Wildfires currently tearing through large swathes of land in Indonesia are on a dangerous trajectory, putting the country on course to produce carbon emissions on a par with its most intense fire season of this century.

Data compiled by the Global Fire Emissions Database reveals that, as of September 7, fires across Indonesia have already produced 76 million tonnes of carbon (MtC) in 2026. This alarming figure places the current year on the exact same trajectory as 2015, a catastrophic season that saw fires burn 2.6 million hectares of land across the archipelago and generate a staggering total of 333MtC.

Dr. Guido van der Werf, a prominent researcher at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, noted that the ongoing fires in Indonesia are tracking closely toward the unprecedented levels recorded eleven years ago. While some areas have managed to avoid the worst, other parts of the country are facing unprecedented devastation. According to Dr. van der Werf, regions such as the eastern province of Papua are currently "burning more than they’ve ever burned."

Indonesia is no stranger to emissions-intensive fires, which have historically left massive environmental and human footprints. Groundbreaking research has previously estimated that the record-breaking 1997 fire season generated carbon emissions equivalent to anywhere between 13% and 40% of all global fossil-fuel emissions for that single year.

Meanwhile, a separate scientific study examining the carbon dioxide emissions from the 2015 fires in south-east Asia—which primarily ravaged Indonesia—discovered that their output was greater than the total fossil-fuel emissions of the entire European Union that year. Beyond the profound climatic impact, the severe, acrid haze produced by these blazes has been linked to more than 100,000 premature deaths across the region, triggering profound public health crises and diplomatic tensions with neighboring countries choked by the smoke.

El Niño Influence and Amplified Vulnerability

As was the case during the devastating seasons of 2015 and 1997, this year’s destructive Indonesian fires coincide with a powerful El Niño event.

This naturally occurring climate phenomenon, closely linked to fluctuating ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, periodically drives up surface temperatures and severely dries out land across Indonesia. By starving the landscape of moisture, El Niño creates the environmental preconditions for massive fires so immense that their emissions imprint globally on the Earth’s carbon cycle.

Climate scientists project that the current El Niño—which officially took hold in June and is anticipated to persist well into 2027—will rank as one of the most intense on record.

Dr. Mark Parrington, a senior scientist from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, explained the seasonal context and the sheer anomaly of the current situation. From August until the end of October or November, Indonesia experiences its traditional dry season. While it is normal to observe some level of fire activity during this window, Dr. Parrington noted that the scale observed this year far exceeds typical dry seasons, outstripping even many previous El Niño years.

Dr. Nisa Novita, the strategic lead for peatland at the Indonesian environmental NGO Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara (YKAN), pointed out that while El Niño does not directly spark the majority of fires, it acts as a massive environmental amplifier. By creating intensely hot and arid conditions, the climate phenomenon ensures that fires ignite with greater ease, spread at frightening speeds, and become exceptionally difficult for firefighting teams to control.

Scientific literature consistently demonstrates that Indonesia’s most severe fires rarely occur in pristine rainforests alone. Instead, they frequently break out in regions that have undergone significant land clearance and extensive peatland drainage to make way for agriculture and expansive palm oil plantations. These industrial land-use practices fundamentally alter the hydrology of the landscape, creating a dry, highly flammable terrain that turns into a tinderbox during periods of drought.

Dr. van der Werf emphasized that the ultimate scale of this year’s fires—and whether they will ultimately surpass the tragic milestones of 2015—will depend heavily on two critical factors: the exact duration of the current El Niño event and the real-world effectiveness of recent peatland conservation and restoration initiatives.

The Unique Danger of Tropical Peatland Ecosystems

The primary reason Indonesia’s fires are so overwhelmingly emissions-intensive lies in the country’s vast and fragile tropical peatland ecosystems.

Dr. Novita explained the mechanics of this vulnerability, noting that when peatlands are degraded and artificially drained through the development of canals for agriculture, the local water table drops significantly. This drainage dries out the dense layers of organic matter, making the peat highly flammable, particularly during seasonal dry spells or severe El Niño episodes like the one currently unfolding.

Unlike fires in standard dry ecosystems, which primarily consume surface vegetation and brush, peat fires possess the terrifying capability to smolder deep underground. Because the soil itself becomes readily available fuel, these subterranean fires can persist for weeks or months, defying surface containment efforts and continuously releasing massive plumes of carbon into the atmosphere.

In response to past catastrophes, extensive peatland restoration efforts have been implemented across Indonesia in recent years. These initiatives were widely credited with dampening fire activity and reducing the total number of blazes during the milder El Niño event of 2019.

The groundwork for these interventions dates back to the catastrophic fires of 1997-1998, after which the Indonesian government introduced a broad array of regulatory measures designed to strengthen peatland protection. This framework included the establishment of dedicated institutions and a sweeping national moratorium on issuing new licenses to convert primary forests and carbon-rich peatlands into commercial plantations and logging concessions.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2015 disaster, Jakarta established an official peatland restoration agency, which was subsequently granted an expanded mandate to oversee mangrove restoration efforts in 2021. However, this specialized agency was dissolved last year, raising fresh questions among conservationists about the long-term institutional priority given to landscape restoration.

Reflecting on the shifting institutional landscape and the current crisis, Dr. Novita posed a sobering question regarding national preparedness. She noted that Indonesia has undoubtedly learned lessons and improved its management strategies over the decades, but cautioned that uncertainty remains over whether these measures are sufficient to counter the escalating risks posed by degraded peatlands during severe climate anomalies.

For researchers analyzing the raw data, the precise impact of recent government interventions remains difficult to quantify amid the smoke of 2026. Dr. van der Werf admitted that he had initially hoped Indonesia would experience a relatively quiet fire season, even in the face of a major El Niño, trusting that regulatory reforms and restoration work would buffer the landscape against extreme drought.

While that protective effect may hold true in some provinces—such as Sumatra, which has experienced a relatively quiet fire season thus far—it is clearly failing to prevent widespread devastation in other parts of the archipelago. Pointing to the east, Dr. van der Werf identified Papua and neighboring Papua New Guinea as the new environmental frontiers. These remote regions, he warned, are currently undergoing the exact same cycle of clearance, drainage, and catastrophic burning that Sumatra experienced two decades ago.