An ecological disaster of staggering proportions is being forced to the back pages of newspapers while the world is preoccupied with the seemingly endless ‘war on terror’. Raging fires have swept across and destroyed great swathes of peat forest in Borneo and Indonesia, areas larger than some small countries (El Salvador or Kuwait, for example). The fires, an annual event, are set by either palm-oil plantation companies or smallholders encouraged by the local mafia to clear land for palm agriculture. But in conditions of climate change-induced drought, the fires have become much worse, threatening already-endangered flora and fauna. It is extremely hard to put out or even find the extensive peat, as it smoulders underground.
Ecological degradation here, as elsewhere, causes a cascade of effects: global heat rise makes the fires worse, which in turn contributes to a surge in carbon emissions – pushing Indonesia’s contribution to global warming to catastrophic levels. On at least 38 days during September and October, Indonesia’s fires were spewing more daily emissions than the entire US economy.
