TheJakartaPost
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The Sumatra disaster in late November indicates that judicial and law enforcement reform is needed to treat environmental destruction and damage as criminal violations, as well as to create a clear and transparent mechanism for the use of related compensation funds.
Around 283,000 hectares of forest, four times the size of Jakarta, were lost throughout 2025 to make way for various extractive businesses across the country, according to the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).
The government has filed lawsuits against six private companies it believes contributed to massive environmental degradation in North Sumatra following deadly floodings in the region, a move critics say must be followed by stronger commitments to environmental restoration and governance reform.
This is how Indonesia is governed now: by spectacle so crude it dares the public to object, by narratives so inflated they collapse under their own weight, by numbers waved around like talismans against doubt.
President Prabowo Subianto’s aspiration to expand palm oil plantations in Papua for biofuel production has drawn strong backlash from environmentalists, who warn the policy risks repeating the ecological disasters already unfolding in Sumatra.
Around 90 percent of 13,000 hectares of natural forests cleared by activities from the pulpwood industry were found in Kalimantan, according to a new report issued by environmental groups, raising alarms of looming ecological crisis that may hit the island in the coming years.
