A new presidential order sets out exactly who is still allowed to burn land

President Prabowo Subianto signed Presidential Instruction 11/2026 on 31 August, with close to 2,000 fires burning across the country and the worst of them in Sumatra and Kalimantan. An instruction is not a law passed by the DPR. It is an order telling ministers and governors what to do, so it takes effect quickly. Writing for Indonesia at Melbourne, Fia Hamid-Walker read the text closely and found it doing more than ordering people to put fires out. It changes who gets to decide which fires are legitimate.

Companies carry the heaviest new duties. A concession holder, meaning a firm licensed to use state land, must now protect its own area plus a buffer of at least five kilometres around it, keep excavators and an emergency crew ready, and answer for fires under strict liability. Strict liability means the company can be punished for a fire on its land whether or not anyone proves it was careless.

Smallholders get permission instead, with conditions attached. Traditional burning, kearifan lokal, stays legal only where the practice is genuinely old and community-based, capped at two hectares per household, for subsistence food crops grown from local seed, with firebreaks cut first. It is banned on peat and within 500 metres of peat, in protected areas and along riverbanks, and banned outright for plantations, mining and any commercial concession. Before burning, a household has to register: the head of household's identity, the coordinates, the area, the seed variety, the planned date, and who will watch the flames.

Hamid-Walker's concern is the checking. The home affairs minister must now inventory regional burning rules, and the coordinating minister for political and security affairs must report to the president within 30 days on which customary rules to amend or cancel. Local knowledge stays legal, but only once the state has verified it.

Why it matters

If you farm a small plot in Sumatra or Kalimantan and clear it with fire, your district's own rule may not survive the review now under way, and burning without registering first could put you on the wrong side of the new one. Find out now where that register sits in your area, because the paperwork asks for GPS coordinates and a planting date, not a quick phone call. The 30-day report is the part to watch, since it decides which local rules survive at all.