Indonesia is on fire, its ancient peatlands burning, spewing out greenhouse emissions and shrouding the entire region in toxic haze. The Peruvian anchoveta fishery has collapsed, the Panama Canal is drying up, and sugar crops are failing in India and Thailand, all signs of a climatic disaster unfurling across the world.

There are dry-season blazes in the Indonesian archipelago every year, exacerbated by land clearing, but the scale of these fires is unprecedented. They come after months of drought fuelled by what is shaping up to be the strongest El Nino on record, as well as underlying climate change.

An aerial view of peatland and forest fires burning in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, in September. Getty Images

“Indonesia is one of the places where El Nino events are linked to droughts and bushfires,” says Associate Professor Andrea Taschetto, a climate scientist at the University of NSW.…