Drought is getting drier, Menhut: This year is a 'big exercise' to face El Nino

JAKARTA - Minister of Forestry Raja Juli Antoni said the government has prepared various steps to anticipate forest and land fires (karhutla) in the face of the potential for a drier dry season and the El Nino phenomenon which is expected to occur earlier.

This was conveyed by Raja Juli Antoni after opening the cat sterilization activity in the Animal Friendly Ministry of Forestry program in Jakarta, Thursday, March 12.

According to him, the government has received reports from the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) regarding the potential for dry drought and early El Nino which is expected to start to be felt in June.

"This year will be our training year, including preparing infrastructure. Because next year is definitely El Nino," said Raja Juli, quoted by Antara.

He explained that weather modification operations (OMC) may be difficult to carry out if the El Nino phenomenon is stronger. "OMC is almost impossible to do because there are no clouds to sow rain," he said.

The government has also held a coordination meeting to anticipate the forest fire, which was led by Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Djamari Chaniago in early March.

The meeting involved the Ministry of Forestry as well as a number of related ministries and agencies.

Raja Juli ensured that efforts to prevent and extinguish forest fires had also been carried out through the Forest Fire Control Brigade and Manggala Agni Land in a number of provinces.

Several areas that are the focus of handling include Riau Province and West Kalimantan.

According to him, previous experience shows that anticipation and inter-institutional collaboration are the key to handling karhutla.

"If we learn from history, anticipation and collaboration are very important. If it starts to burn, we will only move, it's hard," he said.

Meanwhile, the BMKG predicts that the dry season in 2026 in the Sumatra region will begin gradually.

Drought is expected to begin in May in several areas such as northern Aceh, parts of North Sumatra, southeast Riau, parts of Jambi, central South Sumatra, and Lampung.

In June, the dry season is predicted to spread to most of Aceh, West Sumatra, Riau, Central Jambi, part of Bengkulu, and part of South Sumatra.

BMKG also warned of the possibility of an El Nino phenomenon in the second semester of 2026, faster than the previous prediction which is estimated to occur in 2027.