JAKARTA — As choking blankets of haze routinely engulf regions across Kalimantan and Sumatra during dry seasons, the legal mechanisms meant to hold polluters accountable are facing profound scrutiny. Experts, legal scholars, and environmental organizations warn that Indonesia’s enforcement of forest and land fire (kebakaran hutan dan lahan or karhutla) regulations remains fundamentally flawed. Rather than prioritizing comprehensive ecological restoration and justice for affected local communities, state lawsuits against corporate actors often prioritize revenue generation for the state, leaving systemic scars unaddressed and victims uncompensated. These pressing concerns took center stage during a high-level discussion on forest fire governance hosted in Jakarta by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM). Legal authorities and civil society watchdogs mapped out how systemic policy loopholes, corporate impunity, and a state-centric focus on non-tax state revenue (Penerimaan Negara Bukan Pajak or PNBP) continue to undermine genuine environmental justice in Indonesia. Main Facts: The Structural Flaws in Environmental Litigation The core critique of Indonesia’s current approach to karhutla litigation is its narrow scope. According to legal experts, state lawsuits against companies linked to environmental destruction treat burned lands primarily as a source of budgetary income rather than a devastated ecosystem requiring complex biological healing. Professor Andri Gunawan Wibisana, a professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Indonesia, pointed out that current enforcement mechanisms focus almost exclusively on physical damage within burnt concession areas. The profound secondary impacts—such as public health crises, economic paralysis, and disruptions to local livelihoods caused by thick smog—rarely receive proportional judicial attention. "When the government files a lawsuit, our assumption is that all the money recovered will be funneled directly into restoration," Professor Wibisana explained during the Komnas HAM forum. "Instead, the primary goal of these environmental lawsuits has become the collection of PNBP. The money flows into state coffers, and the case is closed." Furthermore, legal frameworks fail to distinguish adequately between two distinct types of losses: Ecological damage localized to the burnt property. Interim and external losses, such as respiratory illnesses, ruined local commerce, and property damage experienced by residents living miles away from the ignition points. While the state and environmental organizations hold the legal standing to sue for collective environmental damage, individual citizens bearing personal losses must navigate separate, often prohibitive legal channels to claim compensation. Consequently, traditional state lawsuits do not automatically translate into relief for affected communities. Chronology: A Season of Smoke and Escalating Hotspots The urgency of reforming these legal frameworks is underscored by recent data tracking corporate compliance and environmental degradation. The timeline of the 2026 fire season highlights a continuous, troubling presence of hotspots within commercial concessions, raising questions about the responsiveness of enforcement agencies. January – March 2026: Environmental watchdogs, including the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI), began detecting high-confidence hotspots within hundreds of corporate concessions. By March, WALHI identified active hotspots across 15 major commercial entities, comprising five oil palm plantations, five timber utilization permit holders (PBPH), and five mining operations. August 2026: Severe forest and land fires intensified across parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan. Thick, toxic haze drifted across provincial borders, blanketing major urban centers like Palembang and severely compromising regional air quality. September 2026: Hotspot proliferation accelerated dramatically. WALHI’s monitoring recorded approximately 200 hotspots distributed across 293 PBPH concessions and 561 Business Usage Rights (Hak Guna Usaha or HGU) operating outside forest zones. In total, these hotspots clustered across 854 active corporate concessions. October 13, 2026: Experts, academics, and NGOs convened at the Komnas HAM office in Jakarta to dissect the systemic failures of karhutla enforcement, highlighting the stark disparity between corporate impunity and the aggressive targeting of indigenous populations. Late October 2026: Legal controversies deepened following the criminalization of traditional practices. Notably, two indigenous Dayak Maanyan farmers in Hayaping Village, East Barito Regency, Central Kalimantan, were designated as suspects in karhutla investigations, sparking widespread public criticism. Supporting Data: Disparities in Enforcement and Land Allocation Data compiled by civil society organizations such as the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL) and WALHI reveal profound structural imbalances in how Indonesia allocates land and applies penal codes. The Land Control Imbalance According to ICEL’s spatial analysis, the structural distribution of land and forest access heavily favors large corporations at the expense of local communities: Approximately 37.6 million hectares of forest areas are currently encumbered by commercial operating permits held by corporations. In stark contrast, local and indigenous communities have secured access to only 5 to 6 million hectares through social forestry (perhutanan sosial) schemes. The Enforcement Gap: Corporations vs. Individuals An analysis of court registries and enforcement actions between 2019 and 2024 demonstrates a heavy institutional bias toward prosecuting individual actors—often smallholders or traditional farmers—while large enterprises largely evade criminal accountability under key environmental and forestry statutes: UU PPLH (Environmental Protection and Management Law): Out of 22 registered cases, 18 targeted individuals, while only 4 targeted corporations. Forestry Law: Across 13 investigated cases, 100% of defendants were individuals; zero corporations faced criminal charges under this statute. UU P3H (Forest Destruction Prevention and Eradication Law): Out of 60 total defendants across relevant actions, 54 were individuals and only 6 were corporate entities. Conservation Law: A staggering 122 individuals were prosecuted, with zero corporate involvement recorded. This systemic disparity highlights what legal analysts term a "territorialistic" state approach: the government aggressively polices who is permitted to occupy forest spaces, criminalizing unauthorized community activities while moving at a sluggish pace to penalize corporate license holders whose operations spawn massive ecological disasters. Official Responses and Expert Perspectives Stakeholders from academia, legal advocacy groups, and human rights bodies have outlined several critical interventions necessary to overhaul Indonesia’s environmental jurisprudence. 1. The Need for a Sophisticated Restoration Framework Professor Wibisana emphasized that Indonesia’s regulatory system lacks a clear, cohesive architecture for ecological healing. Current laws recognize administrative sanctions, civil lawsuits, and criminal penalties, but these mechanisms operate in silos without coordinated oversight. This leads to a chaotic overlap where companies may face simultaneous, contradictory demands that fail to guarantee actual land recovery. By contrast, mature legal frameworks like those in the United States incorporate nuanced recovery models: Primary Restoration: Actions designed to return damaged natural resources directly to their baseline state. Interim Losses (Interim Loss): Accounting for the continuous loss of ecosystem services while recovery is underway. For peatlands, which can take decades or over a century to heal, interim losses are massive. Compensatory Restoration (Compensatory Restoration): Requiring companies to rehabilitate areas larger than the original damaged footprint (e.g., restoring 200 hectares if 100 hectares were destroyed) to offset the ecological deficit suffered during the decades-long healing process. 2. Enforcing Strict Liability and Addressing Peatland Canalization Legal experts underscore the applicability of strict liability (strict liability) in fire cases, particularly on carbon-rich peatlands. Commercial activities, particularly palm oil and industrial timber plantations, frequently drain peat ecosystems by digging extensive canal networks to lower the water table. This artificial drying transforms naturally waterlogged, fire-resistant peat into tinderboxes. Under civil principles, once a concession burns after being systematically drained, liability should attach regardless of whether direct proof exists of an employee intentionally striking a match. "In the context of civil law, we need to look at whether the land is burned or simply catches fire—frankly speaking, it matters less," Wibisana argued. "The danger is that companies carry out these activities on peatlands by intentionally draining them, effectively preparing the fuel." 3. Structural Governance and Regulatory Harmonization Adam Putra Firdaus, Head of the Forestry and Biodiversity Division at ICEL, stressed that addressing karhutla requires tracing the crisis back to its root causes in forestry governance and regulatory incoherence. A prime example is the fundamental conflict between environmental and forestry laws: The Environmental Protection and Management Law (UU PPLH) treats permits as preventive instruments designed to measure impacts, mandate mitigation, and enforce strict liability and robust restoration guidelines. (The word "recovery/restoration" appears 60 to 70 times). The Forestry Law, conversely, treats permits primarily as tools for spatial allocation, with protection and restoration protocols mentioned sparingly (only about three times). ICEL contends that ongoing legislative efforts to revise the Forestry Law must move beyond technical tweaks to fundamentally reshape forest governance, embedding mandatory corporate accountability and robust community rights into the legal text. 4. Demanding Transparency and Human Rights Protections Teo Reffelsen, Manager of Law and Executive Advocacy at WALHI, criticized the government’s sluggish pace in prosecuting corporate wrongdoers. Despite hundreds of hotspots flagged within active concessions throughout 2026, enforcement remains reactive and weak. WALHI has formally called upon Komnas HAM to: Pressure relevant ministries to aggressively pursue civil lawsuits against negligent corporations. Ensure transparency regarding companies currently designated as criminal suspects, upholding the rights of affected publics to access justice and information. Monitor human rights violations stemming from misdirected law enforcement, pointing to cases like the criminalization of two Dayak Maanyan indigenous farmers in Central Kalimantan, who became scapegoats while corporate polluters retained their operating licenses. Implications: The Path Forward for Environmental Justice The ongoing debate over karhutla enforcement signals a critical crossroads for Indonesian environmental policy. If the state continues to treat ecological devastation as a transactional revenue stream rather than an urgent mandate for biological and social restoration, the vicious cycle of toxic haze, public health degradation, and climate acceleration will persist. True reform demands a paradigm shift: Harmonizing Regulations: Aligning forestry laws with the more progressive, prevention-oriented standards of environmental protection statutes. Targeting Corporate Negligence: Shifting enforcement priorities away from vulnerable smallholders and indigenous guardians toward the corporate license holders whose structural land management practices—such as peat canalization—create the conditions for catastrophic fires. Redefining Litigation Goals: Transitioning civil lawsuits away from simple bureaucratic revenue collection (PNBP) toward comprehensive, science-backed ecological restoration plans that factor in interim ecosystem losses and provide direct restitution to impacted populations. Without these foundational structural changes, Indonesia’s legal frameworks will remain ill-equipped to heal its ravaged landscapes, leaving both its unique ecosystems and its most vulnerable citizens exposed to the next wave of smoke. 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