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More than 1.91 million hectares of land in Indonesia were scorched by wildfires between January and the end of September this year, nearly 12 times the size of London, according to forest monitoring group Nusantara Atlas.
The data, released on Monday based on satellite image analysis, show the scale of the fires, which remain uncontrolled and have spread haze across several Southeast Asian countries.
Neighbouring Malaysia has renewed its offer of assistance, but Indonesian officials have rejected calls to declare the fires a national disaster, saying the country remains capable of handling the situation on its own.
According to Nusantara Atlas, the fires spread rapidly after drought began in June, with a strong El Niño phenomenon intensifying dry conditions.
The Indonesian government has yet to release an updated official estimate of the area burned. Authorities previously reported that 202,000 hectares had been affected by the end of July.
Nusantara Atlas founder David Gaveau said satellite analysis had identified 1,916,588 hectares of burned land, adding that the actual damage could be greater.
He said the estimate might be lower than the true figure because the analysis excludes burned areas smaller than 6.25 hectares and uses cautious methods to avoid incorrectly identifying land as burned.
Dense haze this year has also made it difficult to identify some fire-damaged areas clearly in satellite images, raising concerns that the actual extent of the damage may be higher.
Despite these limitations, the group’s data show that the area burned by the end of September was 38% greater than during the same period in 2019.
Indonesia experienced devastating wildfires in 2015, but a direct comparison with this year is not possible because the satellites currently used for monitoring were not operational at that time. Gaveau said this year’s fires could be as severe as those in 2015.
Source : Reuters