- While Indonesia’s courts have fined plantation companies more than $21 trillion rupiah ($1.3 billion) for forest and peatland fires, almost none of that money has been collected.
- This fuels a cycle of impunity where fires continue to flare up in concessions already found guilty by court.
- In a common pattern, companies found guilty of burning forests either shield their assets, declare bankruptcy or exploit loopholes to avoid paying.
- Indonesia’s enforcement gaps also allow repeat offenders to continue operating unchecked, profiting from the very land they were banned from using.
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s courts have ordered plantation companies to pay more than 21 trillion rupiah ($1.3 billion), an amount 28 times the environment ministry’s entire annual budget, for forest and peatland fires — yet almost none of that has been collected.
This leaves burned land unrestored, smoke returning each dry season and climate goals slipping further out of reach.
The challenges stem from legal loopholes, noncooperation, strategic bankruptcies and weak inter-agency coordination.
But not all companies dodge responsibility — some are settling their debts, albeit painfully late.
After a decade of legal stalemate, palm oil company PT Kallista Alam has begun paying its 366 billion rupiah ($22.6 million) fine for burning peat forest in the Tripa swamp, an important Sumatran orangutan habitat, between 2009 and 2012.
Another company, pulpwood producer PT Bumi Mekar Hijau, a supplier to paper giant Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), has also paid in full its fines of 78.5 billion rupiah ($4.8 million) for fires in its concession.
These exceptions underscore the norm: Most fines remain unpaid, fueling a cycle of impunity where fires continue to flare up in concessions already found guilty by court.
Four recent cases illustrate the different ways companies evade payment, and how weak enforcement perpetuates the cycle.
PT Merbau Pelalawan Lestari
One of the starkest cases involves industrial forestry firm PT Merbau Pelalawan Lestari (MPL).
In 2016, the Supreme Court fined PT MPL 16.2 trillion ($1 billion), the largest penalty ever imposed in a forest fire case, for the massive blazes that swept its concession in Riau province.
Yet, an asset review by Indonesia’s largest environmental NGO, Walhi, found its concession’s acacia trees were worth no more than 156 billion rupiah ($9.6 million) — less than 1% of the court-ordered compensation.
The environment ministry revoked MPL’s operating permit in 2022, leaving the concession idle but still covered with mature acacia stands that could be harvested for profit.
Walhi Riau said some companies have already tried to apply for new permits in these areas, warning that handing over PT MPL’s concession to another operator would further complicate asset recovery and enforcement.
“We must not allow the issuance of new permits in a way that causes further state losses and environmental damage,” Walhi Riau director Boy Jerry Even Sembiring told Mongabay.
Since PT MPL’s assets were valued much less than the amount of fines they have to pay, the company went bankrupt, making it difficult to collect the fine, according to Environment Minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq.
“The 16 trillion rupiah [$989 million] fine is already final and binding, but its assets don’t match the value of the fine — so they filed for bankruptcy,” he told reporters in April.
Hanif added that he’s currently in discussions with the attorney general on how to execute this case.
MPL’s case underscores a pattern in which companies found guilty of burning forests either shield their assets, declare bankruptcy or exploit loopholes to avoid paying.
PT Ricky Kurniawan Kertapersada
The second company is palm oil company PT Ricky Kurniawan Kertapersada (RKK), which filed for bankruptcy in March 2023 without listing the state as a creditor, putting its 191.8 billion rupiah ($12 million) fine for 2015 fires in Jambi province at risk of going unpaid.
“With the ministry not being listed as a creditor, there’s a risk that the 191.8 billion rupiah fines will not be paid to the state,” Rasio Ridho Sani, then the ministry’s law enforcement director-general, said in 2024.
This despite the bankruptcy filing itself cited the fine for 2015 fires in Jambi as its main liability. The ministry was neither notified nor given a copy of the filing, a move it suspects was designed to evade payment.
The ministry suspects PT RKK declared bankruptcy to evade payment and has filed formal objections, as well as reported the court-appointed curator and supervising judge to their respective ethical boards.
According to Dodi Kurniawan, the ministry’s director of environmental dispute resolution, the case remains pending as the ministry waits for the outcome of those objections.
PT Waringin Agro Jaya
Another palm oil company, PT Waringin Agro Jaya (WAJ), has also filed for bankruptcy.
In 2019, Indonesia’s highest court found WAJ liable for the 2015 fires in its concession in South Sumatra province, ordering the company to pay 466 billion rupiah ($28.8 million) in fines.
In March 2023, the company declared bankruptcy. And yet, its concession continued to burn. In the first week of September 2023, 627 hotspots were detected inside the plantation, making it the concession with the most fire alerts during that period, according to data from forest monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas, run by technology consultancy TheTreeMap.
After declaring bankruptcy, PT WAJ successfully auctioned off its assets worth 210 billion rupiah ($13 million) in December 2023.
Dodi said the environment ministry got around 40 billion rupiah ($2.5 million) from the auction because the assets had to be divided among creditors, including workers and banks.
But that amount is less than a tenth of the total fines of 466 billion rupiah, illustrating how even successful auctions may recoup only a fraction of what’s owed.
Besides the challenges of companies declaring bankruptcy and their assets not matching the amounts of fines they have to pay, another challenge is the lack of asset transparency, Dodi said.
“Some companies are hiding assets; they’re not being open. So in these bankruptcy cases, it’s very possible that assets were deliberately concealed,” he told Mongabay in April.
Boy Jerry of Walhi Riau acknowledged there had been challenges in identifying assets of companies found guilty of forest fires, particularly because the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/National Land Agency has refused to release data on factory and plantation locations.
Therefore, there should be a coordinating ministry tasked with identifying the assets of companies that haven’t paid their fines for forest fires, he said.
Companies that haven’t declared bankruptcy also pose challenges by being uncooperative, Dodi added.
“For instance, we summon them for complying with the court order [to pay the fines], but they don’t show up,” he said.
PT Jatim Jaya Perkasa
Palm oil company PT Jatim Jaya Perkasa (JJP) in Riau province illustrates how Indonesia’s enforcement gaps allow repeat offenders to operate unchecked.
In 2020, the Supreme Court found JJP guilty of burning 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of land in 2013, ordering it to pay 119.8 billion rupiah ($7.4 million) in damages and 371.1 billion rupiah ($23 million) for environmental restoration — a total of 491 billion rupiah ($30.3 million) — and prohibiting replanting on burned peatland.
Yet Walhi investigators later found the company replanting on the prohibited land and earning up to 47 billion rupiah ($2.9 million) per month from palm oil production, in direct violation of the ruling.
JJP has also been accused of encroaching on community farmland and, in early 2024, sued forestry forensic expert Bambang Hero Saharjo over testimony in the fire case — a SLAPP suit widely condemned as an attempt to intimidate witnesses.
In July 2025, the environment ministry even shut down one of JJP’s factories for air pollution breaches.
That the company can violate a final court ruling for years — continuing to profit from the very land it was banned from using — shows the limits of Indonesia’s current enforcement system.
Critics say the absence of asset seizure, license suspension or operational halts beyond a single factory shutdown reflects a fragmented enforcement system in which court rulings don’t translate into on-the-ground consequences.
PETIR, a grassroots organization, has urged the Attorney General’s Office to seize JJP’s assets, warning that letting the company ignore the verdict “reflects the weakness of our legal system” and encourages other firms to flout the law.
“We urge the AGO to take firmer steps on the criminal side so the ruling can be enforced according to the law. This is important because the state losses caused by PT Jatim Jaya Perkasa are enormous,” PETIR chairman Jackson Sihombing said as quoted by local news in July.
Impunity
Together, these cases reveal a structural failure: Indonesia’s legal victories in court rarely lead to environmental recovery on the ground.
Fires continue to ignite in the same concessions, undeterred by billion-rupiah penalties.
In July alone, Walhi detected 639 high-confidence hotspots, more than half inside corporate concessions — some of them repeat offenders.
A monitoring by peatland watchdog Pantau Gambut also found that half of the hotspots in peatland hydrological areas in July were located inside concession areas.
This recurrence of forest and land fires shows how the state continues to bow to corporate forest burners, said Uli Arta Siagian, the forest and plantation campaign manager at Walhi.
“Even companies that have been found guilty by court rulings face no real consequences — their licenses are not revoked, and they burn again this year,” she said. “This impunity is the root of Indonesia’s recurring fire crisis.”
The environment ministry seems to understand this as Dodi said the ministry is not giving up on collecting the fines despite the challenges.
“We’ve already submitted letters to the courts to execute the rulings — in Jambi, Riau and Kalimantan,” he said.
Without executing the court rulings by collecting these fines, burned areas that were supposed to be restored will remain unrestored, making them more vulnerable to future fires.
“If left unenforced, court victories will remain meaningless on paper, and restoration funds will never materialize,” Boy Jerry of Walhi Riau said. “Worse yet, areas that were supposed to be restored have instead been replanted [with crops like palm oil].”
An analysis by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) found that most of burned areas in 2019 were degraded and idle land, not forested land, highlighting the importance of protecting these areas and restoring them to prevent future recurrences of fires.
As Indonesia braces for the peak of the dry season in August and September, environmentalists warn that the government’s inability to enforce court rulings will all but guarantee another year of smoke, haze and unhealed land.
“The government only dares to prosecute ordinary citizens — like traditional farmers who use fire to clear their small plots using local wisdom,” Uli said. “In contrast, corporate actors — the intellectual perpetrators — go unpunished. Sealing off their lands is just a gimmick. It never leads to permit revocation. This reflects the weakness of our legal system.”
By not addressing the root cause of Indonesia’s recurring fires, the government will also fail to reduce emissions from the forestry and other land use (FOLU) sector, the backbone of Indonesia’s climate mitigation plan, she added.
FOLU is the second-largest emitter in Indonesia each year, and during massive fire years like 2015 and 2019, it becomes the top emitter as fires, particularly in carbon-rich peatlands, release massive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.
Unless Indonesia enforces these rulings, it won’t just leave forests unrestored — it will forfeit billions in environmental damages, allow smoke and haze to return, and undermine the credibility of its climate commitments.
“If the government claims to be serious about adaptation and mitigation while allowing the root causes of fires to persist, it cannot claim to be committed [to tackling climate change],” Uli said. “Without fundamental change [on punishing burning concessions], our climate commitments and reliance on FOLU as a mitigation pillar will collapse.”
Banner image: Fires engulf a palm oil plantation in Rokan Hilir district, Riau, Indonesia. Image by Zamzami/Mongabay Indonesia.
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