Speaking at the Climate Action Summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York, the United States, on Monday, Kalla said the world was in a climate emergency and that the extreme weather caused by climate change had rendered disaster-prone countries even more vulnerable.

“Indonesia is a case in point,” Kalla told the UN forum in New York, according to a UN recording of the event. “Land and forest fires that have broken out in parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan are worsened by the impact of climate change.”

The choking haze and worsening air quality in Indonesia were a result of the illegal clearing of agricultural land by fire in Sumatra and Kalimantan, with the National Police having named 249 people and six companies suspects for the forest fires.

The average global temperature between 2015 and 2019 is on track to be the hottest of any five-year period on record, according to a report compiled by the World Meteorological Organization and published ahead of the UN climate summit, AFP reported. The period "is currently estimated to be 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial [1850-1900] times and 0.2 degrees warmer than 2011-2015," the report said. The past four years were already the hottest since record-keeping began in 1850.

On Monday, teenage activist Greta Thunberg angrily denounced world leaders for failing to tackle climate change.

“How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just 'business as usual' and some technical solutions?” she said in one panel at the UN, as recorded in a video that went viral on Monday.

Thunberg and 15 other young climate activists filed a complaint with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child alleging that world leaders' inaction on the climate crisis had violated children's rights.

She said the popular idea of cutting emissions in half in 10 years would only result in a 50 percent chance of staying below a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees, which may be acceptable for the current authorities, but not enough for her generation.

“Those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist. So, a 50 percent risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences,” she said.

In Jambi, one of the areas most affected by smog, residents have started to feel the impact of the worsening air quality — which reached "dangerous" levels over the weekend as a result of the forest fires. It has forced authorities to close down all schools, from kindergartens to universities, as residents closed their doors and windows tightly to avoid hazardous haze.

"Merely providing residents with dust masks is not enough. They need oxygen [tanks]," Jambi's Kumpeh district head Rizky Armaidi previously said.

In his speech at the UN, Kalla acknowledged Thunberg’s demand, saying: “We hear you, Greta Thunberg, our house is falling apart.”

Kalla said even though it was not easy, Indonesia had taken serious measures to tackle such challenges. He promised that Indonesia would take concrete yet realistic climate actions.

Indonesia, he said, was trying to curb greenhouse gas emissions with an ambitious target of 29 percent with its own resources and up to 41 percent with international support by 2030, a pledge Indonesia already made in 2016.

“Indonesia will establish a dedicated environmental funding facility to facilitate climate financing and support other environmental programs. We invite international partners to join in our funding facility,” he said.

The Environment and Forestry Ministry previously claimed that the country had managed to reduce its emissions by 8.7 percent against the business-as-usual projection in 2016. Observers noted that Indonesia was “on the right track but still far from the target” due to poor enforcement and compliance.

Another speaker at the UN climate meeting was Surabaya Mayor Tri “Risma” Rismaharini, who called for climate-friendly transportation, like electric buses, given that conventional transportation is responsible for about 28 percent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in the world.

Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who spoke on behalf of ASEAN at the UN as his country chairs ASEAN this year, said the bloc was committed to be actively involved in global climate action at all levels because the increased impacts of climate change have threatened the region’s economic and social progress.

He called on developed countries to deliver on their financial commitments, saying: "We also hope to see their strong political signals to scale-up climate finance that is secure, predictable and sustainable in the post-2020 context."

However, he did not touch on the issue of the region’s forest fires, nor on the resulting smog that has blanketed some parts of Indonesia and Malaysia.

Vania Santoso, a participant at the Youth Climate Summit at the UN and cofounder of heySTARTIC, an Indonesian social enterprise that promotes an environmentally friendly mindset through ethical fashion, said there were reasons to be optimistic.

“While there is still a lot of work that needs to be done for climate change adaptation and mitigation, […] there are also many young people, even groups of young people in Indonesia who have taken concrete actions,” she said.

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