8 AUGUST 2025
1) The World’s Largest Deforestation Project
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In the West Papuan regency of Merauke, close to the border with Papua New Guinea, Indonesia is rapidly clearing land in the world’s largest ever deforestation project: three million hectares for sugarcane and rice production. Within three years, Indonesia plans to convert an expanse of forest roughly the size of Belgium into profitable monoculture. The ambition and destructiveness of the development distinguish it from previous mining or agribusiness initiatives in West Papua, which has been under Indonesian occupation since the 1960s.
At a ground-breaking ceremony in June 2024, Indonesia’s then president, Joko Widodo, described Merauke as Indonesia’s future ‘food barn’. He also touted the potential of converting sugarcane into bioethanol fuel. (On the Raja Ampat islands meanwhile, Papuan activists are fighting plans to exploit nickel reserves for electric vehicle batteries.)
Since formalising its control of West Papua in a fraudulent 1969 referendum, Indonesia has carried out genocidal military assaults – up to a quarter of West Papuans have been killed under occupation – and ‘transmigration’ settlement programmes that have reduced the Indigenous population to a minority.
In the nine months since he took office, Indonesia’s new president, Prabowo Subianto, has both restarted the transmigration programme and accelarated deforestation in West Papua. Widodo designated Merauke a ‘National Strategic Project’ (PSN), giving the state eminent domain powers to expel civilians. Fifty thousand Indigenous Papuans face displacement over the project’s lifespan; already, people are finding vast tracts of their customary land have been closed to them, with wooden stakes signalling the expropriation by the Indonesian military.
The human costs of the PSN, while severe, are eclipsed by its possible environmental consequences. The destruction of Merauke is set to release over 780 million additional tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, more than doubling Indonesia’s yearly emissions and leading to irreversible ecosystem collapse in one of the world’s most biodiverse regions. Officials have pressed on with the development while trying to conceal its impact. The energy minister, Bahlil Lahadalia, in charge of parcelling out land to developers, has claimed there is ‘no forest in the middle of Merauke ... only eucalyptus, swamps and savannahs’. But though the sago and paperbark mangroves that cover much of the Merauke landscape may appear sparse from above, they store up to 381 tons of carbon per hectare – a higher concentration than the Amazon rainforest.
The PSN is not Indonesia’s first attempt to convert Merauke into profitable farmland. In the 2010s, huge swathes of the rainforest were razed to make way for a palm oil mega-project, the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE). It has been described by one researcher as effecting an ‘ecologically-induced genocide’ of the Marind tribe, whose gardens and hunting grounds also extend into the territory now threatened by the PSN. As their forest recedes, the Marind are forced to rely on remittances from the corporations that have seized their land. Rice and instant noodles are replacing traditional sago cultivation.
In her book In the Shadow of the Palms, Sophie Chao describes the warping effects that MIFEE has had on both the environment and the Marind worldview. Before palm oil arrived, the forest provided a rich network of relationships between people, plants and animals. Under the monocrop regime, everything is ‘abu-abu’ – grey, uncertain. In a new documentaryabout Merauke, a Yei tribesman describes the transformation of his land in similarly alienated terms: ‘Before, when I went there [to the forest], I could catch deer, pigs, fish ... Now it’s like I’m half dead.’
MIFEE was intended not only to boost Indonesia’s food security, but also to make it a net exporter of rice and palm oil – to ‘feed Indonesia, then the world’. The profit motive is harder to identify in the Merauke PSN. Its advocates have instead emphasised national self-sufficiency, partly in response to the precarity of global supply chains exposed by the Covid pandemic. Even a staunch rightwinger like Prabowo can sound like an anti-colonial nationalist when discussing the project: ‘How can a country be independent if it cannot feed its people?’ he asked in 2023, when he was defence minister.
During Indonesia’s three decades of dictatorship under Suharto (Prabowo’s father-in-law), more than a third of its national revenue came from West Papua, much of it from the world’s largest gold mine, which was operated until 2017 by the US company Freeport McMoran. But while the Freeport mine primarily enriched foreign and domestic elites, the Merauke PSN is designed to insulate ordinary Indonesians from food and energy shocks – caused by a climate crisis that the PSN will drastically worsen. Both ventures aimed to secure the future of the regime, though in different ways. West Papua has gone from being Indonesia’s gold mine to its larder.
Where private interests are involved in the PSN, the principal beneficiaries are not foreign corporations but politically connected Indonesian entrepreneurs. Co-ordinating the project is the palm oil magnate Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad, also known as Haji Isam (or the ‘new poster boy of Indonesia’s oligarchy’). Isam owns the Jhonlin Group, which has bought two thousand excavators from a Chinese company to begin the deforestation. His cousin, Amran Sulaiman, is the agriculture minister.
The military role in the development of the PSN goes far beyond their normal land-grabbing and security remit. Following a large recruitment drive in Java, more than three thousand additional troops have been deployed to Merauke, where they are directly engaged in felling and crop cultivation. Instagram posts show fresh-faced soldiers playing at farmers, ineptly watering crops or operating Isam’s excavators.
Sulaiman has insisted that ‘the military support is there because of a lack of manpower’ – but while most of the soldiers deployed to Merauke may be new recruits, photographs have also surfaced of some sporting the insignia of Yonif Raiders, an elite combat unit notorious among West Papuans for their brutality. In August 2022, a troop of Raiders murdered four Papuan villagers and dumped their dismembered bodies in a local river. Such atrocities are commonplace in the West Papuan highlands, where the armed resistance movement is strongest and international scrutiny all but non-existent.
Merauke is a lowlands region, which may be one reason the PSN hasn’t yet been met with violence from its opponents. Nonetheless, resistance has been immediate and widespread: there have been mass protests throughout West Papua, while a coalition of NGOs and Indigenous groups has drawn the UN’s attention to the project. A UN fact-finding mission has long been a demand of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), a proto-governmental organisation uniting the three most significant independence factions, operating under the stewardship of the exiled leader Benny Wenda (I have worked with them).
While the forces arrayed against the ULMWP are forbidding – not least a decades-long ban on foreign media that has kept West Papua from international attention – the climate crisis gives their liberation struggle a global dimension. The New Guinea rainforest is the world’s third largest, after the Amazon and the Congo. Uniquely, tribal struggles for land rights in West Papua form part of a wider revolutionary movement that seeks to replace military-corporate domination with Indigenous sovereignty and a ‘green state’. Wenda has urged environmental activists to ‘accept climate catastrophe or fight for a free West Papua’. Merauke will determine their choice.
Governor of Highland Papua, John Tabo, said here on Saturday that he recently met with President Prabowo Subianto in Jakarta to discuss efforts to speed up development of the new autonomous regions (DOB) in Papua, especially Highland Papua province.
“One of the topics we discussed was the roadwork from the Mamberamo River bridge to Elelim in Yalimo, Highland Papua, which spans 61 kilometers,” he informed.
According to Tabo, severe damage on the road segment between the Mamberamo River bridge and Elelim, Yalimo, has significantly slowed the flow of traffic from Jayapura to Wamena.
“We hope that with the road improvements, four- and six-wheeled vehicles can reach Wamena more quickly, which will help boost the local economy,” he said.
He added that the poor condition of the Trans-Jayapura-Wamena road segment has led to delays in the distribution of staple goods and heavy materials, contributing to high prices in the province.
“High inflation here is partly caused by the slow distribution of basic needs and other heavy goods. However, if the road is improved, then the prices of basic goods and others here can be kept under control,” he added.
Furthermore, Tabo informed that the construction of the 61-kilometer road is being fully funded by the state budget (APBN).
“We do not know the exact amount of the funding, as that falls under the authority of the central government, in this case, the Ministry of Public Works,” he said.
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Translator: Yudhi, Kenzu
Jakarta: The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources has set a target for Merauke, South Papua to begin producing bioethanol by 2027, as part of key projects under the region’s food estate development program.
“We’re aiming to have bioethanol production up and running in Merauke by 2027,” said Deputy Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Yuliot Tanjung during a meeting at the ministry’s Jakarta office on Friday.
To meet the deadline, Tanjung said the ministry is speeding up the construction of a bioethanol plant this week to help meet the country’s fuel needs. “Right now, we’re focusing on getting the necessary work done,” he said.
Merauke District has been named one of the government’s priority food estate areas. Its development plan includes three major projects: establishing a 500,000-hectare sugarcane plantation for bioethanol production, expanding cultivated land from 40,000 hectares to 100,000 hectares, and creating one million hectares of new rice fields to be managed jointly by the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Agriculture.
Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Bahlil Lahadalia, who also serves as the Daily Chair of the National Energy Council, voiced his support for expanding sugarcane plantations in Merauke to produce both ethanol and methanol.
“The key step for Merauke is to turn its sugarcane into ethanol and methanol,” Lahadalia said on July 18, noting that the bioethanol would follow Brazil’s example of using sugarcane as a renewable energy source.
Fajar Hutomo, expert staff to the Minister of Tourism for crisis management, said in Wamena, Highland Papua province, on Friday that the participation of foreign tourists in cultural and tourism festivals can directly boost the economy, particularly in the host districts.
“With the appeal of cultural and tourism activities, we believe this can increase visits from both domestic and international tourists,” he said.
He emphasized that, in the future, organizers across Indonesia—especially in Jayawijaya district, Highland Papua—must wisely and creatively manage their tourism potential, creative economy, arts, and culture, while fostering community pride.
“We know Jayawijaya district has extraordinary natural beauty, tourism potential, and cultural heritage, so it must be managed properly to attract not only foreign but also domestic tourists,” he added.
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According to Hutomo, if managed well, the tourism potential of Jayawijaya will generate pride within the local community.
“From that sense of pride, the intention, enthusiasm, and efforts to preserve and develop the region’s potential will grow,” he said.
He cited the example of the Baliem Valley Cultural Festival of Highland Papua, which was selected for the third consecutive time this year as one of the 110 Karisma Event Nusantara by the Ministry of Tourism.
“We hope the Highland Papua provincial government and the Jayawijaya district government will continue to develop their cultural and tourism potential, and collaborate with various stakeholders to be more innovative and creative in holding sustainable cultural events that positively impact the tourism industry,” he said.
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Translator: Yudhi Efendi, Primayanti
Editor: M Razi Rahman
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