As fires spread, Indonesia’s rubber growers draw on traditional ways to fight back

In South Sumatra, wildfires intensified by El Niño have pushed smallholder rubber farmers into direct, often improvised firefighting, using fertilizer sprayers and canisters hauled from drying swamps to protect trees that take five years to mature after being lost.

Residents and a local elder trace the surge in fires to the early-2000s arrival of oil palm plantations, noting that rubber growers rarely burn their own land because rubber trees are especially vulnerable to fire damage, while oil palms tolerate it better.

A visit by reporters found no burned area in traditional Musi Indigenous rubber-growing territories, with fires concentrated in and around oil palm plantations instead, even as drought has already cut local latex output by more than half.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.