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View all search resultsGovernment accused of limiting access to forestry data amid raging wildfires
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Motorcyclists ride in the morning in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan on October 14, 2026. Thick haze has turned the skies in the city into apocalyptic shades of yellow and orange on Thursday, reducing visibility to a few dozen meters as wildfires cause a regional air pollution crisis. (AFP/Reina)
T
he Forestry Ministry is accused of restricting data amid widespread wildfires raging the country, as it threatens criminal charges against unauthorized copy and use of geospatial data crucial for tracking deforestation and fire hot spots.
A pop-up notification appears on the ministry’s unified interactive mapping platform Sigap since last month, warning visitors that the once freely accessible database is now “view-only” and restricting people from “retrieving, extracting or converting” the information without prior written approval.
People must now consent to terms and conditions stating that violations of the restrictions constitute a criminal offense punishable under the draconian Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law and a 2011 law on geospatial information.
Further violations, which include altering or trafficking the data, may result in up to nine years of imprisonment and or a maximum fine of Rp 3 billion (US$167,420).
The Sigap platform has long served as the official source of wide-ranging geospatial forest data, from deforested and burned regions to the zoning of conservation landscapes in Indonesia.
Environmentalists and academics interviewed by The Jakarta Post said they mostly used the data to track illegal forest clearing, habitat fragmentation or wildfires by overlaying the government’s deforestation map, for instance, with business concessions or conservation zones.
In doing so, they were able to to monitor forest loss or unlawful corporate practices in a specific area, as opposed to the database that mostly contains low level of geographical and land-use details.
