About 2.6 million hectares of land in Indonesia was burned between June and October 2015, mainly on Indonesia's Sumatra and Borneo islands

By Michael Taylor

KUALA LUMPUR, July 18 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A Singaporean charity is working with villagers in Indonesia to restore ancient peatlands, seeking to curb the haze that chokes the region every year, organisers said on Thursday.

Indonesian farmers burn huge swathes of land every year to clear land for agricultural expansion, creating a vast haze that clouds the skies over large parts of Southeast Asia - including Singapore.

Now the People's Movement to Stop Haze (PM Haze), an advocacy group in the city-state, has launched a peatland restoration project in a tiny Indonesian village that suffered bad fires in 2014.

"One of the things we realised is thatgood management of peatland is very important for managing haze in the region," Benjamin Tay, executive director of PM Haze told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

"A lot of the haze comes over from that part of Indonesia into Singapore, so by preventing fires and haze in that region, we prevent haze from coming to Singapore," he said.

Peaty soil is particularly flammable when dry, often causing fires to spread beyond their intended areas.

When peatlands are drained or cleared by fire, often to make way for oil palm plantations or farming, the carbon is released into the atmosphere where it traps heat, contributing to climate change.

Tay's group is improving canals in the area around Sungai Tohor, a farming village on an island off the coast of Sumatra with a