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View all search resultsWildfire emissions may cause Indonesia to miss climate target
Greenhouse gas emitted from forest and peatland fires across Indonesia has reached the same amount of 74 coal-fired power plants, potentially hurting the country’s “net sink” aim in the forestry sector by 2030.
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A Manggala Agni forest firefighter struggles to extinguish a forest and peatland fire on Saturday in Rambutan village, Ogan Ilir regency, South Sumatra. (Antara/Nova Wahyudi)
T
he ongoing burning of forest and peatland have put Indonesia on the brink of missing its national climate target as emissions from wildfires reach record highs, prompting calls for the government to launch aggressive climate mitigation measures.
Large swaths of Kalimantan, Sumatra and Papua have been ravaged by fires since the beginning of this year. By late August, total burned land reached nearly 900,000 hectares, or four times the size of Tokyo, according to independent forest monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas.
In addition to toxic haze that reached as far as the Philippines, the wildfire has also released greenhouse gas emissions that may exacerbate global heating.
As of Friday, Indonesia’s annual fire emissions reached 76.2 megatonnes (Mt) of carbon, around one-third of the global total, according to periodical data from Europe-based Earth observation platform Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). This level of emissions is equivalent to what is released by nearly 74 coal-fired power plants in a year.
The level of emissions is also higher than what was recorded during the same period in 2019, although still lower than 2015, when Indonesia suffered major destructive fire seasons. The emissions and haze produced by this year’s wildfires will continue to severely impact air quality across the region, according to CAMS senior scientist Mark Parrington.
“It is a huge assumption to make,” Parrington told The Jakarta Post on Friday, “but this may indicate that 2026 will finish above 2019 but below 2015.”
Indonesia is among the world’s top greenhouse gas emitting countries, with a major share of emissions coming from the forest and other land-use (FOLU) sector, including peatland fires.
