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View all search resultsSelf-inflicted wound: When ignorance sells the forest
The floods are the bill we are paying for decades of cultivated ignorance.
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An aerial photo shows damage left by a flash flood on Dec. 2 in Rigeb, Blangkejeren, Gayo Lues regency, Aceh. (Antara/Taufik Hidayat)
T
he floods that recently drowned entire districts in Indonesia are not “natural disasters.” They are the bill we are paying for decades of cultivated ignorance. It is an ignorance so deep that a nation with one of the world’s richest biocultural endowments now behaves like it has nothing to learn from its own land or its own people.
Indonesia contains one of the three largest biodiversity concentrations on Earth. Our forests hold thousands of plant species, intricate ecological systems and cultural practices that evolved to manage them. They should be the engine of our future economy. Instead, we have spent decades treating forests as obstacles to be cleared or commodities to be liquidated.
This is not an accident. It is the direct legacy of colonial rule, which reduced forests to timber and plantations and dismissed indigenous wisdom as “primitive.” Post-independence elites inherited the same worldview. Logging concessions were handed out like lottery tickets, peatlands were drained, local communities were pushed aside.
And today, the rewards flow to a tiny circle of business elites who live like sultans with their luxury cars, private jets and endless displays of wealth on social media, while ordinary Indonesians wade through chest-high floods and watch their houses slide off hillsides.
But the world has already shown that another future is possible. When traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is combined with modern science, ecosystems thrive and people prosper.
In the Amazon, studies show that indigenous-managed forests have far lower rates of deforestation and higher carbon stocks than adjacent state-managed lands. In Thailand, community forest programs boosted household incomes and sharply reduced illegal logging once management rights were returned to local communities. In Vietnam, agroforestry systems merging local practice with soil science outperform monoculture plantations in long-term productivity.
These findings are echoed across more than a hundred case studies worldwide: the forests that survive are the forests managed by people who understand them.
The irony is that Indonesia already possesses such practices. In Maluku, sasi regulates harvests to prevent depletion. In Lampung, repong damar systems can produce sustainable resin incomes year after year, often higher than the one-time sale of timber. Indigenous forest gardens in Kalimantan maintain extraordinary species diversity and act as living seed banks. These are not romantic relics, they are sophisticated ecological systems.
Yet instead of strengthening these knowledge traditions, we sideline them. The cost is visible everywhere. The 2015 peat fires alone cost Indonesia more than our entire annual forestry revenue. This year’s floods caused tens of trillions of rupiah in damage, which far exceeds the revenue from forest product exports in the previous year. Scientists estimate that clearing a single hectare of peat forest generates long-term losses many times greater than the value extracted from its timber.
We are literally paying more to destroy our forests than we earn from them. This is not development. This is self-inflicted impoverishment.
Indonesia could have been a global leader in biocultural innovation: tropical medicine, biodiversity research, germplasm banks, sustainable forest foods, ecosystem services and climate adaptation technologies. The global market for plant-based pharmaceuticals is projected to reach US$200 billion by 2030. Countries with far less biodiversity are investing aggressively. We, meanwhile, are still exporting raw logs and palm oil as if it were 1880.
To change course, Indonesia must rebuild the knowledge systems we allowed to wither. That means recognizing TEK as a legitimate scientific partner, not a cultural ornament. It means strengthening research in biodiversity, ethnobotany and ecosystem services. It means shifting from concession-based forestry to community-based stewardship that rewards those who protect forests. And it means securing customary land rights so that forest peoples are not treated as trespassers in their own homes.
The recent floods are more than an environmental crisis. They are the clearest sign yet that Indonesia suffers from a knowledge crisis, a refusal to value our forests as living systems and our communities as guardians of irreplaceable wisdom. This is what historian Peter Burke calls organized ignorance, produced, maintained and profitable for those at the top.
Indonesia has a choice. We can continue enriching a handful of elites while the public absorbs all the risks and none of the benefits. Or we can combine the wisdom of our ancestors with the power of modern science to build a biocultural economy that brings prosperity without devastation.
The forests are not just trees. They are knowledge, protection and wealth. And they are trying to tell us something.
It’s time we start listening.
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The writer is the founder of Jalin Indonesia.
