Sriwati can no longer drink from the Kapuas River. After three months without rain, the shopkeeper and mother of three watches from her village of Penyeladi on Borneo as Indonesia's longest river dwindles to a shallow stream. Its muddy water is too contaminated for drinking or washing rice. More than 3 million people depend on the river. Sriwati now buys water, putting further pressure on her already tight household budget.
“The water shortage affects us, especially when it comes to drinking water,” Sriwati told The Associated Press from her concrete home. “I’m worried about this prolonged dry spell. It’s reached the point where just going about our daily activities — going anywhere at all — has become difficult.”
Her struggle is not isolated. It reflects the human cost of climate forces colliding with decades of environmental degradation, a crisis in which the poorest bear the weight of both natural disasters and policy failures.
The Perfect Storm: El Niño Meets Land Destruction
This year’s super El Niño is a natural climate cycle involving warming ocean temperatures. It’s expected to bring extreme drought, heat waves, flooding and other disruptions worldwide. Meteorologists forecast that it could exceed a record El Niño that began in 1997 — 29 years ago — and helped trigger billions of dollars in damage from heat waves, floods, droughts, tornadoes and wildfires.
But Indonesia’s crisis isn’t just about nature. Experts say decades of damage to Borneo’s ecologically vital peatlands have made the disaster worse. About 60% of peatland areas in Kalimantan, the Indonesia-controlled part of Borneo, have been drained for palm oil plantations and pulp and paper concessions, according to Amanda Hurowitz, a senior director at international environmental organization Mighty Earth.
“That means the water is not where it should be,” Hurowitz explained. “There are all these canals, and because the canals are blocked, the water table goes low. Because it’s so dry, the water has just disappeared.” Peatlands are ancient wetlands critical for carbon storage, water regulation and pollution control. Their destruction doesn’t just affect local water supplies; it intensifies human-caused climate change itself.
Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry acknowledged the negative impact of drained peatlands in a written statement, but argued that evidence should determine specific causes and liabilities, rather than automatically attributing them to El Niño or businesses. The ministry said the government aims to prevent further peatland degradation through ecosystem restoration and strict enforcement of concession holders’ obligations. “The government’s long-term agenda focuses on preserving and restoring peatland hydrological functions, improving landscape and water management, strengthening fire prevention, and ensuring that all parties managing land fulfill their responsibilities,” it said.
When Working People Lose Their Livelihoods
The drought has devastated people who depend on the river to survive. Boaters, fishers and others who rely on the Kapuas face water levels too low for fishing or travel. Where boats can still operate, thick haze cuts visibility and makes travel dangerous. Fisherman Abiansah, 39, has watched his work become increasingly impossible.
Large metal barges that usually carry oil palm tree kernels downriver for processing have run aground on sand. No one has yet measured the national economic impact — a telling sign of how quickly this crisis has developed.
Fires have compounded the catastrophe. Hot, dry El Niño conditions and degraded peatlands have fueled fires across Borneo. Dried peat is highly flammable, and fires can spread underground, making them difficult to extinguish and likely to recur, according to the Borneo Nature Foundation. Dwindling water supplies have slowed firefighting efforts. Japan has sent firefighting assistance to the island.
In Sungai Malaya village in West Kalimantan, fires have burned for more than a month. Residents stay tense around the clock because fires have sometimes worsened suddenly at night. The fires destroyed vacant lots where Rumsiyeh, a 45-year-old mother of five, and her husband gathered ferns to sell at the market. “Everything’s gone. We can’t make a living anymore,” she said.
Indonesia’s Forestry Ministry recorded more than 202,000 hectares (499,000 acres) of burned land between January and July — an area almost three times the size of Singapore. Toxic, thick haze blanketing the sky has traveled more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) to the Philippines and exceeded Malaysia’s emergency-level air-pollution threshold. Authorities declared an emergency in a town in Sarawak state on Borneo.
The Road Forward: Whose Responsibility?
The ministry said the government is shifting its forest and land fire policy toward prevention. Its plans include stronger cross-sectoral coordination, enforcement against burning-based land clearing, expanded patrols and early-detection systems, risk-based monitoring, peatland restoration, and requirements for permit holders and communities to take responsibility for fire control. “Ultimately, controlling forest and land fires is not the task of a single ministry or institution,” the ministry acknowledged. “Prevention requires collaborative effort.”
That framing points to the real issue: decades of permits and concessions granted to corporations to drain and exploit peatlands created the conditions for this crisis. Now ordinary people — shopkeepers, fishers, mothers, fathers — are paying through water poverty, lost livelihoods and toxic air.
Private and government water donations have brought some relief in Penyeladi, but residents remain worried about how long the dry spell will last and what comes next.
Why This Matters:
This crisis shows that climate impacts don’t fall equally. Wealthy nations and corporations can adapt; poor communities in Indonesia face collapse. Peatland degradation wasn’t inevitable. It followed policy choices by governments and corporations that prioritized short-term extraction over long-term ecological stability and human welfare. When people destroy the landscape’s ability to store water and regulate its own climate, drought in bad years is only part of the problem: every climate disruption that follows grows worse. The 3 million people depending on the Kapuas, the boaters now stranded, and the mothers who can’t earn enough to feed their families are living proof that environmental regulation and peatland restoration aren’t luxuries. They’re the difference between survival and destitution.