The Tamesis
April 7, 2026
jakarta – Indonesia will see its worst forest loss in nearly a decade in 2025, the first full year of President Prabowo Subianto, whose government has been expanding massive food and energy estates on the heavily deforested island, according to a new report from Auriga Nusantara.
Environmental regulators used satellite image analysis and on-site verification to find that the country’s forest area exceeded 430,000 hectares in 2025, which is about six times the area of Singapore.
Launched in Jakarta on March 31 Indonesia’s deforestation status in 2025 (STADI 2025) The report highlights that land clearing surged 66% last year compared with 2024, reversing the country’s downward trend in deforestation over the past decade.
“The surge in deforestation in 2025 is truly alarming, taking Indonesia back to its peak,” Auriga executive director Timer Manurung said in the release.
He was referring to deforestation rates in 2016, when more than 1 million hectares of forest were cleared, which was the highest level in a decade at the time.
Kalimantan has topped the list of the most deforested regions since 2013, when it overtook the all-time record holder Sumatra. Last year, the region lost nearly 160,000 hectares of forest area, accounting for more than one-third of the country’s forest area, with Central Kalimantan listed as the province with the most severe deforestation.
Meanwhile, Papua’s easternmost region saw the largest increase in land clearing in 2025, with the loss of about 77,000 hectares of forest, more than four times the amount in 2024.
To compile STADI 2025, Auriga analyzed nearly 500,000 maps with a 10-meter resolution to identify small- to large-scale forest loss and claims an accuracy of 89%.
state-led forest loss
The watchdog cited the government’s ambitious food and energy self-sufficiency agenda under the banner of Project Strategic National (PSN) as one of the key drivers of the surge in deforestation.
These projects are believed to legally convert forest areas into monoculture plantations. For example, the National Medium-Term Development Plan 2025-2029 (RPJMN) allocates 4 million hectares of land (an area almost the size of the Netherlands) for domestic rice cultivation to produce an additional 10 million tons of the staple grain.
Priority areas for rice development include Central Kalimantan, South Sumatra and South Papua. In Merauke County in South Papua alone, about 2.3 million hectares of land are planned for growing rice and sugarcane.
According to STADI 2025, nearly 80,000 forest areas – one-fifth of total deforestation – have been lost to projects to develop food, energy and water reserves.
Prabowo’s government has designated about 20 million hectares of land and forest areas for plantations and other projects to produce food, energy and water.
Maikel Primus Peuki, executive director of the Papua chapter of the Indonesian Environment Forum (Walhi), said the country has been allowing large-scale land clearing without the prior consent of indigenous communities in an effort to increase productivity through strategic projects.
“The most obvious threat in Papua, especially in the southern region, is PSN, including the expanding rice and sugarcane plantations,” Mike said on April 2.
“We are witnessing massive deforestation.”
Different terms?
According to a forest department report, only about 166,000 hectares of forest were cleared between January and September 2025.
Minister’s spokesman Ristianto Pribadi said jakarta post In its report on April 2, deforestation refers to the permanent conversion of forested areas to non-forested areas, as defined by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Without mentioning Origa, Cristianto claimed that some independent analyzes often count temporary losses of tree cover, such as crop rotation and harvesting, as deforestation.
While such methods can provide insights into forest conditions, they “also run the risk of overestimating or underestimating the data” without reference to the IPCC’s established definitions, he said.
Dedi Sukmara, director of data and information at Auriga, refuted the accusation, saying the indicators used by STADI 2025 do not include crop rotation or harvesting. Instead, he said data related to duplicate land clearings was intentionally excluded to avoid double counting.
Dedi added that because determining whether a piece of land has been permanently converted requires at least three years of observation, some deforested areas may not be recorded in official data in time.
Whatever definition is 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 last November’s Sumatra disaster, when cyclones and landslides in three northern provinces caused widespread damage, including more than 1,000 deaths and the displacement of more than 500,000 people.
Environmentalists blame rampant deforestation across the island for exacerbating disaster risks.
The disaster also prompted the government to launch investigations into companies that may have exacerbated the damage, ultimately stripping 28 companies from various industries of their business licenses.
Spokesman Christianto said the forestry department would continue to “evaluate all strategic plans” and “ensure that their implementation does not neglect forest protection.”
