’s largest-scale deforestation is underway”
Learn more about the El Niño phenomenon → “The adverse impacts of the El Niño phenomenon”
Forest fires in Indonesia (Photo: Landscape Alliance / Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])
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