This article originally appeared on VICE Indonesia.

This article is part of a wider initiative by VICE looking at the state of the environment around the globe. In Asia-Pacific, each VICE office is examining the main concerns from their territory, in an effort to gauge the health of the planet as a whole and to highlight the widespread need for change. For other stories in this series, please check out Environmental Extremes .

A trench enclosed a piece of land filled with weeds and shrubbery as far as the eye could see in the Indonesian village of Air Hitam Laut, Jambi. Two men approached the area and scouted the scene. Landowner Safarudin hired Erwin (both only go by one name) to prepare four hectares of his land so it could be farmed with betel nuts. That day, the plan was to clear the trench of the thick shrubbery that had covered it over the summer, using a technique known locally as merun, a traditional method of selective land-clearing through the use of fire_._