Indonesia is once again confronting a familiar disaster: vast areas of forest and peatland burning, thick smoke spreading across communities, and haze crossing national borders into neighboring Malaysia.

But the scale of the 2026 fire season is making the problem harder to dismiss as a routine dry-season emergency. More than 9,000 hotspots were recorded in August, while nearly 95,000 hectares were damaged by fires in July alone, according to Reuters. The country is experiencing an exceptionally strong El Niño, which is making already vulnerable landscapes hotter and drier.

The obvious question is why Indonesia, after years of promises, enforcement campaigns and billions of dollars in prevention efforts, is still struggling to prevent the same crisis from returning.

The answer is more complicated than simply blaming the weather.

El Niño Is Making a Bad Problem Worse

Indonesia's 2026 fires are unfolding during an unusually severe El Niño.

Indonesia's meteorological agency has warned that the phenomenon could produce a longer and drier-than-normal dry season, increasing the risk of forest and land fires. The Forestry Ministry has also acknowledged that the extreme climate conditions are making fire prevention and suppression considerably more difficult.

But El Niño does not actually light the fires.

It creates the conditions in which fires can spread rapidly.

Dry vegetation becomes highly flammable, water levels fall and peatlands lose moisture. Once a fire begins, it can move much faster and become difficult to contain.

That distinction matters because Indonesia's recurring fire problem has a strong human component.

The Fire Problem Starts Before the Flames

Land clearing remains one of the central reasons Indonesia continues to experience large-scale fires.

Burning vegetation can be a cheaper and faster method of preparing land for agriculture than mechanical clearing. In some areas, illegal burning is connected to plantation expansion and land conversion.

Indonesian authorities have increasingly focused on this problem. Police recently arrested 72 people suspected of starting forest and peatland fires, with investigators examining whether companies may have financed or ordered some land-clearing activities.

That investigation highlights a fundamental weakness in the traditional response.

It is relatively easy to arrest people found holding matches or working at a fire site. It is considerably harder to establish who financed the clearing, who benefited from the land and whether corporate structures were involved.

Until enforcement reaches those higher levels, the incentives behind illegal burning can remain intact.

Peatlands Make Indonesia's Fires Different

One reason Indonesia's forest fires are so difficult to extinguish is that many occur on peatlands.

Peat is made from layers of partially decomposed organic material accumulated over thousands of years. When peatlands are drained for agriculture or plantations, they become dramatically more vulnerable to fire.

The problem does not end when flames disappear from the surface.

Peat fires can burn underground and smolder for long periods, making them difficult to detect and extinguish. Reuters notes that large areas of fire-prone peatland on Borneo remain particularly difficult to manage.

This is why simply sending more aircraft and firefighters into burning areas cannot solve the underlying problem.

The landscape itself has been altered in ways that make future fires more likely.

Jakarta Has Learned From 2015—but Not Enough

The shadow of 2015 still hangs over Indonesia's current fire season.

That year, enormous forest and peatland fires created one of Southeast Asia's worst environmental crises, sending hazardous haze across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

The government subsequently introduced tougher enforcement, expanded peatland restoration and established stronger fire-monitoring and prevention programs.

Those measures appear to have made a difference.

Experts cited by Reuters believe that post-2015 prevention measures may have helped prevent the current fires from reaching an even greater scale despite exceptionally severe El Niño conditions.

But prevention has not eliminated the underlying causes.

That is the central contradiction facing Jakarta: the government has become better at responding to fires, but the economic and environmental conditions that allow them to start have proved much harder to change.

Jakarta Is Fighting the Flames, Not Always the Incentives

Indonesia has deployed a large emergency response.

Authorities have mobilized 48,000 officers and more than 1,400 volunteers, while dozens of aircraft are being used for water bombing. The government has also turned to cloud seeding in an effort to increase rainfall over fire-affected regions.

These measures are necessary.

But they are expensive and largely reactive.

An aircraft can put out a fire. It cannot stop a company, farmer or land operator from using fire to clear land next year.

That requires stronger land governance, reliable enforcement and economic alternatives to burning.

The Indonesian government has recently ordered regional authorities to tighten enforcement of a nationwide ban on land clearing through burning during the 2026 dry season and El Niño conditions.

The challenge is turning that order into consistent enforcement across thousands of remote areas.

Companies Are Back Under the Microscope

Corporate responsibility is becoming another major part of the debate.

Indonesia's Environment Ministry said it was investigating 19 companies whose concessions were linked to fires covering more than 11,000 hectares. Authorities have identified 42 companies operating in areas considered at risk.

This is potentially more significant than simply increasing the number of arrests.

If companies are found legally responsible for fires on their concessions, financial and legal consequences could create a stronger deterrent than prosecutions of individual fire starters.

But enforcement must be consistent.

If companies believe that the financial benefits of clearing land outweigh the likelihood and cost of punishment, illegal burning will remain an attractive option.

The Human Cost Is Becoming Harder to Ignore

Indonesia's forest fires are not only an environmental issue.

They are a public health emergency.

Smoke from the fires contains fine particulate matter that can penetrate deep into the lungs and increase respiratory risks. In affected parts of Borneo and Sumatra, schools have been forced to move classes online as air quality deteriorated.

The damage extends to wildlife.

Borneo's orangutan populations are particularly vulnerable because fires destroy and fragment forest habitat. Reuters recently reported the rescue of an orangutan suffering from hypoxia and respiratory illness after being found near a fire in a palm-oil plantation in West Kalimantan.

For communities living near fire zones, however, the immediate concern is much more basic: breathing clean air, keeping children in school and protecting homes and livelihoods.