Guide

Karhutla: oil palm without fire, and how to help the forest

Updated 30 October 2026. Figures carry the date of their source. Also in Bahasa Indonesia.

Karhutla is short for kebakaran hutan dan lahan, forest and land fires: the name Indonesia gives the dry-season fires of Sumatra and Kalimantan. Most are lit by people clearing land. They are a crime, they poison the air of four countries, and they are not needed: palm can be planted without fire, and peat that stays wet does not burn. In 2026, an El Niño year, the smoke closed schools in West Kalimantan and Sarawak and pushed Singapore's air into the unhealthy range.

Where the fires come from

Most fires are lit by people, to clear land or to stake a claim to it. CIFOR's account of the 2015 fires lists who lights them: smallholders opening a few hectares for crops, companies preparing plantations, migrants and speculators moving into land that new roads have opened, and parties to land disputes. Whoever lights it, the smoke is breathed by everyone downwind.

Oil palm is part of the picture, not all of it. Satellite data from 2015 put about one fire in five inside an oil palm concession, and CIFOR cautions that even that is tangled: communities live inside concessions, and fires lit outside spread in. In 2026 the largest burned areas were in West Kalimantan, South Papua and East Nusa Tenggara, and the officials who spoke for the government said most fires came from human pressure on land, deliberate or careless.

Why peat turns a fire into haze

Much of the lowland that burns in Sumatra and Kalimantan is peat: soil built from partly decayed vegetation in coastal wetlands. Wet and intact, it barely burns. Cleared and drained for planting, it dries out and becomes fuel, and a peat fire burns down into the ground, where it can smoulder for days or weeks out of reach of water bombing. Often only the heavy rain of the wet season puts it out, and until then the smoke goes wherever the wind takes it. Auriga Nusantara counted about 40,000 hectares of burned peat in the 2026 season.

The 2026 season

The government's SiPongi monitor counted more than 202,000 hectares burned between January and July 2026, in 36 provinces, the largest share in West Kalimantan at about 38,000 hectares. Hotspots rose from 110 in January to 11,228 by 20 September. Schools in Sarawak's Kuching, Padawan, Serian and Samarahan closed on 20 and 21 August; Pontianak moved its classes online from 24 August. On 4 September Singapore's 24-hour PSI in the central region reached 107, unhealthy, and smoke was reported over Brunei and parts of the Philippines.

By early September the Ministry of Health had recorded 113,336 cases of acute respiratory infection in seven provinces, and the research group Celios put the economic and health cost of January to August at Rp39 trillion to Rp123 trillion. The season is still smaller than 2015, when 2.6 million hectares burned between June and October at a cost to Indonesia of at least US$16.1 billion, but some climatologists expected the 2026 El Niño to be stronger than that one.

What a fire costs

The law

Clearing land by fire is a crime. The Plantations Law (UU 39/2014, Article 56) forbids every plantation business to open or work land by burning, and requires it to keep the systems and equipment to fight fire on its land. The penalty under Article 108 is up to ten years in prison and a fine, raised by a third when the offender is a company.

The 2026 season tested it. By mid-September the police had 219 cases and 162 suspects and were investigating 95 corporations; the Forestry Ministry had frozen the permits of 26 companies, and the Environment Ministry had sealed the concessions of 25.

The certificate

The RSPO, the voluntary certification much of the export trade asks for, keeps a complete ban on fire in certified units, deliberate or accidental, and follows up every satellite hotspot detected on a member's concession. A burn is a breach of the standard, not a footnote to it.

The smoke

The haze settles on the estate too. Interviews with women day labourers on West Kalimantan plantations, published in October 2026, found masks handed out only at the start of the season; day labourers, about 70 percent of plantation workers, get no paid sick leave.

Palm without fire

Planting without fire is ordinary practice, not a sacrifice. In zero-burning clearing the old palms and felled vegetation are chipped or shredded, stacked in rows between the planting lines and left to rot where they lie, so the nutrients go back into the soil instead of into the sky. SALCRA, the Sarawak government's plantation agency, clears both new land and old palm this way.

It takes patience rather than money. A 2005 study of pulverised palm biomass found more than half of it decomposed within 24 weeks and 80 percent within 56. The same study warns that coarse heaps can breed rhinoceros beetles, which is why growers chip the wood fine and spread it thin.

Keep the peat wet

Peat that stays wet does not burn. The tool is the canal block, sekat kanal: a small dam across a drainage channel that holds water in the peat so the ground does not dry into fuel, and that gives fire crews water to draw on when a fire does start. In June 2026 the Environment Ministry counted 45,430 of them in seven fire-prone provinces, against an estimated need of 538,568, and the minister's aim was to bring fires down to near zero.

How to help

Never burn to clear, and never pay someone else to. Chop, chip and let it rot; the land is ready a season later and nobody downwind pays for it.
Report a fire while it is small. Tell the village fire group, the local disaster agency (BPBD) or the forest fire brigade, Manggala Agni. The government's SiPongi map shows hotspots to anyone.
Back the village fire crews. Masyarakat Peduli Api, the volunteer fire groups of fire-prone villages, watch for and put out fires before they spread. The Environment Ministry calls them strategic partners; their members say they are short of equipment and money.
Keep forest standing and plant it back on peat, slopes and riverbanks, where palm does worst and fire does most harm.
Buy palm oil certified fire-free. The RSPO bans fire outright on certified land.

Questions people ask

What does karhutla stand for?: Kebakaran hutan dan lahan: forest and land fires. The lahan is deliberate, because much of what burns each year is not standing forest but cleared land, scrub and drained peat.
Is it legal to burn land to plant oil palm?: No. Article 56 of the Plantations Law forbids every plantation business to clear or work land by fire, with up to ten years in prison.
How can palm be planted without burning?: By zero-burning clearing: fell, chip or shred, and leave the wood in rows to rot back into the soil. It is standard practice on large estates and takes a season, not a fortune.
Why does Indonesia's haze reach Malaysia and Singapore?: The smoke goes where the dry-season wind takes it. In 2026 it crossed from West Kalimantan into Sarawak and Brunei and drifted from Sumatra toward the Strait of Malacca, which is why the neighbours close schools and issue warnings for fires they did not light.

In the game

Sawit Simulator lets you burn, because real growers face that choice, and then makes you pay for it. A burn reaches into standing forest far more readily than it should, more so in an El Niño year, and enough of them turn every fire on the estate into a wildfire under a haze that cuts sunlight and the fruit price. The first wildfire opens a police investigation by itself, and a second one during it is an arrest; an honest district can ban the estate for 90 days the same day. Burn three blocks at once and a haze season trims every harvest for about two months, and enough ash drives the wildlife, the golden capybara with it, off the estate.

The game rewards the other way. Chop by hand and keep the forest standing: the Palm Certificate needs five years without a match. Plant forest back and the district's attention falls sharply, and forest cover softens the blow when Europe's deforestation rules bite. An estate that grows back more forest than palm earns the Reboisasi ending, and one that burned once and then grew two hectares back can still earn Redemption. What is simplified: the map has no peat yet, so nothing smoulders underground; the haze hangs over one district rather than four countries; and the people breathing the smoke appear only in the news, where the schools close.

Play in the browser About Sawit Simulator Glossary

Sources

CIFOR Forests News, Clearing the smoke: the causes and consequences of Indonesia's fires, 30 October 2015. https://www.forestsnews.org/37016/clearing-the-smoke-the-causes-and-consequences-of-indonesias-fires
Mongabay Indonesia, Kebakaran hutan bahayakan kesehatan masyarakat dan rugikan ekonomi, 26 September 2026 (SiPongi, Auriga, Ministry of Health, Celios and enforcement figures). In Indonesian. https://mongabay.co.id/2026/09/26/kebakaran-hutan-bahayakan-kesehatan-masyarakat-dan-rugikan-ekonomi/
Katadata, Karhutla 2026 meluas, akankah krisis asap Asia 2015 terulang?, 20 August 2026. In Indonesian. https://katadata.co.id/ekonomi-hijau/investasi-hijau/6a86f6ec8f281/karhutla-2026-meluas-akankah-krisis-asap-asia-2015-terulang
Katadata, Asap kebakaran hutan RI menyebar ke 4 negara tetangga, Brunei hingga Filipina, 2 September 2026. In Indonesian. https://katadata.co.id/berita/nasional/6a97bc1f252c7/asap-kebakaran-hutan-ri-menyebar-ke-4-negara-tetangga-brunei-hingga-filipina
Investortrust, Gegara asap karhutla RI, kualitas udara Singapura masuk kategori tidak sehat, 4 September 2026 (NEA readings). In Indonesian. https://investortrust.id/international/115206/gegara-asap-karhutla-ri-kualitas-udara-singapura-masuk-kategori-tidak-sehat
Hukumonline, Hukumnya membakar hutan untuk membuka lahan, updated 11 June 2026 (UU 39/2014 Articles 56 and 108). In Indonesian. https://www.hukumonline.com/klinik/a/hukumnya-membakar-hutan-untuk-membuka-lahan-lt56a70dd6773cd/
SALCRA, Planting and replanting technique (zero burning). https://www.salcra.gov.my/en/security/item/113-planting-replanting-technique
Ooi and Heriansyah, Palm pulverization in sustainable oil palm replanting, Plant Production Science 8(3), 2005. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pps/8/3/8_3_345/_article/-char/en
Katadata, Jutaan hektare gambut rusak, RI kekurangan 493 ribu sekat kanal cegah kebakaran, 19 June 2026. In Indonesian. https://katadata.co.id/ekonomi-hijau/investasi-hijau/6a34d995cf378/jutaan-hektare-gambut-rusak-ri-kekurangan-493-ribu-sekat-kanal-cegah-kebakaran
RSPO, RSPO hotspot monitoring, 12 September 2019. https://rspo.org/rspo-hotspot-monitoring/
The Conversation Indonesia, Terpaksa nyawit di tengah karhutla, buruh perempuan menanggung beban berlapis, 28 October 2026. In Indonesian. https://theconversation.com/terpaksa-nyawit-di-tengah-karhutla-buruh-perempuan-menanggung-beban-berlapis-294942