Cyclone Senyar was said to be the immediate trigger, but the deeper causes stretch far beyond one weather event: deforestation, river sedimentation, and the weakening of watershed buffer areas. The disasters reinforced how climate change and weak land governance can amplify risks—even in regions widely recognized as the heart of Indonesia’s palm oil production.
Root Causes: Complex and Reinforcing One Another
The ecological crisis that erupted at the end of 2025 did not happen in isolation. Forest clearing and land conversion for plantations and mining have drastically altered watershed systems. Meanwhile, uncontrolled settlement expansion and infrastructure development along riverbanks have further disrupted hydrological balance.
At the same time, climate change has worsened conditions. Rainfall variability is increasingly unpredictable, dry seasons last longer, and extreme weather events occur more frequently and with greater intensity. These challenges are compounded by limited disaster preparedness and low awareness among parts of the private sector and communities in protecting ecological landscape functions.
A New Paradigm: Environmental Intelligence
For years, disaster response in Indonesia has focused too heavily on recovery after events occur. But such an approach is clearly not enough, given the immense humanitarian and economic costs borne by the state and society.
Indonesia must shift toward a more proactive paradigm: Environmental Intelligence (EI) integrated with Integrated Watershed Management. These two pillars are not only essential for sustainable development, but also help the palm oil industry meet global standards in a more authentic way—beyond administrative compliance.
Environmental Intelligence can be understood as the capacity to gather, process, and filter environmental information to generate fast, accurate, and evidence-based decisions. Supported by advanced technology, EI combines real-time data, predictive modeling, and IoT sensors to monitor ecological risks and forecast potential disasters before they unfold.
Automated weather stations, river water-level sensors, and satellite imagery can detect early warning signs, such as rising river discharge or emerging deforestation hotspots. Further, machine learning models can map flood- and landslide-prone areas with increasing accuracy. As a result, interventions can be carried out earlier—before disasters escalate.
EI also plays a key role in strengthening Environmental Impact Assessments (AMDAL), ensuring the process is no longer treated as a document formality, but is built on comprehensive and verifiable data.
Integrated Watershed Management: The Foundation of Landscape Resilience
Beyond Environmental Intelligence, integrated watershed management is a non-negotiable requirement. Watersheds are not merely water channels, but ecological systems that store water reserves, sustain biodiversity, and reduce flood impacts. They support agriculture, transportation, and daily community life.
However, many watersheds are now in critical condition due to pollution, deforestation, and development along riverbanks. Restoration cannot be partial. It requires a connected chain of actions: upstream reforestation, wetland rehabilitation, land-use control, and investment in green infrastructure.
When managed through cross-government, private sector, and community coordination, watershed systems become more stable—water flows are more regulated, sedimentation decreases, and flood and drought risks can be significantly reduced.
The Role of Stakeholders
Building ecological resilience through EI and integrated watershed management is not a one-party job—it is a shared responsibility.
First, government must lead through strong policies, strict environmental law enforcement, and investments in monitoring networks. Since watersheds cross administrative boundaries, the central and provincial governments play a crucial role in orchestration. EI can also enable early warning systems to predict fires, droughts, floods in palm oil regions, and peatland degradation.
Second, the private sector has a strategic role through sustainable land-use practices, monitoring environmental impacts, and supporting disaster risk reduction. Businesses must recognize that operations cannot be separated from the watersheds in which they operate. Protecting river buffer zones is no longer merely about certification compliance (ISPO, ISCC, RSPO), but an investment in long-term sustainability for business, communities, and the planet.
With EI, companies can identify high-risk areas, prevent violations before they happen, and ensure suppliers meet global standards through stronger traceability.
Third, communities play a role in protecting local landscapes, spreading early warning information, and safeguarding natural resources. True resilience always grows from the grassroots—when people have knowledge, tools, and space for participation.
Fourth, individuals also matter. Everyday decisions—from licensing processes and plantation management to simple habits like waste disposal—directly impact ecosystem health and watershed quality.
Government Orchestration for a More Resilient Palm Oil Sector
The 2025 disasters in Sumatra should accelerate Indonesia’s push for real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and more disciplined environmental governance—especially for palm oil, a leading commodity constantly scrutinized by importing countries, particularly the European Union through the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
Indonesia must build an integrated platform for geospatial monitoring of land use and deforestation, while also developing a National Environmental Intelligence System. Such a platform could connect BRIN, BIG, the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Forestry, ATR/BPN, and the Ministry of Agriculture into a continuously running data ecosystem.
With such a system, changes in land cover, deforestation hotspots, fire risks, and peatland conditions can be consistently monitored. This is not only vital for national resource governance, but also for meeting global requirements such as EUDR, which demands precise geolocation and deforestation-free verification for commodities entering the EU market.
More Competitive Sustainable Palm Oil
If Environmental Intelligence is implemented seriously, Indonesia will not only adapt to global demands—but lead the transformation toward more responsible palm oil.
Several strategic benefits can be achieved:
Ultimately, Environmental Intelligence is more than a technological tool. It is a new language of sustainable development—uniting government, companies, and smallholders under one mission: building Indonesia’s palm oil industry to be more competitive, responsible, and environmentally sound. (*)
