Waking up After Disaster Strikes
Monday, December 22, 2025
Parts of Sumatra were hit by floods resulting from the arbitrary granting of permits to clear forests. Now Papua is under threat.
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EVERY time disaster strikes, the government acts as if it has only just woken from a slumber. Officials scramble in a daze, searching for someone to either save face or serve as a scapegoat. Now, after flash floods claimed thousands of lives across Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra in late November 2025, the government is only just beginning to hunt for the corporate culprits.
Two weeks after floods devastated Garoga village in South Tapanuli, North Sumatra, the Environment Ministry sealed the oil palm plantation of Tri Bahtera Srikandi (TBS) in Central Tapanuli. The National Police Criminal Investigation Department (Bareskrim) is also investigating the same allegations. The company, owned by a local businessman, is suspected of clearing forests so extensively that the resulting timber debris was swept away, battering the homes of villagers.
The Forestry Ministry has sealed three plantation companies in South Tapanuli, also because they allegedly worsened the impacts of the floods. Simultaneously, the Forest Area Enforcement Task Force swung into action. Their findings concluded that 31 companies and individual businessmen were responsible for triggering the floods.
The corporations responsible for the environmental destruction must be prosecuted. But this is too little too late. The government could have prevented the fatalities if it had implemented the right forestry management policies. There was no need to wait until people lost their lives. As of Tuesday night, December 16, 2025, according to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), 1,050 people had died.
The government has never fulfilled its obligation to manage forests sustainably. According to the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, forests in Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra vanished rapidly between 2016 and 2025. A total of 1.4 million hectares of forest area were converted into oil palm plantations, mines, and other commercial uses.
Sumatran forest areas have seen the most significant conversion into oil palm estates. The total area of oil palm plantations in Sumatra has reached 10.7 million hectares, leaving only 6.7 million hectares of forest, surpassing the safe limit of the island’s carrying capacity. Due to their monoculture system and uniform plant species, oil palm plantations are incapable of stabilizing the soil during extreme rainfall.
The problem lies in President Prabowo Subianto’s obsession with oil palm. Following a four-year moratorium, the government is set to begin expanding oil palm plantations by 600,000 hectares next year. In total, the government targets 3 million hectares of new plantation openings which, according to Prabowo, is necessary to achieve a production target of 100 million tons of oil palm by 2045.
With the forests of Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi already depleted, the government is directing forest land clearing toward Papua. As of 2024, there were approximately 236,000 hectares of oil palm plantations on the island. Both legal and illegal logging continue unabated. If Papua’s forests continue to dwindle, it is entirely possible that the disasters witnessed in Sumatra will repeat themselves and migrate there.
As a forestry tycoon, Prabowo views jungles as business opportunities. He sneers at those who warn about the dangers of deforestation for the environment and people. Prabowo equates oil palm with trees, a statement at odds with science. If he now has his eyes on Papua’s forests, at a time of horrific flooding in Sumatra, we know when to stop hoping for our country.
