Grist: "What’s fueling Indonesia’s worst wildfire season in a decade?" by Sachi Kitajima Mulkey.
"Peat fires are burning across the country, smothering one of the world's most populated countries in smoke." Some government buses are outfitted with oxygen tanks.
"Fire fighters [are] collapsing to the ground in relief at the first sign of rain." Dozens of orangutans required rescue.
"Hundreds of Indonesian students [marched] through the haze, some wearing gas masks, others carrying signs." More than 4.6 million acres have burned across the country since August, blanketing its large island regions, like Kalimantan + Sumatra, in a thick smoke that has spread to neighboring countries.
"On some days, the air quality conditions are more than 13 times worse than the threshold considered unhealthy." And like in many tropical countries, buildings in Indonesia are often built to maximize air flow, rather than filter it or keep it out.
"Just last year, 1,200 residents of Sumatra died during catastrophic cyclone-induced flooding + landslides." As a warming climate pushes sea levels higher, the country is racing to move the capital Jakarta to higher ground.
While the weirding climate is suspected as a factor, mostly it is "a superstrong El Niño [which sent] Indonesia into a severe drought, drying out the peatlands found across the country." When farmers or agriculture companies light fires to quickly + cheaply clear away vegetation + debris—a common practice in Indonesia—peat fires can quickly get out of control, smoldering underground for months.
"Frustration over the fires, high living costs, + government spending has sparked numerous large protests across the country in recent weeks." Many of the fires appear to be on unmanaged lands next to working plantations, which often grow oil palm, + are the primary driver of Indonesia’s high rates of deforestation and biodiversity loss.
Credit to the fossil fuel industries.
