Maretha Uli, Jakarta – The ambition from President Prabowo Subianto's administration to increase the country's economic growth to 8 percent through expanding extractive business may risk accelerating environmental degradation and widening social injustice, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) has warned.
Since taking office in October 2024, Prabowo has boasted the goal for the 8-percent gross domestic product growth by the end of his term in 2029; a target met by skepticism among economists over its feasibility. The latest projection from Bank Indonesia (BI) was a 4.9 to 5.7 percent growth for this year, according to central bank governor Perry Warjiyo.
Walhi warned efforts to pursue the high-growth goal could push Indonesia into an ecological crisis, following government policies and programs that led to the expansion of large-scale extractive activities.
"There is a high price to pay for growth. What was supposed to be the foundation for prosperity instead ends up pushing vulnerable communities further to the margins," Walhi urban campaigner Wahyu Eka Setyawan said in a press briefing on Wednesday.
The group noted several policies rolled out throughout 2025 may lead to further ecological degradation. Among them is a plan to open oil palm plantations in Papua, while the country's easternmost island and communities living on it had endured repression that came with large forest clearing for a food estate project.
The food estate, declared a national strategic project (PSN) aimed at achieving food self-sufficiency, is projected to open up more than 2 million hectares of forest, which Walhi described as the country's "largest project to legalize deforestation".
Nationwide, the environmental group recorded up to 283,000 ha of deforestation throughout 2025, four times the size of Jakarta. The figure, which rose from 217,000 ha in 2024, was claimed to be done for projects authorized by authorities, but carried out without comprehensive environmental impact assessments.
Deforestation has been blamed as an important factor exacerbating the deadly floods and landslides in Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra last November, with environmentalists saying the three regions suffered environmental degradation from plantation and mining activities.
After the disasters, the government revoked permits for 28 companies holding plantations, mining and power plant concessions allegedly linked to the disaster. However, activists have been questioning authorities' plans to recover the degraded environment following the permit revocation.
The country's remaining forests are also in grave danger, Walhi warned, as 26 million ha of natural forests are located in business concessions across the archipelago. Around 9 million ha of them are permits for mining businesses, which have been linked to environmental degradation and agrarian conflicts.
Should companies opt to start operating in the concessions to pursue Prabowo's 8-percent economic growth, Walhi campaign head Uli Arta Siagian warned it would amount to "massive legalization of deforestation".
Walhi also criticized the growth target for failing to translate into an even improvement on economic conditions across all segments of society.
"I believe Prabowo won't be able to achieve a prosperous Indonesia through the 8-percent economic growth target without recognizing marginalized communities, ensuring environmental protection and distributing incentives for all communities," said Walhi executive director Boy Even Sembiring.
The Jakarta Post reached out to several officials at the Environment Ministry for comment, but they were not immediately available.
The ministry previously said one of its focuses for 2026 is to implement environmental protection and management planning according to Government Regulation (PP) No. 26/2025 on the planning for environmental protection and management.
In response to the country's second-quarter economic growth of 5.12 percent year-on-year, Deputy Environment Minister Diaz Faisal Malik Hendropriyono said in August 2025 the growth had not come at the expense of environmental sustainability.
He conveyed his confidence that sustainable development amid the 8-percent economic growth target is "neither impossible nor an oxymoron".
Source: https://asianews.network/extractive-led-economic-growth-fuels-indonesias-environmental-crisis