Forest and land fires have been occurring in Indonesia since the 1970s, but within the last two decades the intensity of these fires and their effects on neighbouring countries has elicited high media attention and new political engagement. As a direct consequence, the Indonesian government has taken stern measures by prohibiting farmers from burning land and forests as part of their agricultural practices. Through the case of Indonesian Borneo, the paper explores how the haze crisis reinitiates old discourses of ‘backward' and ‘destructive’ agriculture and invigorates policies of agricultural modernisation and privatisation at the expense of traditional agrarian practices.
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