Info,JAKARTA — Prevention and handling of forest and land fires (karhutla) are considered necessary to be done through early detection using artificial intelligence (AI). Especially, karhutla has become the main threat to achieving the FOLU Net Sink 2030 target.
Researchers and members of the Regional Fire Management Resource Center Southeast Asia (RFMRC-SEA) from IPB University, Robi Deslia Waldi, stated that the forestry sector plays a major role in achieving Indonesia’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction. The government targets this sector to reach a condition where it absorbs more emissions than it produces, or a net sink of -140 million tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) by 2030, also known as FOLU Net Sink 2030. Therefore, collaboration is needed, as forest fires remain one of the major sources of emissions, especially if they occur in peatlands.
“However, the important role of all other stakeholders, whether in government, NGOs, education, society, and especially the younger generation, can also join the campaign to address, control, and prevent forest and land fires. Because these forest fires are very important to be controlled as a major threat that can undermine the achievement of the FOLU Net Sink 2030,” he said, as cited by Antara on Thursday (8/7/2025).
To achieve a greater absorption condition compared to emissions in the forestry sector by 2030, early detection based on AI and communities need to be improved. The use of technology is continuously applied to prevent and handle forest fires, starting from remote sensing imagery to monitor hotspots using satellites, up to monitoring particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) concentrations to assess air quality conditions.
“Forward-looking strategic steps are important to achieve FOLU Net Sink for the younger generation and everyone, the first being early detection based on AI and communities,” he said.
According to him, AI technology is increasingly being used in the forest fire prevention process, especially for predicting hotspots based on weather and land cover analysis. Even now, signs of burned areas can already be seen on maps that are widely used by the community.
AI technology will support remote sensing using satellites that have been used so far to monitor the presence of hotspots, including using Landsat, VIIRS, and Sentinel-2.
However, collaboration among various parties at the ground level is still necessary to ensure prevention and handling, including verifying the accuracy of hotspot analysis conducted based on AI and remote sensing.
Remote sensing“It is very important to see how BNPB and BPBD deal with its impact on the community. It is not only technology-based, but we also involve the community, because ultimately it comes back to how the community uses the technology,” he said.
Meanwhile, the forest and land fire trend shows a decrease compared to its peak in 2015, when 2.6 million hectares of area were burned throughout Indonesia. It temporarily increased in 2019, with an area of 1.6 million hectares, the number continued to decline, 296,942 ha in 2020, 358,867 hectares in 2021, 204,894 hectares in 2022, 1.16 million hectares in 2023, and 376,805 hectares in 2024.
Meanwhile, for this year, data from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry’s SiPongi system shows that the reported burned area up to June 2025 reached 8,594 hectares.