VOLUME 2

Welcome to Indonesia at a Crossroads newsletter!

This week is special because we are welcoming new members: the former subscribers of my Voice of Papua newsletter. Back in 2020, my friends and I, from both West Papua and Australia, started that newsletter to focus on West Papua issues. This year, I decided to broaden the scope to cover not only West Papua but Indonesia as a whole, inspired by the recent election that saw Prabowo elected as the new president.

I aim to publish this newsletter at least every two weeks. However, during especially busy times with significant breaking news, you may receive it weekly. Just like today. Despite the expanded focus, West Papua will continue to be discussed each month, with one week dedicated to covering its issues.

To celebrate the new subscribers, let's begin with the update from West Papua and then Indonesia in COP 29 conference.

Glacier and Environmental Crisis in West Papua — A Race Against Time

Equipped in climbing gear and a hydration vest, Brazilian ultrarunner Fernanda Maciel was seen speeding toward the finish line. When she finally reached it, the Red Bull team, main sponsor, celebrated with joyful cheers. The reason: she had broken a record 4,884 meters above sea level on the highest island summit in Oceania — Carstensz Pyramid.

It took her just 1 hour and 48 minutes to summit and return to base camp, setting the fastest known time for this mountain. What an achievement!

Carstensz, also known as Puncak Jaya, is one of the Seven Summits of the world. Typically, climbers take an average of 13 hours to complete the ascent and descent. This cold, rocky mountain, known for its extreme elevation and steep slopes, is famous for the glacier at its peak — a feature that, unfortunately, is predicted to vanish within a few years.

The Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) at the Moses Kilangin Meteorological Station in Mimika Regency, Central Papua Province, has predicted that the snow on the Jayawijaya Summit will disappear by 2026.

The BMKG found that the snow on top of the mountain has shrunk by about 0.11 square kilometers since 2022, leaving just 0.16 square kilometers remaining. The combination of rainfall, heat from the rocks, and climate change are believed to cause the aggressive melting process.

Puncak Jaya and the Grasberg mine owned by PT Freeport Indonesia are located in the same mountain range, as reported by Kompas. Although the article didn’t explicitly state that the mine contributes to the heat around the mountain, it raises a question about whether the atmosphere is correlated with the mining activity or not. What do you think?

But the melted glacier is just the tip of the iceberg of the climate catastrophe facing the West Papua region — a bigger problem that may be overlooked by a sports event. This is what I fear most every time there’s a sporting event or festival held in Puncak Jaya or other parts of West Papua. I am very supportive of any sporting event, but what concerns me is that these events might normalize or distract from the real issues in the region.

Instead of seeing the melting glacier as evidence of a climate catastrophe, I fear it will be seen merely as a dramatic, nostalgic scene — a fleeting experience of snow, like the kind seen at the North Pole during Christmas. The difference, however, is that this snow will never return. This phenomenon could be viewed as the commodification of the adventurous, breathtaking beauty of West Papua, turning it into a spectacle while the real environmental issues go unaddressed. And the environmental problems in West Papua are very real.

Starting from the location of Puncak Jaya, the Grasberg mine hides its own environmental problems. In 2019, Mongabay reported that when the Indonesian government took a controlling stake in the operator of one of the world’s richest gold mines at the end of 2018, Indonesia inherited a long legacy of toxic pollution from the mine. The source of this pollution came from the mining waste and tailings that have been produced for decades.

Moving from Puncak Jaya, Merauke, the neighboring regency, has recently become a headline for its Food Estate saga involving investors like the notorious Indonesian “Crazy Rich” from Borneo, Haji Isam. The problem is that this project lacks an Environmental Impact Assessment (AMDAL) and has the potential to significantly increase carbon emissions due to the vast amount of forest that will be cleared to make way for sugarcane plantations and rice fields.

Recent studies from the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) reveal that Indonesia plans to clear 2 million hectares of forest for a mega food estate project in Merauke. This could potentially create a surge in carbon emissions amounting to 782.45 million tons of CO₂, equivalent to a carbon loss of Rp 47.73 trillion. As a result of the food estate project in Merauke, Indonesia is likely to fall short of its Net Zero Emission target by 5 to 10 years, which is set for 2050.

I did my own conversion of the 782,450,000 tons of CO₂ in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)calculator and the result is shocking. This is equivalent to greenhouse gas emission from:

• 165,570,805 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year

• 95,327,556 homes' energy use for one year

• 1,643,398,796 barrels of oil consumed

• 187 coal-fired power plants in one year

• 250,822,144 tons of waste recycled instead of landfilled

Just a reminder that the Merauke forest had already been cleared previously for palm oil plantations. Even before the announcement of the Food Estate project, the region ranked first in deforestation in Papua, as reported by Auriga Nusantara and the Independent Forest Monitoring Network (JPIK) in 2022.

Auriga’s report revealed that Papua has the largest tropical forest in Indonesia, covering 38 million hectares. This forest area makes up 91.12% of Papua’s land. From 2001 to 2019 alone, 663,443 hectares of the forest was cleared due to deforestation.

Merauke broke the record for deforestation in Papua, with 120,000 hectares of forest cleared, or 18% of the total deforestation in the province. Most of this deforestation occurred in concessions for extractive industries, such as palm oil plantations.

Now, the region has to bear the brunt of further deforestation for the food estate project, with the government cracking down on the protesters.

The indigenous community in Merauke has faced significant intimidation and psychological terror in response to their protests against the Food Estate project. Tabloid Jubi reported:

• A group of soldiers reportedly searched for Simon Balagaize, an indigenous leader who tried to stop the company’s activity, and threatened him with harm if they found him.

• Ariston Moyuwend, another indigenous leader, also shared that his relative, who requested that the company not enter the sacred land of the Malind indigenous community and tried to stop the excavator from operating on their ancestral land, was threatened by security forces.

• Intelligence agents have been closely monitoring meetings and discussions related to the project, making it difficult for indigenous leaders to freely express their concerns.

• Security forces have also restricted community activities, such as hunting and gathering food, by imposing time limits and curbing their freedom.

The Merauke Solidarity Group, representing the indigenous communities of Malind, Makleuw, Yei, and Khimaima, who are affected by the project, has officially submitting their complaint to DPD (Regional Representative Council) mentioning in the letter that “this project violates the serious human rights of the indigenous Papuans and causes environmental destruction.”

But above all, it’s a case of the same old, same old with the transition of the government, from Joko Widodo to Prabowo Subianto, in handling the environmental problems in West Papua.

Let’s keep our eye on the case in this newsletter over the next five years.

COP29: The illusion of Carbon Credits Market?

While the eastern part of Indonesia is experiencing a climate catastrophe, instead of doing everything to stop deforestation, Indonesia is busy promoting the carbon credits at the COP 29 conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. President Prabowo appointed his brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, an Indonesian businessman and philanthropist, as a special envoy and head of the national delegation at the conference.

Subscribe to read more.

Cheers,

Indonesia at a Crossroads team