TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsThe disastrous trap of Indonesia’s extraction strategy
The recent series of disasters that hit Sumatra illustrate the worsening collective outcomes Indonesia risks if it continues to choose the wrong option as posited in the classic game theory problem of the prisoner's dilemma.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
A mosque is surrounded by residual mud and standing water on Nov. 30, 2025, after a flash flood in Meureudu, the administrative seat of Pidie Jaya regency in Aceh. (AFP/Chaideer Mahyuddin)
H
eavy rains in recent weeks have triggered severe floods and landslides across Sumatra, claiming hundreds of lives and displacing thousands. Images from the affected areas show entire villages buried in mud, rivers overflowing with tree debris and people struggling to salvage what remains of their lives.
Yet amid the devastation, the public comments from several government agencies sound familiar: blaming the extreme weather, calling for resilience and reaffirming the nation’s right to continue exploiting natural resources for economic growth. What is rarely addressed is how unsustainable extraction, deforestation and weak enforcement have contributed to the scale and frequency of such disasters.
President Prabowo Subianto, defending the expansion of oil palm plantations, argued at a forum nearly 13 months ago that public concerns about deforestation were exaggerated.
“We should not be afraid of claims that it is dangerous or causing deforestation. Oil palms are still trees, right?” Prabowo said at the time, insisting that palm trees should not be associated with environmental harm. He then called on regional leaders and security forces to guard plantations as national assets.
Such a statement reflects a persistent nationalistic logic: Indonesia is entitled to the same resource-driven growth that the Global North enjoyed decades ago.
This view may resonate politically, but it traps the country in a strategic dilemma. Faced with a choice between preserving the environment or expanding extraction, our elites tend to choose the short-term payoff of defection, even when it leads to long-term collective loss.
Sumatra’s large-scale floods and landslides are not isolated disasters, but symptoms of deeper structural failures.
