September 12, 2026 | 02:17 pm
Tens of thousands of hectares of Merauke’s food estate land are burned. The ambition for self-sufficiency brings disaster.
WHAT is the point of building food security if the way to achieve it makes a region increasingly vulnerable to disaster? The question has become more relevant after forest and land fires hit the government’s food self-sufficiency project area in Merauke, South Papua.
The indicative area burned in South Papua reached 95,000 hectares as of August 20, 2026, according to an analysis by the Madani Berkelanjutan Foundation. The figure is equivalent to 30 percent of the total area of forest and land burned in Indonesia through August. Half of the burned area was located within the food self-sufficiency project in Merauke.
The fires have caused a smoke disaster and health problems for local residents. At the same time, the fires have worsened deforestation that has been underway since land clearing for the project began in 2024. The government is targeting the clearing of up to 2 million hectares for the National Food, Energy, and Water Self-Sufficiency Area.
The scale of the fires should prompt the government to take serious action. Yet the response in Merauke has not been as serious as in Kalimantan and Sumatra. President Prabowo Subianto even went directly to the two islands on August 22-24, but has yet to give similar attention to Merauke.
The government needs to determine the cause of the fires. There is a possibility that the fires were deliberately started or triggered by hot and dry weather. If the fires were intentional, law enforcement authorities must investigate them as criminal acts. But if drought was the trigger, the government cannot use natural conditions as an excuse. The more fundamental question is why an area being cleared for a state project has become so vulnerable to fire.
Deforestation can alter the area’s water systems and ecological conditions and increase the risk of drought and fire. Therefore, the dry season accompanied by a strengthening El Niño since June 2026 should not be used as a pretext to ignore environmental changes caused by forest clearing.
Local residents have testified that fires around Kilometer 55 of the access road for the rice field development project allegedly originated from wood from land clearing that had been piled along the roadside. The fire then spread to standing trees around the project site.
If the testimony is proven true, the fires cannot be viewed solely as a result of drought. Land clearing has at least created conditions that allowed the fire to spread and magnified its impact. The government cannot wash its hands of a development policy that has increased such risks.
Even before the fires, the Merauke food estate project had triggered agrarian conflicts. Most of the targeted food production area consists of customary land. Indigenous communities have opposed the project because it threatens their living spaces.
These problems show that disaster risks do not always come from nature. Changes to the landscape caused by forest clearing can disrupt water systems and increase disaster risks during both dry and rainy seasons. Agrarian conflicts also show that the project’s impact goes beyond ecological damage.
The government should halt the rice field development project and forest clearing in Merauke until their ecological and social impacts have been comprehensively assessed. Food security must not be built at the expense of forests, the living spaces of indigenous communities, and the safety of residents.
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