Indigenous peoples must benefit from science

The sun has been pale for months here in Sumatra and the skies are grey all day — choked with pollution from the massive fires that rage across the Indonesian island. Since the late 1990s, the haze caused by these annual fires has posed a significant threat to the health of Sumatra’s rural communities. This year’s haze is especially bad and has affected major cities, both here and abroad; consequently, the fires have again made headlines around the world.

Many of these news stories blame the big palm-oil companies for the fires. Slash-and-burn techniques remain the cheapest way to clear forest for new plantations. But scientific evidence suggests that this simple narrative is not absolutely true. A number of surveys have found that the bulk of these fires are started outside the official oil-palm concessions. Small-scale farmers seem to be more to blame.

The haze in Indonesia is not just an environmental issue; it is a complex socio-economic problem that is driven partly by conflict over land ownership between palm-oil companies and rural communities — a struggle that...