Indonesia braces for forest and land fires ahead of dry season

The Star

18-05-2025

JAKARTA (Jakarta Post/ANN): With some regions already seeing their land engulfed by wildfires, the government is intensifying efforts to mitigate the risk of forest and land fires as the country is expected to shift to the dry season in the coming weeks.
The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) recently forecasted that most regions across the country will enter the dry season between April and June, with its peak expected to fall in August, exacerbating the risk of wildfire.
As the nation transitions to the dry season, the Forestry Ministry has recorded 163 wildfire incidents in several provinces that burned more than 3,200 hectares (ha) of land and forest, totalling an area the size as Macao, within the first five months of the year according to data from the ministry's official wildfire monitoring platform SiPongi.
Authorities have been using satellite imagery to monitor hotspots, or areas recorded as having higher temperatures compared to their surroundings.
While hotspots are not necessarily wildfires, they may be indications of a potential fire, thus detecting them may help authorities in preventing forest and land fires.
As of Wednesday (May 14), the ministry recorded at least 195 hotspots detected nationwide since the beginning of the year, according to Thomas Nifinluri, the forest and land fire control director at the Forestry Ministry.
'[The ministry] is checking the hotspots on the ground for verification,' Thomas told The Jakarta Post.
With the dry season approaching, he added that the ministry has been pushing several prevention measures, including joint patrols with military and police officers and regular fire monitoring.
No complacency
The number of detected hotspots so far is lower than compared with last year. But the lower number should not be a reason to be complacent, said Environment Minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq.
'Despite the decline, we must not be off guard. We have to be proactive, strengthening our early warning system and responding quicker to any signs of danger,' Hanif said last week, as quoted in a statement issued by the Environment Ministry.
Other measures launched by the government to mitigate and prevent forest and land fires included launching a wildfire management desk in March.
The desk would become a forum where various ministries and state institutions coordinate in anticipating forest fires during the upcoming dry season.
The wildfire desk has put its attention on seven provinces deemed prone to wildfires, namely Riau, South Sumatra, Jambi, South Kalimantan, West Kalimantan, East Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan.
Recorded as having the largest areas of burned lands during the fire season each year, these provinces are also home to large areas of peatland.
The ecosystem is often dried to be converted into various plantations, including oil palm.
Hanif, whose ministry is part of the wildfire desk, urged companies under the Indonesian Oil Palm Association (Gapki) to push for more forest and land fire prevention measures to help the government achieve its zero wildfire target by this year.
President Prabowo Subianto reportedly set the target of zero forest and land fires this year when pushing for the establishment of the wildfire desk, which is placed under the Office of the Coordinating Politics and Security Minister.
The government set the target after acknowledging the geopolitical cost of forest and land fires.
In the past, Indonesia had been blamed by Malaysia, Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries for the transboundary haze from the massive wildfires burning in Sumatra and Kalimantan in 2015, 2019 and 2023.
The fires in the three years were larger compared to the usual years due to El Niño climactic phenomenon, which tends to bring hotter and drier air to the Indonesian archipelago.
Prevention first
Despite the target, several regions put under the government's special attention have been experiencing forest and land fires since the start of the year.
Riau is among the worst, with almost 700 ha, a total area the size of 980 soccer pitches, burned since January, many of which were peatlands.
The figure accounts for around 21 percent of the total burned land across the archipelago.
'Even without being deliberately burned, peatlands can still potentially be engulfed in flames due to strong winds, with more damage observed during the dry season. Mitigation efforts must be carried out even before the fire appears,' BMKG head Dwikorita Karnawati said.
The weather agency has been working with the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) to launch a week-long cloud seeding operation since early May to prevent fires in Riau from prolonging.
But hotspots and fires were still detected, forcing the regional administration to declare a state of emergency for fire hazards.
Other provinces, such as Aceh and East Nusa Tenggara, are also working to prevent forest and land fires, after both provinces suffered from wildfires last year.
In 2024, Indonesia saw 376,000 ha burned by wildfires, an area the size of almost six Jakartas.
The figure, however, was a 67 percent decrease compared with the previous year. - The Jakarta Post/ANN