Almost every day for months, Indonesian schoolteacher Natanael Undas has gazed up at smoke-filled skies in apocalyptic shades of yellow and orange.“It looks like Mars, like we’re living on another planet,” said Undas, whose home in central Kalimantan province is at the heart of devastating wildfires generating toxic smog in Indonesia and across Southeast Asia.Although his family keeps the windows shut at all times, the noxious smoke penetrates the house anyway, sending Undas’ 2-year-old daughter into constant sneezing fits amid a spike in respiratory illnesses in haze-affected regions.Wildfires are nothing new in Indonesia, whose forests and peatlands are set ablaze each year as family and commercial farms clear land using traditional “slash and burn” methods.
But the fires this year are far worse than usual, said Undas, who has been documenting Indonesia’s air quality on Instagram since 2014, as heat and drought aggravated by a “super” El Niño weather pattern make this the country’s worst fire season in over a decade.00:36Wildfire smoke covers Indonesia skies in orange haze00:0000:00The unrelenting haze from the fires has affected millions of people in the region since they started in July, closing schools in multiple countries and spurring arguments about who is to blame.
Indonesian protesters have accused their government of insufficient action, while other countries are threatening prosecution.On Wednesday, hundreds of Indonesian students and members of civil society groups protested in the capital, Jakarta, and other cities against the policies of President Prabowo Subianto, including his resistance to declaring the fires a national disaster.“We want transparent and independent investigations about these wildfires,” protester Natasha Ruvantina told NBC News.
“And also, we want a long-term prevention strategy.”The Indonesian government said in a statement Wednesday that it recognized the students’ concerns, adding that it was pr...