For months, people in West Kalimantan have lived beneath toxic haze described as thick enough to taste. About 40 million people across Kalimantan and Sumatra have spent two months breathing hazardous smoke from forest and peatland fires.
Indigenous and civil society groups in the province have now filed a class action lawsuit against the government, including President Prabowo Subianto and the governor. They allege that the authorities failed to prevent the fires and are seeking a national disaster declaration that would unlock emergency funds.
The fires began across Kalimantan and Sumatra in August, starting Indonesia’s worst wildfire season in 11 years. The haze has since crossed borders into Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, while Malaysia has declared an emergency in Sarawak.
More than 48,000 hectares of land and forest have burned in West Kalimantan since the start of the year, according to Indonesia’s national disaster management agency. Nearly 900,000 hectares have burned across Indonesia since January.
The health toll is concentrated sharply in the province at the centre of the case. Indonesia’s Health Ministry has recorded more than 175,000 acute respiratory infections so far, including over 116,000 in West Kalimantan. Nearly 28,000 acute respiratory infection patients there were under the age of five.
The Prabowo Subianto administration has not declared a national disaster despite the public health crisis and calls for such a step. The plaintiffs say local resources are overwhelmed.
Glorio Sanen, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, said the history of the fires was central to their case. “This is not a new disaster. This is a disaster that occurs every year. This recurring pattern proves our view that the defendants knew about the potential haze disaster and the risks of disaster from forest and land fires.”
The government has deployed 64 aircraft and 54,000 personnel to fight forest fires in Borneo and Sumatra since August. Around 350 members of the Japanese Self-Defence Forces are providing international aid.
Teddy Indra Wijaya, the Cabinet Secretary, said the territory’s size and the difficult conditions in peatlands created serious obstacles to tackling forest and land fires.
Daniel Sinyor, a spokesman for the disaster mitigation agency for West Kalimantan, said fires burning at varied depths inside peat soils were making suppression harder. Ground teams also faced shrinking or vanishing water sources in fire-hit areas, he said.
The lawsuit accuses the government of negligence in its handling of wildfires ravaging the province. Its request for a national declaration puts the question of emergency funding before the courts, where environmental cases routinely fail.
Whether the court will rule for the residents, or whether the government will declare a national disaster, remains unresolved. For those living under the haze, the immediate burden remains the smoke and the illnesses already recorded.
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