Gembong Hanung, Jakarta – Indonesia has seen its highest level of forest loss in almost a decade in 2025, the first full year under President Prabowo Subianto whose administration has been expanding large-scale food and energy estates in critical deforested islands, according to a new report from Auriga Nusantara.
Using satellite imagery analysis and field verification, the environmental watchdog found that more than 430,000 hectares of forest area nationwide, around six times the size of Singapore, were cleared in 2025.
Launched in Jakarta on March 31, the Indonesia Deforestation Status 2025 (STADI 2025) report highlights that land clearing surged 66 percent last year compared to 2024, reversing the country's declining deforestation trend over the past decade.
"The surge in deforestation in 2025 was truly alarming, taking Indonesia back to a period when it was at its highest," Auriga executive director Timer Manurung said during the launch event.
He was referring to the deforestation rate in 2016, when more than 1 million ha of forest were cleared, the highest level in a decade at that time.
Kalimantan has consistently topped the ranks of most deforested regions since overtaking historic record holder Sumatra in 2013. Last year, the region lost nearly 160,000 ha of forest area, or more than one-third of the nationwide figure, with Central Kalimantan ranked the most deforested province.
Meanwhile, the easternmost region of Papua recorded the biggest jump in land clearing in 2025, when it lost roughly 77,000 ha of forest, more than a fourfold increase compared to 2024.
To compile STADI 2025, Auriga analyzed nearly 500,000 maps at a resolution of 10 meters to determine small- to high-scale forest loss and claims an accuracy of 89 percent.
State-led forest loss
The watchdog pointed to the government's ambitious food and energy self-sufficiency agenda, executed under the banner of national strategic projects (PSN), as among the major drivers of the surge in deforestation.
These projects are believed to have legally enabled the conversion of forest areas into monoculture plantations. For example, the 2025-2029 National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN) has allocated 4 million ha, nearly the size of the Netherlands, for domestic rice cultivation to generate an additional 10 million tonnes of the staple grain.
Regions prioritized for rice field development include Central Kalimantan, South Sumatra and South Papua. In South Papua's Merauke regency alone, around 2.3 million ha is slated for rice and sugarcane plantations.
According to STADI 2025, nearly 80,000 forest areas, or one-fifth of the total deforestation figure, were lost to development projects for food, energy and water reserves.
The Prabowo administration has designated around 20 million ha of land and forest areas for converting into plantations and other projects to produce food, energy and water.
Maikel Primus Peuki, executive director of the Papua chapter of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), said the state had been permitting mass land clearing without prior consent from indigenous communities for the sake of productivity gains via strategic projects.
"The most apparent threat in Papua, especially in its southern part, is PSN, including ever-expanding rice and sugarcane plantations," Maikel said on April 2.
"We are witnessing massive clearing of forests before our eyes."
Different terms?
According to a report from the Forestry Ministry, only some 166,000 ha of forests were cleared between January and September 2025.
Ministerial spokesperson Ristianto Pribadi told The Jakarta Post on April 2 that in its report, deforestation referred to the permanent conversion of forest areas into non-forest areas, as defined by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Ristianto, without mentioning Auriga's, alleged that some independent analyses often counted temporary loss of tree cover, such as for crop rotation and harvesting, as deforestation.
While this method could offer insights on the state of forests, they "also risk overestimating or underestimating the data" if it did not refer to the established IPCC definition, he said.
Dedi Sukmara, Auriga's data and information director, has refuted this allegation, saying that the metrics used in STADI 2025 did not include crop rotation or harvesting. Rather, he said it deliberately excluded figures related to repeat land clearing to avoid double counting.
Since determining whether a tract of land had been permanently converted required observation for at least three years, Dedi added, some cleared forest areas might not be captured in the official data in a timely manner.
Regardless of the definition used, he urged the government to improve its analysis, including being more "transparent in detecting and reporting" deforestation.
Indonesia's forest governance has returned to the spotlight since the Sumatra disaster last November, when cyclone-induced floods and landslides in three northern provinces caused widespread devastation, including over 1,000 people killed and more than 500,000 displaced.
Environmentalists have blamed rampant deforestation across the island for exacerbating disaster risk.
The disaster also prompted a government probe into companies that might have contributed to increasing the level of destruction, which eventually stripped 28 firms across various sectors of their business permits.
Spokesman Ristianto said the Forestry Ministry would continue to "evaluate all strategic programs" and "ensure that their implementation does not neglect forest protection".
Source: https://asianews.network/state-led-projects-drive-soaring-forest-loss-in-indonesia-watchdog-finds