Inclusive Environmental Governance in Indonesia: Empirical Analysis Using Geospatial Forest Fire Data

The occurrence of forest fires has been quite persistent in Indonesia. This study aims to estimate the effect of forest fires on public health quality at the country’s lowest administration level. We created a dataset based on satellite wildfire hotspot data from the Ministry of Forestry and Environment of Indonesia, covering 2018 and 2020. Our fixed-effect estimate shows that forest fires have negatively affected life expectancy in general at -0.003 for the baseline model. However, we find that the effect is different across gender. Forest fires have a significantly adverse effect on female life expectancy, while it is insignificant for males. The coefficient is more significant at -0.004 when urban areas (cities) and small islands are excluded from the model, indicating a more substantial effect in more rural and remote areas. Further tests under unconditional quantile regression show that results for males are negative and significant except for the first quartile. These findings suggest that the impact of forest fires may disproportionately affect populations with higher baseline health, possibly due to cumulative exposure or differences in healthcare access. Despite the relatively small magnitude of the coefficients, the main findings exploit a weakness in environmental governance in the Indonesian districts. We discuss several inclusive policy options to address this issue, including the need for targeted, gender-specific interventions that strengthen local institutional capacities.