Every year, when Indonesia’s dry season peaks, Southeast Asia inherits the bill. Smoke from burning peatlands — set by palm oil companies and smallholders clearing land the cheap way — drifts northwest from Kalimantan and Sumatra, settling over Malaysian and Singaporean skies as a brownish curtain that grounds flights, empties hotel pools, and sends children indoors. It is a regional tax, paid in coughs and lost tourist bookings, that has never been fully collected.

In 2026, the tab is running higher than usual. El Niño has returned, and it is tracking toward the intensity levels last seen in 2015. Kuching, Malaysia, already ranked as the world’s most polluted major city during peak days this August — a snapshot of how fast conditions deteriorate when a prolonged dry weather pattern meets deliberately lit fires.

The sectors most exposed are tourism and agriculture. Schools in Sarawak and Pontianak suspended classes as air quality entered unhealthy ranges. Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park — one of Java’s flagship eco-tourism destinations — closed entirely, an early casualty of a fire season that typically drags through October. Sumatra’s palm oil and rubber plantations face ash-fall damage at the same time the regional harvest calendar is peaking. Logistics corridors across the Malacca Strait, among the world’s busiest, have begun factoring in visibility disruptions.

Indonesia’s national disaster agency has deployed 48,000 firefighters and 35 aircraft across six priority provinces on a budget of 491 billion rupiah — roughly $27.5 million, the lowest in 15 years. Hotspot detections exceeded 154,000 by mid-August, already surpassing levels from the 2019 season. El Niño is simultaneously disabling cloud seeding, the region’s quick-response tool for artificial rain, because the weather pattern strips the sky of the moisture-laden clouds the technique requires. The U.S. Climate Prediction Center puts an 81% probability on El Niño reaching very strong intensity between October and December.

Indonesian authorities have arrested 72 people suspected of setting fires and opened investigations into four companies. Between January and June 2026, fires already affected 107,465 hectares — a 110% increase over the same period in 2023. The World Bank has estimated that a single bad fire year can erase more than $5 billion in Indonesian economic output; the 2015 season hit $16.1 billion. The structural problem — burning peatland remains the cheapest way to clear land for agriculture — has outlasted every enforcement cycle.

El Niño’s peak intensity is still two months away.

Tags: Indonesia, Malaysia, El Niño, peatland fires, Southeast Asia haze