JAKARTA — For weeks, parts of Indonesian Borneo have resembled an Armageddon landscape, with masked residents engulfed in a putrid, red-brown haze as wildfires devour peatlands near homes and farms.

Burning slowly, mostly underground and sometimes for months, peatland fires are responsible for much of the dry-season haze that this year has affected air quality as far away as Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.

Peatlands are made up of organic material that does not fully decompose in waterlogged conditions and has accumulated over thousands of years into layers of soil-like matter.

Healthy peatlands are home to diverse plants and trees such as nutmeg and durian, as well as animals including endangered orangutans, clouded leopards, Sumatran tigers, sun bears and tapirs.

They are porous and absorbent, making them important for flood control.

Although peatlands cover only about three per cent of the world’s land surface, they store about a third of global soil carbon — twice the amount held by forests.

Indonesia has the world’s largest share of tropical peatland, accounting for about a third of the global total.