Indonesia to withdraw forestry permits after deadly Sumatra floods

(MENAFN) Indonesia will revoke more than 20 forestry permits across the country, Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni announced Monday, following deadly floods and landslides that devastated parts of northwestern Sumatra. Environmentalists and experts have highlighted the role of deforestation in worsening flash floods and landslides, which killed over 1,000 people this month.

The government will cancel 22 forestry permits covering more than one million hectares, Antoni told reporters. Over 100,000 hectares of the revoked permits were located on Sumatra, although the minister did not explicitly link the decision to the recent disaster. He noted that with this move, around 1.5 million hectares of forests have now been regulated, following an earlier revocation of permits covering roughly 500,000 hectares in February.

Forests play a critical role in absorbing rainfall and stabilizing soil, and their absence increases vulnerability to floods and landslides. Antoni previously said the disaster provided an opportunity to “evaluate our policies,” acknowledging that “the pendulum between the economy and ecology seems to have swung too far towards the economy and needs to be pulled back to the centre.”

Indonesia consistently ranks among the countries with the highest annual forest loss. Mining, plantations, and fires have cleared extensive tracts of rainforest in recent decades. In 2024 alone, over 240,000 hectares of primary forest were lost, according to The TreeMap’s Nusantara Atlas project.

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