JAKARTA: After months of choking on toxic haze and enduring obscured skies from forest and peatland fires, residents across Sumatra, Kalimantan and other wildfire-stricken islands have finally received welcome news from above.
Intermittent rainfall has descended upon several hot spots across the country. In Palembang, the capital of South Sumatra, residents rejoiced after weeks of hazardous air quality and severely restricted visibility.
Similar scenes unfolded in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan, where exhausted firefighters dropped to their knees, welcoming the downpour that helped douse the blazes they battled for months.
Rainfall also reached other regions, including Greater Jakarta, offering brief respite from prolonged scorching heat and a reservoir-depleting drought imperiling the metropolitan area’s clean water supply.
While we share the relief of the firefighters and communities now welcoming these rains, the central government and regional authorities must not succumb to complacency. A temporary downpour cannot serve as a pretext to abandon the systemic reforms required to prevent these fires from igniting in the first place.
Meteorologists attribute the recent precipitation to short-lived atmospheric dynamics around the Indonesian archipelago, notably Super Typhoon Champi making landfall in Taiwan and a moist air stream from Australia facilitating cloud formation.
These patterns offer fleeting relief; Typhoon Champi dissipated shortly after striking Taiwan’s central mountain range.
The phenomenon with far greater staying power is El Niño. With sea surface temperatures in the east-central Pacific surging more than three degrees Celsius above normal, projections indicate that El Niño’s drying influence could persist over the archipelago well into early 2027, further delaying the onset of the regular monsoon season.
Without sustained rainfall, El Niño will plunge emergency teams back into severe firefighting operations in the few months ahead. Even amid the recent showers, satellite monitoring continues to detect persistent hot spots.
Now is the moment for the state to redouble its suppression and prevention strategies. Crucially, addressing the wildfire crisis requires authorities to welcome constructive criticism and candidly acknowledge vulnerabilities in current containment strategies.
To date, state officials have too often responded defensively to public scrutiny and bilateral assistance offers. When questioned regarding Malaysia’s proposal to dispatch three aircraft and 52 personnel, Coordinating Human Development and Culture Minister Sugiono pointed to the deployment of 71,000 joint personnel under a "national-level" operation.
Yet relying strictly on domestic mobilisation when resources are stretched across thousands of peatland hectares is an operational bottleneck Jakarta cannot afford. The most realistic and immediate path forward to accelerate firefighting efforts is the formal activation of operational protocols under the Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (AATHP).
Ratified specifically to address crises of this magnitude, the treaty provides a structured, legally binding mechanism for mobilising aerial water-bombing assets, specialised technical personnel and regional disaster-response units without bureaucratic delays
Tapping into this established regional framework is neither an admission of state failure nor a compromise of national sovereignty; it is sound, pragmatic disaster management.
As toxic plumes drift across international borders and threaten public health throughout South-East Asia, triggering the AATHP offers the fastest route to multiplying Indonesia's suppression capacity before subterranean peat fires become uncontrollable.
Concurrently, law enforcement must focus aggressively on corporations and concession holders responsible for large-scale land clearing, rather than disproportionately targeting smallholders and customary farmers who rely on controlled, traditional burning on small plots for subsistence.
Coordinating Political and Security Affairs Minister Dudung Abdurachman noted that President Prabowo Subianto instructed all relevant ministries and agencies to accelerate fire-suppression operations without passively waiting for rain. The policy direction is sound; the execution must now follow.
Decisive progress requires moving firmly along that path, rather than denying the reality that Indonesia needs all the support it can rally to extinguish these blazes once and for all. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
