The fires in Indonesia that are creating hellish amounts of toxic smoke are also doing their job: clearing land. This year they’ve removed about 21,000 square kilometers (8,100 square miles) of forests and peatland, according to the country’s National Space and Aviation Agency (link in Indonesian).
For context, that’s greater than the land area of the US state of New Jersey, or of the nations of Slovenia, Kuwait, or El Salvador.
Set to inexpensively clear land for the palm oil and pulp-and-paper industries, the smoke from the fires have caused respiratory ailments in half a million people in Indonesia, and at least 19 have died (most from breathing in smoke, some from fire-fighting accidents). The fires have also cast a toxic haze over a large part of Southeast Asia, including Singapore and parts of Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. By some calculations the smoke has catapulted Indonesia to the top of the rankings of the world’s worst global warming offenders, just ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held next month in Paris.
The agency used satellite imagery and data collected from June 21 to Oct. 20 to make its calculations. It warned, however, that the final figure was likely to be higher. The fires are still raging, and there’s little hope of rain—delayed by El Nino—extinguishing the flames anytime soon. (Last week the Indonesian Red Cross extended its response period to the haze crisis until January.) And smoke still shrouding the land, it added, makes assessing the situation difficult for many areas.
Here’s the latest look at the first that were burning on Monday afternoon (Nov. 2) in Indonesia, according to Global Forest Watch, which is monitoring the situation in real time:
According to Indonesia’s space and aviation agency, about 6,180 square kilometers (2,390 square miles) of the land burned is peatland—highly toxic when drained and burned—and 15,000 square kilometers (5,790 square miles) is not. The fires have primarily hit Sumatra, Kalimantan, and the Indonesian side of New Guinea, which is considered the next frontier for Indonesia’s palm oil industry.
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