A brutal Indonesian forest fire season that left Southeast Asia choking in smog has renewed scrutiny of major palm oil and paper companies, with activists accusing them of breaking promises to halt logging.

The monster blazes sent a pall of acrid smoke over the region for weeks, closing schools and airports and causing a spike in respiratory ailments.

Mostly lit to clear land for agriculture, they were the worst seen in the country since 2015.

Leading companies have in recent years pledged not to log any more pristine rainforest, not to use burning to clear land and to cut ties with smaller suppliers who don't abide by their rules -- but critics say such vows now ring hollow.

"They do not live up to the commitments, and are not addressing the fact that we are now in a climate crisis," Annisa Rahmawati, a senior forest campaigner at Greenpeace, told AFP.

"They are still doing business as usual."

Industry players however insist they have gone to great lengths to stop burning and trees being cut down in their operations.

Singapore-listed Wilmar International, the world's biggest palm oil trader, committed in 2013 to a no-deforestation policy and says it has stopped sourcing from 17 suppliers that did not comply with their rules.

Production of Palm oil -- used in numerous everyday goods from shampoo to biscuits -- has been blamed by environmentalists for driving massive deforestation.

Consumer goods companies are paying more attention to where they source palm oil and other materials.

Some of the world's largest brands -- including Nestle and Unilever -- pledged in 2010 to reach net zero deforestation within a decade through "responsible sourcing" of cattle, palm oil, soya and other commodities.

But after that pledge was signed, the pace of tree-felling linked to commodities increased dramatically and at least 50 million hectares (123 million acres) of forest worldwide has been destroyed Greenpeace said -- an area about the size of Spain.

- Firestarters -

Fires are used as a cheap way to clear agricultural land in Indonesia every year during the dry season.

Experts say it is hard to know who is responsible for the blazes in the hardest hit areas -- Indonesia's Sumatra island and the Indonesian part of Borneo -- which are home to myriad companies of varying sizes and numerous small-scale farmers.

Big firms insist they have "no-burn" policies in place and often blame smallholders for starting fires they say then spread to their plantations.

Indonesia has made some arrests over the blazes but in many cases it remains unclear who started the fires -- and who ordered them.

While larger companies have vowed not to source from smaller ones that break strict environmental rules, critics say they are not monitoring their supply chains carefully.

"The biggest challenge is the industry-wide lack of traceability of the origins of palm fruit," said Nur Maliki Arifiandi, from WWF Indonesia.

"This has allowed continuing deforestation, often caused by real smallholders as well as land speculators and rich, powerful people to open more natural forest areas and plant illegal oil palm plantations."

Some industry watchers say commitments by big firms have helped and official figures show the rate of forest loss in Indonesia declined in recent years.

- Burning issue -

But critics say problems persist -- this week Greenpeace said in a new report that palm oil and pulpwood companies with links to land burned between 2015 and 2018 rarely faced serious government sanctions.

And last year the NGO accused palm-oil giant Wilmar, as well as other consumer brands including Colgate-Palmolive, Hershey, Nestle, and Unilever, of continuing to buy from groups that were destroying the rainforest.

At the end of 2018 Wilmar, Unilever and Mondelez committed to a mapping and monitoring platform for the palm oil sector, which Greenpeace supported at the time as a potential breakthrough in cleaning up supply chains.

But the NGO pulled out of the project last month, saying the companies were not serious about the project.

Wilmar insists it sticks to its commitments and says it continues to work towards a supply chain free from deforestation from 2020.

Activists however doubt such goals are within reach.

"We are asking companies to be more serious in implementing their targets on the ground," WWF Indonesia's Arifiandi said.

Things to know about palm oil and Indonesia's raging forest fires
Jakarta (AFP) Sept 29, 2019 - Forest fires raging across Indonesia have sent air quality levels across Southeast Asia plummeting as they belch out emissions that aggravate global warming.

The country's palm oil industry bears much of the blame for the out-of-control blazes critics say, as producers burn land to make way for their plantations.

The pulp-and-paper sector has also come in for criticism over the issue, as have small-scale farmers who use slash-and-burn techniques to clear land for planting crops.

Here's a look at palm oil and the role it plays in the smog crisis.

What is palm oil?

Palm oil is the most widely consumed vegetable oil in the world. It is found in everything from soap and chocolate to pizza and cosmetics, and even vehicle gas tanks -- palm oil is used in biodiesels.

Extracted from the reddish-brown fruit of the oil palm tree, it helps make foods easier to spread or fried products crispier while giving them a longer shelf life.

Indonesia is the world's top producer and -- along with number two grower Malaysia -- supplies some 85 percent of the world's palm oil.

The multi-billion-dollar industry employs millions in Indonesia alone.

Sounds good, what's the problem?

Environmentalists say palm oil drives deforestation, with vast areas of Southeast Asian rainforest logged in recent decades to make way for plantations. This threatens the habitat of orangutans and other endangered species.

Some palm is grown on swampy peatlands which become highly flammable when they are drained of water to grow crops.

Palm oil development also contributes to climate change through deliberate forest-clearing fires, which release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and lung-clogging smog into the region's air, critics say.

But the industry denies it's to blame, saying its plantations are usually not the source of the burning and that the flames spread from nearby areas.

Political battle

Green activists have taken their beef with the powerful palm oil sector onto the world stage in a bid to shame the industry into action and alert consumers about what they're eating -- enraging Indonesia and Malaysia.

An increasingly bitter trade battle is also in full swing between Indonesia and the European Union after the bloc decided to cut its use of palm-based biofuels for cars by 2030.

The EU earlier imposed duties on imports of subsidised biodiesel from Indonesia saying it was needed to level the playing field for its producers.

In response, Indonesia threatened to impose higher tariffs on EU dairy products.

Malaysia this year hit out at Europe's biofuel phase-out, saying it may buy new fighter jets from China instead of European aviation firms.

What's going to change?

Probably not much in the short term -- palm oil industry is a huge employer and is not going anywhere.

Indonesia's fires have been an annual problem for decades, though this year's were particularly bad because of the dry weather.

Indonesia is pushing to educate people about the dangers of land-clearance burning for palm oil and other agriculture, but the practice is widespread and enforcement spotty.

President Joko Widodo last year issued a moratorium on new forest clearance for palm plantations, to reduce the outbreak of fires.

Biodiverse Indonesia's deforestation rates may have peaked, but, in the last half century, rainforests covering an area twice the size of Germany have been logged, burned, or degraded.

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