Indonesia bolsters integrated strategy in fight against wildfires

[hartono]

Indonesia bolsters integrated strategy in fight against wildfires​

President Prabowo Subianto leads a wildfire management meeting at the South Sumatra Forest and Land Fire Task Force Command Post, Palembang, South Sumatra, on Monday (August 24, 2026). ANTARA FOTO/Galih Pradipta/kye/am.

Jakarta (ANTARA) - As strong El Niño patterns exacerbate dry conditions, widespread forest and land fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan are once again pushing Indonesia into a battle against the flames.

The Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) has warned of an increased risk of forest and land fires as dry conditions dominate across much of Indonesia in August. The peak risk is expected to run from August through September 2026, particularly in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

This situation underscores the need to expand wildfire management, such as suppression, early detection, personnel deployment, aerial operations, weather modification, law enforcement, and public awareness initiatives.

In response, President Prabowo Subianto directly led forest and land fire management from West Kalimantan on August 22 and inspected containment efforts in Riau and South Sumatra on August 24.

The president’s presence in the key fire-prone regions was more than just a routine field visit. Directives issued point to an effort to establish a more integrated response strategy: fires must be detected early, reached immediately, and extinguished before spreading, while their root causes are investigated and any resurgence is closely monitored.

A key takeaway from the president’s meeting on wildfire management in Palembang, South Sumatra was his call for immediate action on every hotspot, signaling a clear shift in priority to focus on rapid response the moment early signs of fire are detected.

This approach is already being put into practice. The National Police (Polri) noted that hotspots are tracked via satellite and community reports, which field officers then verify. Once confirmed, extinguishing and cooling operations will be launched immediately.

Polri has even set a target response time of one to two hours from the moment a satellite detects a hotspot. After the fire is put out and the area is confirmed to be safe, an investigation into law violations can begin.

Remote sensing technology, public reports, and field personnel thus form an interconnected chain.

A hotspot must not remain just a dot on a monitoring screen; it has to trigger action on the ground. That is the true value of early response.

Integrated operations

To address the high-risk period, the Indonesian government has prepared integrated operations.

Six provinces have been set as priorities in forest and land fire response: South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, West Kalimantan, Riau, Jambi, and South Sumatra.

Across those six provinces, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) has deployed 39 aerial units, including patrol helicopters, weather modification aircraft, and water-bombing helicopters. This air fleet is tasked with monitoring, detecting hotspots, extinguishing fires, and intervening whenever air support is required.

At the same time, ground operations are continued through command posts that bring together local authorities, the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI), Polri, regional disaster mitigation agencies (BPBD), and other stakeholders.

Through these collaborative efforts, the BMKG provides weather updates and risk assessments, feeding into monitoring systems that detect hotspots.

Local officials and security forces then verify these alerts, ground crews are dispatched to the site, and helicopters are brought in when terrain is hard to access by land.

Weather modification or cloud seeding is carried out to induce rain, followed by cooling operations once the fires are out to prevent residual embers from reigniting.

This chain of measures highlights that forest and land fire management is fundamentally about the speed of coordination.

As of August 9, 2026, the burnt area across six priority provinces had reached approximately 48,889.69 hectares. West Kalimantan accounted for the largest share at roughly 28,680.47 hectares, followed by Riau with 15,551.76 hectares. Central Kalimantan with 3,069.52 hectares, South Sumatra with 664.87 hectares, Jambi with around 540 hectares, and South Kalimantan with 383.07 hectares.

Figures from late July reflected a similar pattern. Data from the BNPB showed that burned areas in Riau reached 15,372.88 hectares, while West Kalimantan stood at 28,680.47 hectares. In South Sumatra, land burned since the start of the year totaled 664.87 hectares across 520 wildfire incidents as of July 28.

These figures highlight that the wildfires had already escalated into an issue that required full-scale operations well before the president’s visit. Consequently, the decision to reinforce resources following field evaluations forms part of a cohesive response strategy.

In West Kalimantan, for instance, the government deployed an additional 1,500 military personnel and six water-bombing helicopters, alongside weather modification operations and enhanced rewetting equipment.

As for Sumatra, specific support is also provided to meet on-the-ground needs. President Prabowo confirmed the delivery of off-road motorcycles to Jambi to support its 81 fire response posts. For South Sumatra, he instructed the addition of 100 off-road motorcycles retrofitted with water tanks, enabling ground officers to reach fire sites.

The human factor

While El Niño and the dry season undeniably heighten wildfire risks, human activity still plays a central role behind the blazes.

Between January 1 and August 21, 2026, Polri reported 89 criminal cases related to alleged forest and land fires across nine regional police jurisdictions. From those cases, 72 individuals have been named suspects, with the total affected area reaching 1,006.67 hectares.

Investigators found that several cases involve land clearing by burning, a practice favored for being cheap. Police are also tracing whether third parties ordered, funded, or profited from the burnings.

This has underscored that wildfire management carries a far broader dimension than firefighting operations alone.

In addition to extinguishing the fires, the state must ensure no parties deliberately carry out burning. This is why law enforcement is inseparable from the prevention strategy.

If land burning yields economic profits for perpetrators while the public bears the environmental and health costs, law enforcement serves to tilt that dynamic. The legal risks must outweigh the financial gains of setting fires.

President Prabowo himself warned that the government will not allow companies proven responsible for blazes to escape accountability. This stance underscores that tackling wildfires is not just about fighting flames, but also dismantling the factors that cause them to recur.

Why must prevention stand on equal footing with suppression? Indonesia’s own experience provides the answer.

The World Bank estimated the 2019 forest and land fires in Indonesia caused approximately US$5.2 billion in economic losses, which mostly stemmed not from direct asset destruction, but from disrupted economic activity across sectors including agriculture, transportation, trade, industry, tourism, health, and the environment.

Another World Bank assessment noted that the 2019 wildfires affected roughly 1.6 million hectares of land and were linked to nearly 900,000 cases of respiratory illness. Total economic losses equaled about 0.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Figures like these affirm that wildfire prevention is more than just an environmental issue.

Every hectare of land burned means potential health costs that could have been avoided. Every hotspot extinguished before it escalates prevents losses across agriculture, transportation, and trade.

In this context, government intervention through patrols, early detection, firefighting equipment, aerial operations, and public awareness initiatives can be viewed as part of broader efforts to protect the nation's economy.

On the prevention front, authorities have prepared thousands of retention basins, canal blocks, deep wells, and monitoring towers, alongside drones and other firefighting equipment.

The battle against wildfires does not begin after the flames break out. The strategy focuses on keeping fire-prone lands moist, monitoring high-risk areas, detecting hotspots early, and ensuring ground personnel can reach them swiftly.

These policies point Indonesia's wildfire management to a vital premise: success should not be measured merely by how many fire sites are tackled, but more importantly, by how many hotspots are suppressed before turning into major blazes.

Crucially, wildfires do not simply end once the flames are out; lingering embers can easily reignite, particularly in dry, hard-to-reach terrain.

Therefore, suppression, cooling, monitoring, outreach, law enforcement, and restoration must be viewed as interconnected parts of the same strategy. The president’s presence in Kalimantan and Sumatra exerts political pressure while reinforcing command across the entire response chain.

Indonesia bolsters integrated strategy in fight against wildfires

As strong El Niño patterns exacerbate dry conditions, widespread forest and land fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan are once again pushing Indonesia into ...

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