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What you need to know about the wildfires in Indonesia — Causes and impacts
This appeared in The Millennial Source
October 2019 — Forest fires continue to wreak havoc on Indonesia’s western island of Sumatra, as well as in Central Kalimantan on Borneo. Hundreds of wildfires have spread across the islands, devastating ecosystems and creating smog so heavy that some regions were forced to close schools and cancel airline flights.
According to an October report from the Indonesian National Agency for Disaster Management, nearly 329,000 hectares of land were burned in the first eight months of 2019. The report also identified nearly 1,500 hotspots under emergency alerts in six provinces.
Indonesia’s disaster management agency identified the leading cause of the forest fires as slash-and-burn agriculture — the deliberate setting of fires to clear land for palm plantations. The fires worsened when the country’s dry season started in July. In an interview with Chanel News Asia, Environment and Forestry Ministry PR Director Djati Witjaksono Hadi also pointed to El Niño, a weather phenomenon that causes prolonged droughts in the country, as a cause of the fires’ rapid spreading.
