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Capturing data…
WED, 21 OCT · 81 ITEMS
Arab News, Jakarta Post, AFP + 3 more · Humanitarian & Biosphere
6 outletsIndonesia's forest and land fires, largely in Kalimantan on Borneo, have burned nearly two million hectares in 2026, producing thick haze that is choking Singapore, Malaysia, and other parts of Southeast Asia. The fires are exacerbated by a and burn deep into carbon-rich peatlands, making them hard to extinguish. Independent monitors such as Nusantara Atlas have recorded over a million wildfire , and the area burned is approaching record levels.
The claim is well-supported by multiple news outlets — AFP, BBC, France 24, Jakarta Post — all citing satellite monitoring data from platforms like Nusantara Atlas. The two-million-hectare figure is an estimate for the first nine months of 2026 and is consistent across reports. The provenance is aggregated/secondary but the underlying data source (satellite monitoring) is reputable and independently verifiable.
This story broke between Oct 19–20, 2026, and is genuinely new — it updates the cumulative burned area as of late 2026, reflecting an ongoing crisis that has been intensifying for months.
We covered an earlier stage of this crisis on Sep 5, 2026, when 61 hotspots were detected near Nusantara and haze spread across Southeast Asia. A subsequent update on Oct 20, 2026 reported that monitors put the burned area at nearly 2 million hectares, essentially the same figure highlighted here.