What was once a thick, green forest has turned into a pitch-black expanse of denuded land. Piles of charred wood lie all over the area as the smoke from smoldering peat fills the air. Everything was destroyed by the fire," says Benar Sitinjak, a middle-aged resident of Senepis, in the Central Sumatra district of Riau.

Sitinjak, originally from Kisaran in North Sumatra, is a slash-and-burn farmer. Like many others in the area he resorted to the c