In the West Papuan regency of Merauke, close to the border with Papua New Guinea, Indonesia is rapidly clearing land in the world’s largest ever deforestation project: three million hectares for sugarcane and rice production. Within three years, Indonesia plans to convert an expanse of forest roughly the size of Belgium into profitable monoculture. The ambition and destructiveness of the development distinguish it from previous mining or agribusiness initiatives in West Papua, which has been under Indonesian occupation since the 1960s.
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Since formalising its control of West Papua in a fraudulent 1969 referendum, Indonesia has carried out genocidal military assaults – up to a quarter of West Papuans have been killed under occupation – and ‘transmigration’ settlement programmes that have reduced the Indigenous population to a minority.

In the nine months since he took office, Indonesia’s new president, Prabowo Subianto, has both restarted the transmigration programme and accelarated deforestation in West Papua. Widodo designated Merauke a ‘National Strategic Project’ (PSN), giving the state eminent domain powers to expel civilians. Fifty thousand Indigenous Papuans face displacement over the project’s lifespan; already, people are finding vast tracts of their customary land have been closed to them, with wooden stakes signalling the expropriation by the Indonesian military.

The human costs of the PSN, while severe, are eclipsed by its possible environmental consequences. The destruction of Merauke is set to release over 780 million additional tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, more than doubling Indonesia’s yearly emissions and leading to irreversible ecosystem collapse in one of the world’s most biodiverse regions. Officials have pressed on with the development while trying to conceal its impact. The energy minister, Bahlil Lahadalia, in charge of parcelling out land to developers, has claimed there is ‘no forest in the middle of Merauke ... only eucalyptus, swamps and savannahs’. But though the sago and paperbark mangroves that cover much of the Merauke landscape may appear sparse from above, they store up to 381 tons of carbon per hectare – a higher concentration than the Amazon rainforest.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/august/the-world-s-largest-deforestation-project