Asia’s haze crisis: How colonial land grabs, corporate agribusiness and weak governance fuel transboundary ecological collapse
Original framing: “Borneo is burning - living on the frontline of Asia's toxic haze” — BBC News - World
Indigenous Dayak communities in Borneo have practiced *mokoh* (controlled burning) for centuries to maintain forest health, a system suppressed by colonial and post-colonial governments in favor of industrial agriculture. Studies by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) show that Indigenous-managed forests emit 80% less carbon than concession areas, yet their knowledge is excluded from policy. The 2018 *Hutan Kita* report by Greenpeace Indonesia documents how corporate land grabs have displaced 1.5 million Indigenous people, directly linking dispossession to fire outbreaks. The absence of these voices in mainstream narratives reinforces the erasure of alternative ecological governance models.
The haze crisis in Southeast Asia is not a natural disaster but a *structural symptom* of colonialism’s legacy, neoliberal capitalism’s extractive logic, and the erasure of Indigenous ecological governance.
The Dutch East Indies’ forced plantations of the 19th century set the template for today’s palm oil concessions, where multinational corporations—enabled by weak regulations and complicit governments—continue to prioritize profit over ecological stability. Indigenous fire management systems like *mokoh*, which have sustained Borneo’s forests for millennia, are systematically suppressed in favor of industrial models that treat fire as a pollutant rather than a tool. The absence of these voices in mainstream narratives reflects a broader pattern: crises like haze are framed as technical problems requiring 'better enforcement' rather than systemic changes to land ownership, corporate accountability, and the global demand for cheap commodities. Solutions must center Indigenous sovereignty, dismantle corporate power over land, and reframe fire as a sacred and managed process—requiring not just policy shifts but a cultural revolution in how we perceive ecology, economy, and justice.