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JAKARTA \u2013 Thousands of hectares of land on palm oil and pulpwood concessions run by large listed firms were burned during Indonesia\u2019s worst fire season in years, highlighting the role of deforestation and land clearing, a study showed on Nov 13.<\/p>\n
Indonesia\u2019s forest fires caused a spike in respiratory illness at home, and triggered air pollution warnings and school closures across the region, with fire emissions surging to three times the seasonal average.<\/p>\n
A total of 2.88 million ha of land was damaged by fire<\/span><\/a> from January to October 2026, driven by intense El Nino weather conditions and extreme heat<\/span><\/a>, as well as clearing of forests to make way for industrial-scale palm oil and pulpwood plantations, according to a joint study by Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and geo-monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas.<\/p>\n The amount of fire-damaged land in the first three quarters of 2026 was 35% higher than in the same period of 2019, the last year Indonesia faced strong \u201csuper-El Nino\u201d conditions, Nusantara Atlas said.<\/p>\n While the analysis did not establish how the fires were ignited, it highlighted the risks associated with degraded peatlands and inadequate fire management regimes in rapidly expanding agricultural concessions, along with the role played by banks in financing deforestation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not really a question of who lit the match, but who drained the peat and created the conditions,\u201d said Alex Helan, RAN\u2019s research and investigations lead.<\/p>\n The study looked at specific cases of fire outbreaks on large holdings, including ones run by business groups under investigation in Singapore as part of its transboundary haze law.<\/p>\n It found that more than 14,600ha of land were burned on the Bumi Mekar Hijau pulpwood concession, an exclusive supplier to Indonesia\u2019s Asia Pulp & Paper (APP). APP said it was unable to comment on the findings.<\/p>\n It also identified at least 3,742ha of burnt land within the Kayung Agro Lestari oil palm concession in West Kalimantan, run by the Singapore-listed First Resources, including nearly 2,000ha of forest designated as \u201chigh conservation value\u201d.<\/p>\n First Resources did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment, but told RAN it observed a \u201czero-burning policy\u201d when clearing land and had implemented fire prevention measures.<\/p>\n Satellite analysis also identified 4,473ha of burnt areas within an oil palm concession run by Bumitama Agri, 88% of which was on fire-prone peatland.<\/p>\n Bumitama did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment, but told RAN that investigations were ongoing and that it was not yet in a position to respond to specific allegations.<\/p>\n The study said banks and investors backing such risky operations in Indonesia need to \u201cmake access to financing conditional on credible fire prevention\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThese companies have made business decisions in their offices… to operate in an extremely fire-prone landscape, and to develop plantations in those landscapes for profit,\u201d Helan said. REUTERS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n JAKARTA \u2013 Thousands of hectares of land on palm oil and pulpwood concessions run by large listed firms were burned during Indonesia\u2019s worst fire season…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/99564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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