Sumatra Floods Expose Indonesia's Climate Failures, Greenpeace Tells Prabowo

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The floods and landslides in Sumatra signify two things: the unavoidable impact of the climate crisis and the long-standing environmental destruction. The extensive disasters in Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra should serve as the final warning for President Prabowo Subianto's administration to improve forest and environmental management policies and commit to climate action wholeheartedly.

In a press release on December 2, 2025, Greenpeace Indonesia emphasized that extreme rainfall will continue to pose a threat as a result of the climate crisis. As a country vulnerable to disasters due to its archipelagic nature, the government should not only perceive the impact of the climate crisis as mere statistics but also realize its life-threatening consequences.

Therefore, Greenpeace insists on the need for ambitious climate actions and targets. The government, it stated, can no longer rely on mitigation and adaptation efforts that only exist on paper.

"There must be no more false solutions in national climate policies," Greenpeace declared, while also adding, "Now is the right time to correct the direction of national policies to no longer favor a handful of people, but to benefit everyone."

The second factor amplifying the impact of the Sumatran floods is the destruction of forests and land conversion, including in the upstream areas of river basins (DAS). Greenpeace's analysis, referring to data from the Ministry of Forestry, found that between 1990-2024, many natural forests in North Sumatra were converted into plantations, dryland farming, and tree plantations. Similar situations occurred in Aceh and West Sumatra.

Overall, the majority of river basins in Sumatra are now critical - with natural forest coverage now less than 25 percent. "There are only 10-14 million hectares of natural forests left, which is less than 30 percent of Sumatra's total area of 47 million hectares," Greenpeace stated.

One severely damaged river basin is the Batang Toru River Basin, which covers the regencies of North Tapanuli, South Tapanuli, and Central Tapanuli. "One of the last tropical forests in North Sumatra is burdened with various permits for land-intensive industries - including the Batang Toru Hydroelectric Power Plant - which then clear forests and encroach on the habitat of Tapanuli orangutans," it added.

Greenpeace urged the government to seriously improve comprehensive land and forest management policies to save ecosystems and communities from the tragedy of climate disasters. But before that, the government must admit that they were wrong in their forest and land management, which led to the near depletion of Sumatra's forests, severe environmental degradation, and now the people of Sumatra must bear the extremely high cost of ecological disasters.

"Prabowo and some of his ministers have indeed mentioned deforestation, but they seem to imply that the forest damage in Sumatra is due to illegal logging," Greenpeace stated. However, according to them, deforestation actually occurred more extensively due to state legitimization from one administration to another.

"In addition to evaluating permits in Sumatra, the government must also stop destroying forests in other regions, such as Papua," Greenpeace referred to the forest destruction in Raja Ampat and other small islands burdened by nickel mining, as well as deforestation in Merauke for the ambition of energy and food self-sufficiency. "The 8 percent economic growth envisioned by Prabowo will not be achieved if the environment is damaged and climate disasters continue to threaten us," it concluded.

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