PENYELADI, Indonesia — Three months without rain has left Sriwati, a shopkeeper and mother of three, watching Indonesia’s longest river shrink to a muddy trickle. The Kapuas supplies water to more than 3 million people, but near her home it has receded so dramatically that she now has to buy water—a direct hit to her monthly budget. What began as a natural weather event has exposed the economic cost of decades of environmental damage, which will take far more to repair than government aid can easily provide.
“The water shortage affects us, especially when it comes to drinking water,” Sriwati told The Associated Press from her concrete home. Private and government donations of water have offered temporary relief, but residents remain anxious about what comes next. Sriwati isn’t alone. Across West Kalimantan, the human cost of poor land management keeps mounting.
The Root of the Crisis: Peatland Destruction
Experts point to a combination of this year’s super El Niño and decades of damage to Borneo’s ecologically vital peatlands. Together, they’ve created a severe water crisis. Peatlands—ancient wetlands critical for carbon storage, water regulation, and pollution control—have faced systematic drainage. Amanda Hurowitz, senior director at Mighty Earth, estimates that roughly 60 percent of peatland areas in Kalimantan have been drained for palm oil plantations and pulp and paper concessions. “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.”
This isn’t just an environmental issue; it’s an economic one. Decades of commercial exploitation under government concessions have fundamentally changed the landscape’s ability to hold water. The private sector pursued short-term profits while the resource base deteriorated. Now taxpayers and ordinary citizens carry the cost.
Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry acknowledged in a written statement that drained peatlands have a negative impact. It cautioned, though, that evidence should determine specific causes and liabilities, rather than having them “automatically attributed to El Niño or businesses.” The ministry says it aims to prevent further peatland degradation through ecosystem restoration and strict enforcement of concession holders’ obligations. Whether those enforcement mechanisms have teeth remains an open question. The government’s long-term agenda focuses on preserving and restoring peatland hydrological functions, improving landscape and water management, strengthening fire prevention, and ensuring all parties managing land fulfill their responsibilities.
Fires, Haze, and Economic Disruption
Hot, dry El Niño conditions, combined with peatland degradation, have unleashed another crisis: fires. The Borneo Nature Foundation says dried peat is highly flammable, and fires can spread underground, making them difficult to extinguish and likely to recur. Dwindling water supplies have slowed firefighting efforts. Japan has sent firefighting assistance to the island, a sign the problem now exceeds Indonesia’s capacity to manage alone.
The numbers are staggering. Indonesia’s Forestry Ministry recorded more than 202,000 hectares of burned land between January and July—almost three times the size of Singapore. Thick, toxic haze blankets the sky. Smoke has traveled more than 800 kilometers to the Philippines and exceeded Malaysia’s emergency-level air-pollution threshold, prompting authorities to declare an emergency in a town in Sarawak state on Borneo.
In Sungai Malya village in West Kalimantan, fires burning for more than a month have wiped out the livelihoods of Rumsiyeh, a 45-year-old mother of five, and her husband. They gathered ferns to sell at the market from vacant lots, but the fires have completely destroyed those areas. “Everything’s gone,” she said. “We can’t make a living anymore.” This is the real-world human cost of regulatory failures that allowed peatland drainage in the first place.
Transportation and Trade Impact
The drought has disrupted work and travel on the Kapuas itself. Boaters, fishers, and others who depend on the river face water levels too low for fishing or travel. Where boats can still operate, thick haze cuts visibility and makes navigation dangerous. Fisherman Abiansah, 39, knows the risks firsthand. Large metal barges that usually carry oil palm tree kernels downriver for processing have run aground on sand. Officials haven’t measured the national economic impact, but when critical transportation infrastructure grinds to a halt, supply chains and commerce can feel the effects quickly.
The government’s Forestry Ministry says it’s shifting forest and land fire policy toward prevention through stronger cross-sectoral coordination, enforcement against burning-based land clearing, expanded patrols, and early-detection systems. The ministry acknowledged that “controlling forest and land fires is not the task of a single ministry or institution” and that “prevention requires collaborative effort.”
Why This Matters:
Borneo’s water crisis shows the true cost of inadequate regulatory oversight and the perverse incentives created when governments grant long-term commercial concessions without enforcing environmental obligations. What began as profitable peatland drainage decades ago now imposes massive costs on ordinary citizens: higher water bills, destroyed livelihoods, disrupted commerce, and international firefighting expenses. The super El Niño is a natural event, but the crisis’s severity stems from man-made degradation that accumulated under government watch. As authorities scramble to restore peatland function and coordinate fire prevention across agencies and nations, the core issue remains: commercial interests were allowed to degrade a critical resource, and now government and private enterprise must bear the costs of restoration. Stable property rights, clear enforcement mechanisms, and long-term stewardship matter far more than short-term extraction.