Burning land is cheap, and the smoke bill goes to someone else

Most fire coverage counts hectares and air quality readings. Ronny P Sasmita, a senior analyst at the Indonesia Strategic and Economics Action Institution, asks a money question instead. Burning is still the cheapest way to clear land, he writes for Al Jazeera, and it stays cheap where enforcement is weak and the other methods cost more. The full price of the smoke never reaches the person who lights the fire. Economists call that an externality: a cost created by one decision but paid by people who had no say in it.

The bill lands on households. Sasmita counts illness, lost working days, closed schools and damaged forest and peat, and the smoke does not stop at the border, so Malaysians and Singaporeans carry a share too. Those costs, he writes, are rarely borne in full by whoever gains from the clearing. That is why the fires return each dry season even after a terrible year. Nothing in the arithmetic of clearing land has changed.

His proposals try to change that arithmetic. Governments should publish comparable figures on burned area, who holds which concession, and what enforcement actually happened, then set penalties on proof, with heavier consequences for repeat burning. Small farmers need the alternatives to be affordable, which means machinery, technical help, credit and somewhere to sell, not only a ban. He also wants peatland restoration paid for before the dry season rather than during it, and an ASEAN scorecard tied to the bloc's 2030 haze-free goal, tracking hotspots, response times, enforcement and how many people are breathing dangerous air. The region already has a Haze-Free Roadmap and a 1.5 billion dollar investment framework meant to raise money by 2030. One caution runs through the piece: satellite hotspots show where land burned, not who lit it, so penalties need evidence rather than suspicion.

Why it matters

If you farm a few hectares, the question is whether the machinery and credit arrive before the next ban does, because a rule on its own shifts the cost of not burning onto you. If you live downwind, watch whether anyone in Jakarta or ASEAN starts publishing concession names and enforcement results, since an accountability system nobody can see is one nobody can check. The money behind the regional roadmap is only meant to be in place by 2030, which is four more dry seasons from now.