A toxic haze from weeks-long wildfires in Indonesia is spreading across South East Asia, affecting Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, with air pollution in some areas reaching over 15 times World Health Organization guidelines. The fires, burning since mid-July across Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo, have been worsened by a "Super El Niño" driving severe drought, and are causing widespread respiratory illness while also threatening to release vast stores of carbon locked in the region's peatlands.

Indonesia's Health Ministry recorded more than 50,000 respiratory infection cases linked to the fires between July and August, over 12,000 of them in children under five, with residents from South Kalimantan to the Philippine province of Palawan reporting coughs, sore throats and eye irritation. Experts trace the crisis to decades of land-use change dating from the Suharto era, with environmental groups alleging that companies still use fire to clear land cheaply for plantations; because the fires are burning through some of the world's largest tropical peatlands, which normally store carbon for millennia, they risk becoming a "carbon bomb" if drained and ignited.