Indonesia’s climate disasters intensify as environmental reforms stagnate under president prabowo subianto

Indonesia ended 2025 grappling with a sobering contradiction: while climate-related disasters grow increasingly severe, the country’s environmental policies have remained virtually stagnant during President Prabowo Subianto’s inaugural year in office. The archipelago nation continues its heavy reliance on fossil fuels and environmentally destructive industries, including palm oil production and mining operations.

The stark reality of this policy inaction became tragically apparent in November 2025, when one of Indonesia’s deadliest natural disasters in recent memory devastated Sumatra. Days of torrential rainfall triggered catastrophic flooding and landslides across three provinces—Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra—claiming numerous lives and displacing thousands of residents.

Environmental scientists and advocacy groups emphasize that these disasters shouldn’t be dismissed as isolated natural events. Instead, they represent the predictable consequences of decades of poor land management, inadequate energy planning, and weak governance. Deforestation, unchecked industrial expansion, and lax oversight of development permits have systematically stripped away natural flood defenses across the island.

Leonard Simanjuntak, Greenpeace’s Indonesia country director, describes the Sumatra catastrophe as a “hard warning” that the nation’s environmental limits have reached a critical breaking point. Current land-use regulations still permit legal deforestation of crucial water-absorbing areas, including river catchments, upstream forests, and steep slopes that serve as natural barriers against extreme weather events. Despite multiple warning signs throughout 2025, government response has remained largely unchanged, leaving Indonesia increasingly vulnerable to future climate disasters.