Reporter Tempo.co March 4, 2025 | 11:37 pm

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Twenty-two Indonesian civil society organizations have sent a letter to European Union Commissioners to express their concerns over the worsening condition of Papua’s rainforests. The region faces the threat of the deforestation of 2 million hectares of forest, alongside increasing risks to the Indigenous Malind and Yei communities.

The letter was addressed to Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice President for a Clean, Fair, and Competitive Transition; Kaja Kallas, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission; Jessica Roswall, Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience, and the Competitive Circular Economy; Jozef Síkela, Commissioner for International Partnerships; and Maroš Šefovi, Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security, Interinstitutional Relations, and Transparency.

According to the press release received today, March 4, the civil society organizations urge the European Commission to seriously consider the deforestation crisis and threats to Indigenous rights in Papua as part of its country risk assessment within the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) benchmarking system. Under this scheme, the EU will classify countries or regions as low, standard, or high risk for deforestation and human rights violations, with classifications to be determined before June 30, 2025.

Article 29 of the EUDR states that the risk assessment must take into account deforestation rates and agricultural land expansion. Furthermore, Article 29(4)(d) requires the European Commission to consider the existence of laws protecting human rights, Indigenous rights, anti-corruption measures, and transparency in data necessary to comply with the EUDR.

“We urge the European Commission to ensure that Article 29(4)(d) is applied consistently and strictly across all countries and regions, including West Papua. Without a rigorous approach to forest and Indigenous rights protection, the EUDR framework risks failing to achieve its goal of preventing deforestation and human rights violations in global supply chains,” said Andi Muttaqien, Executive Director of Satya Bumi, in the press release.

A report previously submitted to the European Commission in 2024—supported by more than 30 Indonesian civil society organizations—clearly outlined how the expansion of large-scale plantations in Papua threatens both ecosystem sustainability and the rights of Indigenous communities who depend on the forests. Papua holds one of the largest remaining reserves of natural forests designated for plantation industries in Indonesia, covering more than 2 million hectares, 1.9 million of which are allocated solely for palm oil and timber commodities.

For this reason, the organizations urging the European Union to ensure that the risk classification under the EUDR benchmarking scheme reflects the vulnerability of Papua to deforestation, aligning with the realities on the ground.

Franky Samperante, Director of the Pusaka Bentala Rakyat Foundation, emphasized that forest clearing in Papua clearly violates the rights of Indigenous communities living within and around plantation concessions, particularly the Malind and Yei peoples.

“The European Union must consider the destruction of livelihoods, the economic dispossession, and the social fragmentation occurring in several districts in South Papua, including the intimidation by military and police forces. Europe’s clean consumption should not only be free from deforestation but also free from the destruction of human dignity,” he said.

The large-scale deforestation project in Papua designates 1.5 million hectares for rice fields and 500,000 hectares for sugarcane plantations. Although these two commodities are not included in the EUDR, there is a risk that timber from forest clearing could enter the European market. Furthermore, deforestation potential should be assessed based on the total forest area cleared—not just the seven commodities covered by the EUDR.

Research conducted by Satya Bumi and others shows that the maximum sustainable plantation area for oil palm in Indonesia, based on the country’s Environmental Carrying Capacity, is 18.1 million hectares. Currently, Indonesia’s oil palm plantations cover 17.7 million hectares. With President-elect Prabowo Subianto’s ambition to open 20 million hectares of land for food and energy plantations, Papua—Indonesia’s largest remaining natural forest—faces the risk of rapid deforestation.

“Papua is a distinctive region and its protection is crucial. Our modeling results indicate that the cap for oil palm development in Papua is 290,837 hectares. Currently, oil palm plantation development has reached 290,659 hectares, meaning it has already reached the cap. The EU Commission should carefully assess this situation when considering benchmarking”, said Giorgio Budi Indrarto, Deputy Director of Yayasan MADANI Berkelanjutan, in the same release.

The European Commission must maximize the use of the EUDR to halt deforestation and protect Indigenous communities. This letter specifically calls on the EU to:

1. Prioritize the risk of deforestation in Papua related to food and energy plantations, including the lack of community involvement, which constitutes a potential human rights violation.
2. Request the UN Human Rights Council and other relevant bodies to investigate whether the situation in West Papua constitutes a violation of Indonesia’s international human rights obligations.
3. Support Indonesia in finding sustainable ways to enhance food and energy security, including increasing agricultural productivity on existing land, reducing food waste, and prioritizing the use of degraded land for expansion.

Author: Júlia Fortuny

“West Papua Is Not an Empty Land”

This article is based on insights shared by Dorthea Wabiser, a young Indigenous researcher at Yayasan Pusaka Bentala Rakyat (PUSAKA), who I had the privilege of speaking with about her work defending the rights of Indigenous communities in West Papua and the environmental challenges they face. Throughout the article, you’ll find Dorthea’s personal experiences and perspectives as she leads the fight for her people’s ancestral lands.

West Papua, a region of immense cultural diversity and breathtaking natural beauty, is also home to deep-rooted challenges: ongoing human rights violations, environmental degradation, and a long legacy of colonial and governmental oppression. Few people illustrate this tension more poignantly than Ms. Dorthea Wabiser, a young Indigenous researcher at Yayasan Pusaka Bentala Rakyat—an Indonesian civil society organisation committed to defending Indigenous peoples’ rights and the environment.

Today, as the Indonesian government proposes opening more than two million hectares for the Merauke Food and Energy Development project, the urgency of Dorthea’s work—and that of her organisation—has never been clearer.

A Childhood Shaped by Activism

Born and raised in Jayapura, West Papua, Dorthea’s parents were both activists deeply involved in fighting against human rights violations in different regions of Indonesia. Her father, originally from Byak Island and now based in Timika, has long advocated for communities impacted by the waste of Freeport mining operations in the region where he now lives. Her mother, hailing from the Yali tribe of the Papuan Highlands, has fought passionately for women’s rights and against human rights violations derived from the Independence movement. Growing up surrounded by stories of injustice and witnessing them firsthand set Dorthea on a path of activism early on.

“Living under oppression in West Papua, you feel how they try to shut your voices when you want to say something, you see every day the human rights violations, you experience the racism, the discrimination” she recalls, pointing out that this discrimination was also present when she moved from Jayapura to Bandung, in Java, for school, where she also felt the prejudice as a West Papuan.

Growing up in an activist family inspired Dorthea to follow a similar path, leading her to study International Relations and write her thesis on conflict resolution in West Papua. But her passion for activism and human rights advocacy began even earlier. During her school years, Dorthea created YouTube videos analysing current events and highlighting social injustices in West Papua. One of these videos eventually connected her with Yayasan Pusaka Bentala Rakyat, the civil society organisation where she now works.

 PUSAKA’s mission to protect Indigenous peoples’ rights and the environment resonated with Dorthea’s core values. After briefly considering a job offer from a large gas company, she realised it conflicted with her principles. “It’s against my morals,” she explains. Seeking a path that resonated with her beliefs, she was drawn to PUSAKA, as its values reflected not only her own but also the lessons she observed through her parents’ work. Joining the organisation felt like a meaningful step toward fulfilling her purpose.

Protecting Indigenous Rights and Cultures in Southern West Papua

Currently based in Jakarta, where PUSAKA’s head office is located, Dorthea works as a researcher, documenting Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and the communities’ resilience confronting the climate crisis in West Papua. She specifically focuses on protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples in the southern part of the region, covering Merauke, Boven Digoel, and Mappi, where large-scale deforestation poses a serious threat. An example of this is a new 2-million-hectare food and energy project in an area of 4-million-hectare, recently declared a National Strategic Project (PSN). Backed by the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Agriculture, this initiative involves extensive land clearing for rice fields, sugarcane and bioethanol plantation, activities that violate ancestral territories.

 PUSAKA’s broader work involves research, advocacy, and capacity building to help local communities understand their legal rights and create security awareness, document environmental damage, and secure formal recognition of customary lands. Dorthea also supports communities’ efforts to“reconnect with nature”, challenging what she describes as the ways capitalism has weakened the relationship between Papuans and their environment.

Dorthea’s connection to the communities she works with is rooted in a deep emotional attachment to the land and its people. Raised in an Indigenous family, she was taught the value of knowledge transfer by her parents and grandparents. Emphasising the importance of preserving traditional knowledge, she recalls family gatherings at her grandparents’ home: “Every time we gather together in their home, my grandfather always tells stories about our culture”.

When she first entered the southern regions of West Papua for her work, she felt an immediate bond with the local people. “I always felt safe and happy there; it was like healing,” she reflects. Through her research, Dorthea has become part of the communities she helps, learning their languages and cultures as she documents their traditional knowledge. Her relationship with the people is one of mutual trust and respect. “When I enter a new community, I know these are my people,” she says. “Even though we come from different backgrounds, they take care of me, and I feel safe.“

Challenging the “Empty Land” Narrative: Affirming the Rights and Presence of Indigenous Communities in West Papua

One of the core challenges Dorthea and PUSAKA confront is the government’s narrative that frames Papua as an “empty land”, void of people or culture. This false narrative aims to justify large-scale exploitation of the region’s resources, ignoring the thriving Indigenous communities who have lived on the land for centuries. In response, Papuan civil society organisations and grassroots communities launched the campaign “West Papua Is Not an Empty Land,” with support from organisations like PUSAKA. The campaign aims to highlight the presence of thriving Indigenous communities with distinct cultures, languages, and ancestral ties to these forests. For this, Dorthea has engaged in research in the affected villages to document and showcase the richness of the land. This includes crafting an inventory of local animals and plants meticulously recorded in the tribe’s original languages, as well as in Indonesian and Latin. Through this work, she highlights the vibrant life, human culture and history that the government’s “empty land” narrative tries to erase.

Translator Najla Nur Fauziyah 

Editor Petir Garda Bhwana 

24 July 2024 10:26 WIB

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – President Joko Widodo or Jokowi visited Sermayam Village, Tanah Miring District, Merauke Regency, South Papua Province, on Tuesday, July 23, 2024. During the visit, Jokowi stressed the government’s commitment to supporting sustainable initiatives in the fields of agriculture and the environment.

In Sermayam Village, Jokowi planted the first sugarcane at PT Global Papua Abadi (GPA). He also inspected several of the company’s existing facilities and infrastructure. These include tissue culture laboratories, sugarcane nurseries, sugarcane plantations, and conservation plant nurseries.

The Sermayam Sugarcane Plantation was a National Strategic Project to support the acceleration of national sugar self-sufficiency and bioethanol as biofuel. The plantation managed by PT Global Papua Abadi covers 506 hectares of land with an investment value of Rp53.8 trillion.

The Presidential Secretariat, in a written statement, said that the food and energy sector will also be the focus of President-elect Prabowo Subianto’s administration. 

Jokowi said sugarcane planting was a strategic step in responding to the global food crisis due to extreme climate change. “Food independence, food security, and food sovereignty must be prioritized,” said Jokowi.

The Sermayam Sugarcane Plantation Megaproject will build five sugar factories to process sugar cane. To support this, GPA built laboratory facilities at the nursery location, which supports research and tissue culture to produce sugarcane seeds and functions as a sugarcane research center.

The Sugarcane Seed Research and Laboratory Area in Sermayan research into the growth and development of sugarcane seed varieties from Australia. GPA collaborates with Sugar Research Australia and P3GI (Indonesian Sugar Plantation Research Center) to obtain suitable seeds for development in Merauke.

Selected seeds are grown and propagated in the main garden in the GPA Plantation area in the Jagebob area which is expected to start operating in 2027. 

DANIEL A. FAJRI

by Hans Nicholas Jong, Sarjan Lahay on 19 June 2024

• Activists have warned of wide-ranging environmental and social impacts from a plan to establish 2 million hectares (nearly 5 million acres) of sugarcane plantations in Merauke district, in Indonesia’s Papua region.
• The plan calls for deforesting an area six times the size of Jakarta, even as the government touts the green credentials of the project in the form of the bioethanol that it plans to produce from the sugar.
• Activists have also warned that the project risks becoming yet another land grab that deprives Indigenous Papuans of their customary lands and rights without fair compensation.
• They add the warning signs are all there, including close parallels to similarly ambitious projects that failed, the alleged involvement of palm oil firms, and government insistences that this richly forested region of Indonesia doesn’t have much forest left.

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government plans to establish 2 million hectares, or nearly 5 million acres, of sugarcane plantations in the eastern region of Papua, home to the last great expanse of rainforest in Southeast Asia.

The country’s investment minister, Bahlil Lahadalia, said the land, spanning an area 30 times the size of Jakarta, was available in Merauke district. He denied that this biodiverse landscape constituted “natural forest,” and justified clearing it in the interest of weaning Indonesia off sugar imports entirely by 2027. The government also has plans to develop cane-derived bioethanol as part of its transition away from fossil fuels.

“Our country is one of the world’s largest in size. But [when] sugar price increases, we always import. We keep importing [sugar],” Bahlil said in Jakarta on April 29.

Bahlil leads a task force formed by President Joko Widodo to allocate land for the project and streamline the licensing process for interested companies. To date, five consortiums, consisting of Indonesian and foreign companies, are confirmed to be participating in the 130 trillion rupiah ($7.9 billion) project, with roles ranging from developing sugarcane plantations and processing mills, to building the power plants to run them.

One of the first orders of business is to rezone 419,000 hectares ( million acres) of forested area, six times the size of Jakarta, into non-forest area, thereby allowing it to be deforested — legally. In South Papua province alone, this amounts to 25,654 hectares (63,392 acres) of intact forest that’s been approved for clearing, according to Auriga Nusantara, an environmental NGO.

“These 25,654 hectares of natural forests are likely to disappear because the areas have been rezoned,” said Auriga campaigner Hilman Afif.

The large-scale deforestation to make way for sugarcane plantations will be at the expense of wildlife habitat and biodiversity, said Dini Hardiani Has, a forest management lecturer at Satya Terra Bhinneka University in North Sumatra. Papua’s rainforests are also among the most biodiverse on Earth, home to at least 20,000 plant, 602 bird, 125 mammal and 223 reptile species.

“Species which need vast habitats to migrate, look for food and mate will be affected,” Dini said. “The wildlife will also compete [with each other for food] if their habitats are shrinking.”

‘Consent’ in the presence of security forces

Activists have also raised concerns about the impact on Indigenous Papuans, many of whom remain highly dependent on forests for their livelihoods, and who, as a group, have often been sidelined from consultation on development projects. This is expected to be the case with the sugarcane project too, given that it’s been designated a project of strategic national importance, which under Indonesian law gives the government eminent domain rights to evict entire communities, including Indigenous groups.

Franky Samperante, director of the Pusaka Foundation, an NGO that works with Indigenous peoples in Papua, said the Indigenous communities should be involved in the decision-making process, and not just notified after the fact.

He said that while some of the companies in the participating consortiums had begun negotiating with Indigenous communities over the land acquisition process in 2023, they were accompanied by security forces — an intimidating sign in a region where the Indonesian state has for decades maintained a heavy military and police presence ostensibly to combat a low-level insurgency.

This means that even if the communities agreed at these meetings to sell or lease their lands for the project, they did so without their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), Franky said. As such, he added, there’s the potential that this project, like many others before it, is displacing Indigenous peoples from their lands and robbing them of their rights.

Petrus Kaize, a member of the Kaize clan in Merauke, told local media that his people were among those that hadn’t struck an agreement with the developers of the sugarcane project. In 2012, a company approached the clan and offered them 2 billion rupiah ($214,000 at the time), he said. Petrus described this payment as a form of tali asih, a local term used to show goodwill, rather than the actual payment for the lease of the clan’s lands.

“At that time, there were verbal discussions [about the lease of the lands with the company], but there’s no written agreement yet,” Petrus told local media.

Bahlil said the government and the project developers would ensure the protection of the Indigenous peoples’ rights, including their FPIC and fair compensation rights. He also said they would benefit from the plantations through the profit-sharing scheme known as plasma, in which a fifth of the plantation area would be allocated to community smallholders. These farmers would receive training and support from the plantation companies, which would also buy their harvests at a guaranteed price.

But the plasma promise is just that — a promise — according to Greenpeace Indonesia forest campaigner Nicodemus Wamafma, citing the long history of the scheme’s failure to benefit communities.

Despite the plasma scheme being mandatory for plantation companies operating in Indonesia, a 2022 investigation by Mongabay, BBC News and The Gecko Project revealed that numerous palm oil companies are stiffing local communities in plasma schemes throughout Indonesia. The investigation estimated that Indonesian villagers are losing out on hundreds of millions of dollars each year because palm oil producers are failing to comply with the plasma scheme, with villagers not receiving the profits they were promised and falling deeper into debt.

That means there’s no guarantee the plasma scheme will work as intended in the sugarcane project, Nicodemus said.

“Indigenous peoples in Merauke aren’t used to work that requires intensive labor, including managing sugarcane plantations,” he told local media.

The choice of sugarcane rather than food crops that are native to Papua also underscores the government’s lack of consideration for the rights and cultures of Indigenous peoples in the planning of the project, said Primus Peuki, director of the Papuan chapter of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).

“Why should it be sugarcane? The tribes of Marind, Mandobo and Awyu [in South Papua] don’t eat sugarcane. They eat sago. They still live with nature, hunting [in the forests] and fishing in the rivers,” he told local media.

Blueprint for a failed project

Then there’s the question of whether the sugarcane project will turn into yet another boondoggle like many before it. Merauke district was the site of a similar megaproject, the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), initiated by Widodo’s predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in 2011 to turn the district into the “future breadbasket of Indonesia.”

The MIFEE project was earmarked for rice and sugarcane plantations to shore up national food security — the same justifications being touted by Widodo administration officials today. But within just three years of the project’s launch, most of the concessions granted by the government were planted with commodity crops meant for export, such as oil palm and pulpwood, belying the claim that the estate would boost domestic supplies of food crops. Permits issued for sugarcane plantations in the MIFEE site were instead planted with oil palms.

Besides being used as cover to establish oil palm and pulpwood plantations, the MIFEE project also became a “textbook land grab,” activists say. Under the project, companies acquired large swaths of customary lands without FPIC and without providing adequate compensation to communities.

Activists also blamed the project for the more than 11,000 fire hotspots detected there in 2015 as a result of burning to clear vegetation — a common practice in the palm oil industry in Sumatra and Borneo.

The failure of the MIFEE should have sent the government a clear message to not force large-scale plantation projects in Papua, Nicodemus said.

“Previous food estate projects run by the government have proven to fail and cause unmitigated disasters, like the mega rice project [in Borneo], the MIFEE, and the cassava food estate project [in Borneo],” he said.

However, Bahlil, the investment minister, blamed the failure of the MIFEE project on the fact that its developers planted seeds unsuited to the soil in Merauke. He said the government had learned from past mistakes and wouldn’t repeat them again.

He also labelled those who critics the sugarcane project as being anti-development.

“There are groups or other countries that don’t want Indonesia to develop. Do you know how many sugars do we import? 5 tons,” Bahlil said during a press conferenceon June 7. “What will this country become if there are people who already protest [us] anytime we want to develop something for our own needs?”

The long shadow of palm oil

Activists say it’s doubtful lessons are being learned, citing the palm oil affiliations of at least one of the companies now involved in the Merauke sugarcane project, and the fact that the seeds being planted now still aren’t native to Papua.

PT Global Papua Abadi (GPA) is one of the companies that’s already started planting seeds on its concession in Merauke. The seeds in question were imported from Australia and will take an estimated 11 months to grow to maturity. GPA ultimately plans to produce 2.6 million metric tons of sugar per year.

The company, established in 2012, had approached the Indigenous Marind tribe in Merauke as early as 2014, according to a 2022 report on the sugarcane industry in eastern Indonesia by the NGO EcoNusa. Official notary act shows that the majority of GPA’s shares (99.9%) are owned by a company called PT Mega Makmur Semesta, which in turn is owned by individuals identified as Sulaidy and Hui Tin.

Sulaidy has been linked multiple times to the billionaire Fangiono family, which owns one of the world’s largest palm oil producers, First Resources. A recent investigation published by The Gecko Project, a London-based investigative journalism outlet, found corporate records that pointed to a string of long-running connections between Sulaidy and the Fangionos.

GPA’s notary act also listed an individual identified as Angelia B. Sudirman as the only director of the company. Franky of Pusaka said Angelia is believed to be a member of the Fangiono family.

This indicates that GPA might be a part of First Resources, which has a history of clearing rainforests for oil palm plantations, he said.

First Resources has been linked to plantation company PT Ciliandry Anky Abadi (CAA), which cleared orangutan habitat in Central Kalimantan, a province on the island of Borneo. CAA’s subsidiaries also allegedly cleared hundreds of hectares of rainforests in the district of Sorong in Southwest Papua province in 2022.

In 2023, CAA was the single biggest palm oil deforester in Indonesia, clearing 2,302 hectares (5,688 acres) across its concessions, according to an analysis by technology consultancy TheTreeMap.

In a statement in 2018, First Resources denied having links to CAA, saying the company is not a subsidiary, associated company, or related party of First Resources, and that First Resources doesn’t have any financial or operational relationship with CAA.

However, Franky said First Resources’ long history of alleged ties to deforesting palm oil operators should have prompted the government to be more cautious about involving GPA in the sugarcane project.

“The government should be more diligent and evaluate the companies [involved] because they  don’t obey [environmental standards],” he said.

Responding to the allegations, First Resources said it had no affiliations with GPA.

“First Resources’ principal activities are within the palm oil sector, with operations across Riau, East Kalimantan, and West Kalimantan provinces of Indonesia. We would like to clarify that PT Global Papua Abadi is not a subsidiary of and has no relations with First Resources,” the company told Mongabay.

‘No forests to clear’

Deforestation for government programs like the Merauke sugarcane project is part of the larger “food estate” project announced by President Widodo in 2020, where large-scale forest clearing is legitimized under the cover of strategic national importance.

Among the “food hubs” designated under the project are the Papuan districts of Merauke, Mappi and Boven Digoel, where a combined 2.7 million hectares (6.7 million acres) — an area almost the size of Belgium — of land has been identified as potential plantation areas.

The purported strategic importance of the food estate project essentially means that any deforestation for the sugarcane plantations in Merauke will have been designed and legitimized by the government, according to Anggi Putra Prayoga, a campaign manager at watchdog group Forest Watch Indonesia (FWI).

“Natural forests in Papua are deliberately destroyed to be converted into plantations, including sugarcane,” he said.

Furthermore, the sugarcane project and the food estate program are also further legitimized by being included in the government’s emission reduction strategy and climate policies, as the crops they produce will be also used as energy, such as bioethanol in the case of sugarcane, Anggi said.

I Getut Ketut Astawa, a deputy at the National Food Agency, said the government would mitigate the environmental impact of the sugarcane project by avoiding forested areas as much as possible. However, Bahlil, denied there was much natural forest left in Merauke, and that the sugarcane project’s environmental impact would thus be minimal.

“There’s no [natural forests] that we will clear,” Bahlil said. “In fact, the establishment of sugarcane [plantations] will create drainage to improve the environment. Unless, there’s still merbau trees, natural timbers and big vegetations. But there’s no such things [in Merauke]. So I think there’s no problem [of deforestation].”

Yet the fact is that Papua is home to 38% of Indonesia’s remaining rainforests, the largest in the country, and the third-largest swath of continuous tropical rainforest on Earth, after the Amazon and the Congo Basin. This amounts to 33.8 million hectares (83.5 million acres) of forests, an area the size of Florida.

Unlike the forests of Sumatra and Borneo, which have been largely depleted by the same industrial agricultural forces now eyeing Papua, the latter’s forests have remained largely intact due to its remoteness; the region’s largest city, Jayapura, is two time zones and more than five hours by plane from Jakarta. Furthermore, a dearth of infrastructure such as roads, electricity, telecommunications and piped water have long rendered the region the least developed and most impoverished in Indonesia.

Astawa said initiatives like the sugarcane project aim to address this. “The challenge lies in the distance [between Merauke and other parts of Indonesia],” he told Mongabay. “If there are already factories there, then [the supply chain] will be integrated. We just need to strengthen the distribution [to the rest of Indonesia].”