JAKARTA — While most tropical countries experienced record-high deforestation rates in 2024, Indonesia’s forest loss is slowing, bucking a global trend. But beneath the headline figures lies a troubling mystery: Nearly half of the forest cleared last year can’t be linked to any identifiable driver, raising red flags about speculative land clearing, regulatory blind spots and delayed environmental harm. This uncertainty complicates supply chain accountability under laws like the EU Deforestation Regulation, and raises questions about who’s really clearing Indonesia’s forests — and why. In 2024, Indonesia lost 242,000 hectares (598,000 acres) of primary forest, down 14% from 279,000 hectares (689,000 acres) in 2023, according to an analysis by TheTreeMap, a technology consultancy behind the Nusantara Atlas forest monitoring platform. Annual Deforestation in Indonesia (2001-2024). Image courtesy of TheTreeMap. TheTreeMap used satellite and time-series imagery to attribute deforestation to known drivers. They are logging (18%), industrial oil palm (13%), pulpwood/timber plantations (6%), mining (5%), food estate projects (3%) and fires (2.3%). Together, these drivers explain just 47.3% of Indonesia’s 2024 primary forest loss — leaving the majority unattributed, which experts say reflects both data limitations and deeper governance failures. What explains this gap in attribution? A likely reason is that land is cleared but not immediately used. A study published in 2024 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that nearly half of all deforested land in Indonesia remained idle for at least five years — meaning it wasn’t converted to plantations, agriculture or any…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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