ASEAN Leaders Can Act to Reduce Fires and Haze

A briefing by the World Resources Institute (WRI) calling for ASEAN leadership to address recurring fires and haze, using high-resolution satellite data from Riau Province to highlight the scale of illegal burning on peatlands and within company concessions.

• In a study area of 2.2 million hectares in Riau Province during the June 2013 crisis, over 1,500 square kilometers of land burned, an area more than twice the size of Singapore. This scale of burning has occurred three times in the previous ten years.
• A significant portion of the fires were illegal, with 72 percent occurring on peatland and some within protected areas, specifically 700 hectares of the 6,000 hectares of Tesso Nilo National Park within the study area. Burning peatland increases greenhouse gas emissions, which may hinder Indonesia's ability to meet its emissions reduction targets.
• Satellite analysis indicated extensive burn scars within company concessions, particularly pulpwood and oil palm concessions. Two concessions showed burn scars exceeding 100 square kilometers each, while 12 others had fires between 10 and 100 square kilometers.
• The NASA MODIS FIRMS system is a reliable and free tool for monitoring fires, with WRI analysis confirming it correctly detected fires 97 percent of the time when compared to high-resolution imagery.

APA

World Resources Institute (2013). ASEAN Leaders Can Act to Reduce Fires and Haze. https://www.wri.org/insights/asean-leaders-can-act-reduce-fires-and-haze

Chicago

World Resources Institute. ASEAN Leaders Can Act to Reduce Fires and Haze. 2013. https://www.wri.org/insights/asean-leaders-can-act-reduce-fires-and-haze.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=ASEAN Leaders Can Act to Reduce Fires and Haze |date=8 October 2013 |url=https://www.wri.org/insights/asean-leaders-can-act-reduce-fires-and-haze |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitute2013asean, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{ASEAN Leaders Can Act to Reduce Fires and Haze}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, year = {2013}, month = oct, url = {https://www.wri.org/insights/asean-leaders-can-act-reduce-fires-and-haze}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }