Indonesia’s peatland wildfires, fueled by a Super El Niño, are releasing massive carbon stores, risking transnational haze and health crises, as volunteer firefighters battle underground fires.
Indonesia’s peatland wildfires, driven by a Super El Niño that has intensified drought conditions, have ignited a transnational haze crisis, with volunteer firefighters risking their lives to combat “carbon bombs” that could release millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases.
Peatlands: Nature’s Carbon Vaults Turned Catastrophes
Indonesia’s peatlands, which can hold up to 20 metres of deep, waterlogged organic material, are among the planet’s most efficient natural carbon sinks. Peatlands are incredibly effective carbon stores because their waterlogged conditions slow decomposition, allowing carbon to accumulate underground for thousands of years,
explains Dr. Nisa Novita, a researcher at Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara (YKAN). However, when these ecosystems are drained or burned, they transform into “carbon bombs,” releasing fossilized carbon rapidly into the atmosphere. A single hectare of deep peatland can store 6,000 tonnes of carbon—equivalent to the annual CO₂ emissions of 4,800 cars—posing a dire threat if ignited.
The scale of the danger is compounded by the fires’ subterranean nature. Underground peat fires, which smolder for months, are nearly impossible to extinguish. Once a fire becomes uncontrolled, it harms many people. Not just humans, but also animals and plants,
says Dwi Sujatmoko, a volunteer firefighter. If underground fire spreads and can no longer be controlled, the losses are enormous.
These fires have already scorched 200,000 hectares of forest and farmland since early July, with toxic smoke spilling across international borders – to Singapore, Manila, Kuala Lumpur.
Volunteers on the Frontlines: Risking Lives to Defuse a Climate Crisis
Thousands of volunteer firefighters, many of them indigenous Dayak or Banjar people, are working tirelessly to contain the blaze. Using hand tools, carts and portable fire pumps, they dig ponds, canals and borewells through bone-dry peat. It hits your nose straight away, your eyes burn— that's more or less what it's like,
Sujatmoko describes. Despite their efforts, two volunteers in Central Kalimantan have died in recent days, reportedly after their health deteriorated from putting out fires.
The Health Ministry recorded over 50,000 respiratory infections linked to land and forest fires between July and August, with more than 12,000 of them children under the age of five. Everybody who's living within that pollution cloud is breathing in the products of those smouldering peat fires,
says Susan Page, a professor at the University of Leicester’s school of geology and the environment. They're breathing in carbon monoxide, which is toxic, and they're breathing in the very finely divided particulate matter… [which] can pass through the alveoli in the lungs into the bloodstream and cause further problems elsewhere in the body, including issues with the heart.
A Regional Health and Environmental Emergency
The fires have fueled a transnational haze crisis that is the region’s worst in more than a decade, with air pollution indices soaring to “unhealthy” extremes – almost 75 times the World Health Organization’s recommended level, in some cases. The toxic cloud has caused health impacts as hospital admissions have surged. Living in this kind of pollution cloud is extremely unhealthy,
Page adds.
Efforts to combat the fires face significant challenges. The Super El Niño has supercharged local drought conditions, making peatlands more susceptible. Local volunteers remain on the frontlines, cloaked in toxic haze that can burn years off a person’s lifespan, making ad hoc irrigation systems to combat subterranean fires.
The situation underscores the disaster at the coalface. As Dr Nisa notes, peatlands can become a carbon bomb when they are drained or burned. With the fires showing continuing threat, the world watches as Indonesia’s peatland fires burn through one of the world’s largest tropical peatland ecosystems.
