Fires that occurred in 1997 and 1998 burned a total of 2,124,000 hectares of peat swamp forest. The disaster caused 156.3 million tons of carbon emissions.
At that time, the smoke not only covered neighboring countries, such as Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei Darussalam, but also spread to Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, and Sri Lanka.
Since then, forest and land fires have continued to occur every year with different intensities. In 2015, another big fire broke out, this was during the administration of President Joko Widodo. The disaster was the worst since the 1998 fires. The fires burned around 2.67 million hectares of forest and land, 35 percent of them were peatlands.
Four years later, the Government of Indonesia has tightened regulations for the restoration of degraded areas and for banning the use of fire. However, fires still happen, such as in 2019. At that time, the fires burned about 1.6 million hectares of forest and land of which 31 percent were peat ecosystems.
Let's observe the development of the Indonesian Government's policy on the management and prevention of haze disasters.
