Ely Marlina’s 2-year-old child began to cough as the wildfires enveloped Indonesia’s Ketapang district in the summer of 2019. The little one soon fell ill with an acute respiratory tract…
A senior member of Indonesia’s parliament on Oct. 10 called for tougher police action against companies responsible for land fires, as air pollution continued to shutter schools and sicken thousands…
Regional governments in wildfire-hit Indonesia shuttered schools in the first week October, as sickly air pollution continued to cloak several population centers in Kalimantan and Sumatra. Local authorities in Central…
New acute respiratory infections in Indonesia’s Palembang city, on the island of Sumatra, are on track to surpass the total number recorded there in 2022, as firefighters scramble to confront…
Indonesia’s oldest women’s Islamic organization will prepare volunteers in Kalimantan and Sumatra to open clean air sanctuaries, should a strengthening El Niño accelerate wildfires over the coming months. “We will…
Indonesia is readying a fleet of drones to launch over Nusantara, its new capital city, as part of efforts to protect the under-construction site in Borneo from wildfires, officials told…
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has warned of potentially dangerous weather conditions accelerating across the archipelago in the coming months, as the nation’s meteorology agency says more than half the country…
When battling to protect Indonesia's peatlands during wildfire crises in 2015 and 2019, most volunteer firefighters confronted the infernos with a dire shortage of equipment and technological resources. For community…
Smoke from the catastrophic 2019-20 Australian bushfires may have tipped the planet into a La Niña climate phenomenon lasting almost three years, according to new research published May 10 in…
Palm oil tycoon Surya Darmadi began trial in Jakarta on Thursday over an alleged corruption scheme that deforested tens of thousands of hectares on the island of Sumatra. "He is…
International and Indonesian NGOs are calling on the country’s largest paper company to stop using drained peat swamps for industrial agriculture. The practice, which relies on drying out the waterlogged…
In the wake of last year’s devastating forest fires, Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s administration forbid agribusinesses from replanting the desiccated peatlands that had gone up in flames during the disaster.…
A crucial new government regulation on peatland management in Indonesia is spurring debate over whether the country is going far enough to prevent a repeat of last year’s disastrous forest…
The father of a little girl who died during Indonesia’s 2015 fire and haze crisis testified on Thursday as part of a legal challenge to the police’s closing of cases…
Indonesia’s peat restoration agency is advocating for greater foreign investment to fill an expected funding shortfall in the government's plan to rehabilitate more than 2 million hectares of peat across…
The health ministries of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have played down a study by Harvard and Columbia universities estimating a mean of more than 100,000 premature deaths resulting from the…
A NASA satellite detected 140 hotspots in West Kalimantan on Monday as smallholders in the province continued to burn land for agriculture, Indonesia’s disaster management agency said on Tuesday. Data…
Two Indonesian military commanders in Sumatra said this week that they were seeing more fires started at night and on the weekend in order to avoid the military's more frequent…
Pulp and paper supplier PT Bumi Mekar Hijau has been declared guilty of causing fires in South Sumatra by an appeals court in the Indonesian province, reversing a decision that…
Singapore’s National Environment Agency said on Friday it expected air quality to remain poor into the weekend as Indonesian disaster management officials cautioned that wildfires in Sumatra and Kalimantan could…
The Indonesian parliament will form a task force to look into the cancelling of investigations against 15 companies alleged to be complicit in fires in Riau, the country’s top palm oil…
Air quality in Indonesia and peninsular Malaysia declined this week as prevailing southwesterly winds continued to blow smog over the water that separates the two countries. “Smoke from forest fires…
On July 23 the local police headquarters in the Sumatran province of Riau released SP3 notices related to 15 companies that the Ministry of Environment and Forestry had listed in…
Satellites on Wednesday recorded 145 fire-linked hotspots over Indonesia’s main western island of Sumatra, down from 245 on Sunday, according to the country’s disaster management agency. It’s a far cry…
The prospects for greater international collaboration in the effort to prevent another Southeast Asian haze crisis hit a bump in the road this week, with Jakarta taking umbrage at Singapore’s threat…
Environmental groups have raised concerns that Indonesian president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s planned moratorium on new oil palm and mining concessions will have limited impact without hawkish enforcement by local governments…
Struck early this year by the annual haze scourge, Malaysia has proposed to amend the Environmental Protection Act so that the state can seize badly burning land, often set alight by…
A major heatwave caused by the ongoing El Niño weather phenomenon continued across Malaysia this week after fires and haze pollution damaged air quality and sent temperatures soaring as high…
Smog from forest fires and hotspots continued to threaten air quality in parts of Indonesia's Sumatra on Friday as local authorities waited for the mid-April rainy season to arrive. The…
Local governments, environmental agencies, emergency services and the military are working across Indonesia’s fire-prone areas as President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo tries to minimize this year’s haze in what could be…
