74% of Indonesia's Fire Hotspots Are on Company Land

Indonesia burned far less land in the 2026 fire season than in 2015, 2019, or 2023. The official figure for the first half of the year is roughly 107,000 hectares, against 2.6 million hectares in 2015.

That small number hides a problem that did not shrink with it. According to Walhi, 74 percent of hotspots in Kalimantan fall inside corporate concessions. A concentration that large cannot be explained by the weather alone.

The headline figure is itself still disputed. The Ministry of Forestry recorded 107,465 hectares for January to June 2026, while the independent satellite platform MapBiomas Fire counted 178,232 hectares for the same period. That gap has not been explained.

Two Stories in One Fire Season

Compare it against previous years first, so nobody misreads the number.

• 2015 — 2.6 million hectares
• 2019 — 1.6 million hectares
• 2023 — roughly 1 million hectares
• 2026, first half — 107,465 hectares (Ministry of Forestry)

On that measure the decline is real and deserves credit. The peak of the season has not passed, though, and hotspots are still being detected through late September.

• Peaked at 1,988 hotspots on 20 September 2026
• Fell to 948 on 21 September, then 331 on 26 September
• 78 percent of hotspots sit in six priority provinces
• West Kalimantan recorded the highest count, 822 hotspots on 20 August

Those six priority provinces are West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, South Kalimantan, Riau, Jambi, and South Sumatra.

The impact has already moved past being an environmental story. BNPB reports air quality in parts of South Sumatra at moderate to very unhealthy levels, with visibility at seven kilometres or less. Respiratory infections are rising in Pekanbaru, and 21 flights have been delayed.

74 Percent of It Starts on Company Land

This is the part that gets discussed least.

In the first four weeks of March 2026, Walhi counted 11,189 hotspots across Indonesia. Of those, 1,351 sat inside or immediately around the concessions of 15 companies.

• 699 hotspots in palm oil concessions
• 285 hotspots in forest-use permit concessions
• 367 hotspots in mining concessions

In Kalimantan the share is larger still. Walhi puts it at 10,739 hotspots inside oil palm forestry rights, 7,880 inside mining concessions, and 6,905 inside forest-use permit areas.

The fire points are almost always the same ones every year. If it is not in a palm concession, it is in a mining concession. But the government is not brave enough to enforce the law.

Uli Arta Siagian, Walhi's national executive campaign coordinator, wrote that while the season was still running.

This point deserves to be put fairly. Some industry figures argue that a hotspot inside a palm concession does not automatically make that company the cause.

That argument is reasonable, because hotspot data alone cannot establish who lit a fire. What hotspots do show is where fires keep happening.

The Money Exists, the Channel Is Jammed

This is the part most often missing from the coverage.

Finance Minister Purbaya said on 26 August 2026 that the budget for handling the fires is already available, and that all that is left is for BNPB to submit its request. BNPB is said to be holding roughly Rp5 trillion in unused funds.

Meanwhile, Commission IV member of parliament Rajiv demanded that an emergency allocation of Rp290 billion be released immediately, stating the figure had not been disbursed while fires were burning.

This is not a shortage of money. It is money that is not moving.

For context, Walhi notes that the 2026 disaster contingency fund is only Rp4.63 trillion, with BNPB's budget line at Rp491 billion. Weather modification operations alone cost Rp3 trillion in 2019 and Rp1.3 trillion in 2020.

In West Kalimantan, Manggala Agni and the provincial fire task force ran 489 suppression operations between 1 January and 31 March, covering about 1,845 hectares of treated area, while the province's burned area through August reached 38,311 hectares.

Why the Story Kept Disappearing

Now for the part nobody asks: why the fires never made the front page.

The cleanest evidence sits on BNPB's own website. In the same week in early September, its popular-news sidebar ranked three reports of the Mount Anak Krakatau eruption far above its own report on the fires.

• Mount Anak Krakatau activity update — 95,000 views
• Ongoing eruptions at Mount Anak Krakatau — 44,000 views
• Four airports closed over volcanic ash — 32,800 views
• Karhutla situation and handling update — 24,500 views

On its own site, volcanoes outranked the wildfires three to one.

The competition never went away either. The Anak Krakatau eruption closed Soekarno-Hatta airport and four others, and cancelled KRL services. At the same time there was an earthquake in East Nusa Tenggara, an aftershock in Cianjur, and a fire at Paniai market that killed eleven people.

News that closes airports and cancels trains has an urgency that burns out fast. Wildfire needs a long argument to tell, because the argument is about policy and accountability rather than a single dramatic image.

On social media, the criticism was not aimed at the fire. A Drone Emprit analysis covering 1 to 25 August 2026 counted 61.2 percent negative sentiment on X, out of 72,158 mentions across platforms. It peaked on 22 August with 11,954 mentions.

What the public objected to was not the burning. It was the response.

The data dispute even played out in public. On 21 August 2026, at the National Environmental Consultation in Pekanbaru, Environment Minister Moh. Jumhur Hidayat said there were no reports of fire points inside corporate concessions, and Walhi contradicted him in the same forum.

There was even a peaceful demonstration in Kuala Lumpur demanding that Indonesia release the fire data.

Two Numbers, Two Stories

Back to where this started. The 2026 season did burn clearly less land than 2015, 2019, and 2023, and that is real prevention work that should not be waved away.

But the small number does not answer the more important questions. Why 74 percent of hotspots cluster inside corporate concessions, why Rp290 billion is not moving, and why official data differs from independent satellite counts by 70,000 hectares.

None of that can be explained by hot weather. El Nino is genuinely drier than usual, but it does not clear peatland, move budget funds, or change how a hotspot is defined.

Three things are worth watching. Whether that data gap gets an official explanation, whether the budget finally flows, and whether any legal action names a company.

The dry season is still running, and BMKG expects El Nino to reach very strong levels. Readers who want to track this themselves can open the satellite hotspot data from BMKG and SiPongi, then follow developments on Google News.

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