Indonesia Wildfires Spread Worst Haze in a Decade — SkimNews
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- Indonesia's wildfires on Borneo and Sumatra have destroyed more than 200,000 hectares and produced the worst haze in a decade, with Kuching (Malaysian Borneo) ranked the world's most polluted major city on Friday by IQAir, followed by Jakarta and Singapore.
- El Niño has intensified the dry conditions driving the blazes, and the UN weather agency forecasts the current Pacific warming cycle will peak in November or December and continue through February 2027, extending the crisis window.
- Indonesia's health ministry reported more than 50,000 cases of respiratory infection across seven provinces between July and August — nearly a quarter among children under five — while 1.4 million students were switched to remote learning.
- Malaysia cancelled all outdoor celebrations of its August 31 independence day and the Philippines suspended in-person schooling in the capital region, with protests breaking out outside the Indonesian embassy in Kuala Lumpur over the transboundary smog.
- Indonesian authorities have penalised six companies linked to fires in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) and named 112 people as suspects, with at least 40 arrested; palm oil plantations have been tied to the blazes despite a national ban on land-clearing by burning.
- Drained peat wetlands on Borneo and Sumatra — among the world's largest and carbon-rich — have caught fire and are fuelling the haze, while cloud-seeding firefighting efforts have been thwarted by a lack of sufficient cloud cover.
Why it matters: The crisis exposes a recurring enforcement failure: Indonesia has banned land-clearing by burning yet 112 suspects have been named this season alone, and drained peat wetlands continue to ignite every strong El Niño year — a pattern last seen in 2015 when fires destroyed 2.6 million hectares. With the current Pacific warming cycle forecast to run through February 2027, the regional toll — already visible in school closures across three countries and 50,000+ respiratory cases — has months more to accumulate.
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