InfoSAWIT, JAKARTA – Forest and land fires are returning to the headlines even before the 2026 dry season reaches its peak. As hotspots increase across Sumatra and Kalimantan, an old question is once again emerging: who should ultimately be held responsible when fires spread?
The pattern is familiar. A small hotspot appears on a monitoring screen, smoke rises into the sky and the incident quickly develops into a much larger environmental and public-health issue.
During severe dry seasons, Sumatra and Kalimantan repeatedly face the same threat. Once fires begin spreading, attention often shifts rapidly toward identifying a party to blame. But this approach can overlook the complexity of how forest and land fires actually start and spread.
Data as of August 2026 illustrate the scale of the challenge, with more than 2,900 hotspots detected across Sumatra and Kalimantan. Sumatra accounted for more than 1,000 hotspots, while Kalimantan recorded an even larger number spread across almost all of its provinces.
Palm Oil Often Becomes the First Suspect
In recent years, oil palm plantations have frequently become the first target of public suspicion whenever haze appears.
That does not mean plantation companies should be exempt from accountability. Companies proven to have deliberately used fire for land clearing or failed to meet their prevention obligations must face firm legal action.
But law enforcement can also lose its meaning if complex fire incidents are reduced to a single assumption.
A company whose concession has burned is not necessarily the party that started the fire.
Conversely, the fact that a fire originated outside a concession does not automatically absolve a company if it is proven that its prevention system was inadequate or that its mitigation obligations were ignored.
This is why fire management requires not only firmness but also precision.
Authorities need to distinguish between the party that started a fire, the party that failed to prevent its spread, and the party whose land became affected by a fire originating elsewhere.
Prevention Must Be Measured, Not Assumed
Companies should be assessed based on the overall effectiveness of their fire-prevention systems.
Such systems include firefighting teams, water reservoirs, firefighting equipment, early-warning mechanisms and groundwater management, particularly in peatland areas.
For oil palm plantations, no-burning land-clearing practices should be a basic operational standard. Fire can destroy productive trees, damage infrastructure, degrade soil quality and eliminate production potential for years, in addition to creating serious legal risks.
The plantation sector itself is not uniform. Some companies comply with regulations, others may be negligent, while some could potentially violate the law.
The legal system therefore needs to distinguish among them.
Fire Risks Extend Beyond Plantation Concessions
The wider fire landscape is also far more complex than corporate concessions alone.
Plantation areas are often surrounded by villages, open land, agricultural areas, forest zones and locations with unclear tenure. Some areas may have long been exposed to land clearing practices involving fire.
Fires can originate in spaces where monitoring systems are weaker than those maintained by formal businesses. Focusing almost entirely on corporations while leaving open areas inadequately monitored risks addressing the symptoms without dealing with the source.
Hotspots Are Early-Warning Signals, Not Proof of Guilt
Another challenge lies in how hotspot data are interpreted.
Satellite-based hotspot monitoring is an important early-warning tool, but a hotspot does not identify a perpetrator. Nor does it constitute conclusive proof of the cause of a fire.
Every thermal signal still requires verification.
A hotspot or fire location should therefore be treated as the starting point for investigation rather than immediate proof that a particular land manager is responsible.
Ground verification and spatial analysis remain essential to determine the direction and pattern of fire movement.
The key questions should not simply be where the fire was found, but also where it came from, who controlled the affected landscape, and what actions were taken before, during and after the fire.
Those questions can determine whether a case involves deliberate burning, negligence, or the spread of fire from another area.
Indonesia Needs Stronger Prevention
Indonesia already has regulations governing open burning, prevention obligations, responsibilities of concession holders, criminal penalties and administrative sanctions.
The challenge is ensuring that those rules are applied based on verified conditions on the ground.
Many fire-prone areas lie outside corporate boundaries, including villages dependent on low-cost land clearing, degraded peatlands, unmanaged open areas and border zones where fires can spread easily.
Prevention therefore needs to extend beyond corporate concessions.
A stronger policy approach should prohibit burning-based land clearing while providing communities with practical support and alternatives for mechanical, no-burn land preparation.
At the same time, the palm oil industry must continue to face strict oversight.
Companies that violate the law should be sanctioned without compromise. Businesses with inadequate prevention systems should remain accountable when negligence is proven.
However, companies that demonstrate strong preparedness, actively fight fires and become victims of fires spreading from outside their concessions should also receive fair treatment under the law.
Ultimately, Indonesia will only break the recurring cycle of forest fires and haze through a combination of systematic prevention and precise law enforcement based on verified facts.
The goal should not merely be to measure how much land has burned each year, but to understand why fires continue to occur and address the conditions that allow them to spread.
Otherwise, every dry season will bring the same questions—and Indonesia will remain trapped in the same cycle of fire and haze. (T2)
By: Edi Suhardi / Sustainability Analyst
Disclaimer: This article represents the personal opinion of the author and is entirely the author’s responsibility. It does not represent the views of InfoSAWIT.
