Flammable Futures – A storyline of climatic and land-use change impacts on wildfire extremes in Indonesia

Wildfire events are driven by complex interactions of the climate and anthropogenic interventions. Predictions of future wildfire events, their extremity, and their impact on the environment and economy must account for the interactions between these drivers. Economic policy and land use decisions influence the susceptibility of an area to climate extremes, the probability of burning, and future decision making. To better understand how climate-driven drought events and adaptation efforts affect burned area, agricultural production losses, and land use decisions, we developed a storyline approach centered on Indonesia’s 2015 fire events, which saw significant production losses of palm oil – a product imported by the EU chiefly as a biofuel – surpassing 7%. We explored analogous events under three warming conditions and two palm oil sector adaptation scenarios using two storylines: ensemble mean climate and high aridity conditions. We employed a model chain consisting of IIASA's wildfire climate impacts and adaptation model (FLAM) and the partial equilibrium global biosphere management model (GLOBIOM) to predict burned area and assess resultant production losses in the oil palm sector in Indonesia. To quantify the changes in burned area, we applied a delta approach based on the different degrees of global warming that can be expected. To define fire-induced oil palm losses and associated economic impacts, we combined the burned areas from FLAM with land-use change and productivity estimates from GLOBIOM. We found that the total burned area and production loss increased across the projections and climate warming by up to 25%, with only minor differences between storylines. By varying characteristics of regional climate change features, we found that these results are spatially explicit and robust across projections. Our results highlight the importance of including future warming and drought conditions in predicting oil palm losses and land use decision making. They leave room to explore how climatic and economic impacts could be mitigated through economic and land use management policies affecting Indonesia and the EU.