Forest and land fires (Karhutla) surged sharply in the first quarter of this year. Based on the analysis of the Indicative Burned Area (AIT) model developed by the Sustainable MADANI Foundation since 2019, there was a three-fold increase in the indicative burned area year-on-year (yoy) during the same period (January-April), from 12,952 hectares estimated to have burned in 2023 to 41,982 hectares in 2024.
This significant increase deserves serious attention from all parties, especially the government as a stakeholder with the authority to handle and mitigate forest and land fire disasters in this country.
The accumulated AIT Model for each province has a correlation coefficient value of 97.37% with the SIPONGI (Forest and Land Fire Monitoring System) owned by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK).
The AIT model developed by MADANI attempts to identify hotspot patterns with specific characteristics, thus potentially indicating areas prone to fires. Hotspot data itself has its drawbacks, including the difficulty of distinguishing between forest and land fire hotspots. However, MADANI's AIT model only includes hotspots that cause forest and land fires, resulting in more accurate information.
From AIT MADANI data, it was recorded that 87.5% of AIT or the equivalent of 35 thousand ha is located in the 10 largest provinces, namely, North Sumatra, West Sumatra, North Kalimantan, Central Sulawesi, NTT, Riau Islands, Aceh, West Kalimantan, Riau, and East Kalimantan.
