Amid the outpouring of public solidarity for the victims of floods and landslides in Sumatra, one development deserves close attention. The term “natural disaster,” long used to describe such events, is increasingly being questioned and replaced with a more political framing. This shift has gained significant traction on social media. Rather than calling these events natural disasters, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI) has adopted the term “ecological disaster,” emphasising that the tragedy is not merely the result of extreme rainfall, but the outcome of reckless forest governance policies.

Logs swept away by flash floods, landslides occurring across multiple locations, and the destruction of residential areas are clear indicators of massive landscape transformations. Changes of this scale do not occur without political decisions that open space for exploitation, followed by business activities that take advantage of it. In other words, ecological disasters are the result of a series of political choices—not simply acts of nature.

When such disasters strike, the state and corporations are often the primary targets of blame. These accusations are not unfounded. Yet a more important question must be asked: why does collaboration between the state and corporations in environmental destruction recur so persistently? Is this merely the result of individual greed, or is there a development logic that systematically drives limitless exploitation?

Data from Global Forest Watch shows that between 2001 and 2024, North Sumatra lost approximately 1.6 million hectares of forest cover, with 84 per cent closely linked to deforestation. Mining, oil palm plantations, logging, and energy projects are frequently cited as the main drivers. But if these business activities consistently lead to environmental damage, why does the state continue to issue concession permits? This question points us toward a more fundamental critique of the development model itself.

Many observers identify extractive business models as the main engine behind deforestation, reckless licensing regimes, and ultimately ecological disasters. Large-scale resource extraction in Indonesia has indeed been underway for decades. Paul K. Gellert (2010) shows that the extraction of natural resources—land, minerals, timber, and marine products—has formed the backbone of Indonesia’s development strategy since the mid-1960s. This pattern did not end with the New Order but continued into the era of decentralisation (Gellert, 2019), now wrapped in new slogans such as “economic growth” and “poverty alleviation.” The key question, then, is not only what is extracted, but why development remains dependent on destructive extraction. Why has development failed to take more environmentally sustainable forms? In the broader Southeast Asian context, similar critiques have emerged. Annika Reynolds (2022) notes that although many countries in the region—including Indonesia—have formally recognised the right to a healthy environment, extractivism in practice continues to erode that very right.

In this context, Ann L. Stoler’s (1985) classic research on plantations in North Sumatra (1870–1979) offers critical insight. Stoler introduces what she calls “plantation perspectives”—a way of seeing plantations not merely as sites of production or economic units, but as a logic of power that governs nearly all aspects of surrounding life. Plantations functioned as colonial “command centres”: determining who worked where, who lived where, how far people could move, and even how they were socially classified. Through the plantation system, Dutch colonialism did not simply extract land and labour, but reorganised entire living spaces—separating labour barracks from European settlements, redrawing village boundaries, classifying populations by race and origin, and dividing nature into production zones fully subordinated to commodity needs. In this way, forests, land, and people were treated as components of a single production landscape that had to be disciplined, measured, and controlled. From here, Stoler invites us to reconsider the analytical units we use to understand development and its consequences—from poverty and ecological disasters to resistance and alternative responses.

Most importantly, Stoler shows that the root of the problem does not lie solely in state policies or corrupt officials, but in the underlying logic governing how natural wealth is extracted and circulated. Rather than beginning with chaotic licensing regimes or collusion between officials and business elites, Stoler urges us to ask how the logic of dispossession—embedded in the plantation system—became the foundational way colonial powers imagined and built their civilisation. Plantations were the heart of colonial civilisation, and North Sumatra served as one of its primary laboratories. State political policies were only a small (though significant) part of this plantation logic. In short, plantation perspectives push us to understand social problems by asking what is produced, why it is produced, how it is produced, who controls production, who benefits, who loses, and how the consequences of this regulatory logic are distributed.

Another crucial insight from Stoler’s work is that although formal colonialism ended, its underlying logic did not disappear. The New Order regime instead modified the plantation system using more modern instruments. Concessions were returned to foreign companies after earlier attempts at nationalisation; labour was tightly controlled with military backing; and independent unions were dismantled and replaced with regime-sponsored “puppet” unions. Colonial legacies were not dismantled, but recalibrated to suit new development designs.

Contemporary ecological disasters, therefore, can be traced back to a development logic that prioritises corporate accumulation over public welfare—especially for communities living near production zones. The devastating disasters that emerge as the endpoint of this logic are rooted in a colonial legacy that has never been fundamentally transformed, but rather preserved and repeatedly reconfigured over time.

This leads to the next question: why has this colonial development pattern been continuously maintained—and even refined? Has Indonesia not been independent for decades?

Drawing on world-systems thinking, Gellert (2010) offers a key insight often overlooked: development patterns inherited from colonialism must be understood within global political-economic formations. Indonesia is not a self-contained unit able to freely determine its development trajectory, particularly in managing natural resources. Since independence, the Republic has confronted an international system characterised by hierarchy and imperialism. When, during the 1950s and 1960s, Indonesia leaned left and President Sukarno sought to challenge this global order through populist politics, major powers perceived a threat and responded with a violent political coup (Scott, 2015). Suharto’s rise restored colonial-style relations, repositioning Indonesia as a peripheral frontier (Farid, 2015) supplying cheap labour and raw materials to Europe and the United States—the core.

During this period, the New Order was deemed successful—economic growth increased and industrialisation advanced—because it was supported by exports of extractive commodities such as oil, gas, timber, and minerals to core countries, aligned with global prices and demand. The regime succeeded precisely because it linked domestic extraction to capital accumulation in the core. Corruption, cronyism, reckless licensing, and aggressive business expansion were not aberrations but reflections of how global capitalism operates in peripheral regions, legitimised by the international system. Colonial-style development was repackaged under slogans such as “stability” and “development.”

After the fall of the New Order, hopes for a new development trajectory briefly emerged. Yet the global formation remained unchanged. Indonesia continues to occupy a frontier position where natural resources are extracted to sustain capital accumulation elsewhere. Intan Suwandi (2019) describes this as “new imperialism,” in which domination no longer takes the form of direct colonial rule but operates through global value chains and multinational corporate control. Using this perspective, Suwandi shows that the greatest profits from the Global South continue to flow to the Global North, despite claims that globalisation levels the playing field for developing countries.

This new imperial mechanism operates through multinational control over domestic suppliers—via delivery-on-demand strategies, international certification, and open-costing systems—and labour discipline through lean and flexible production. The system rests on international hierarchies established in the twentieth century, particularly after the Cold War. Multinational firms outsource production responsibilities to domestic companies or governments, while retaining control over standards, pricing, and wages. These dynamics are evident in mining, oil palm, and timber operations across Sumatra.

Seen more closely, gold mining, logging, and oil palm plantations in North Sumatra—particularly in the Batang Toru/Tapanuli landscape—are not merely domestic concerns, but nodes within transnational value chains. Following recent disasters, government investigations and temporary suspensions targeted companies frequently cited in media reports, including PT Agincourt Resources (Martabe gold mine), PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy (Batang Toru hydropower), and PT Perkebunan Nusantara III (PTPN III), with land clearing near Batang Toru identified as a factor exacerbating flood and landslide risks. In value-chain terms, gold extracted from fragile upstream ecosystems does not remain in North Sumatra: Reuters notes that Indonesian gold exports, including dore, flow to global trading and refining hubs such as Singapore, Switzerland, and Hong Kong—key nodes linking extraction sites to financial and industrial markets downstream.

For palm oil, Reuters explains that Indonesia’s core production zones lie in Sumatra and Kalimantan, feeding global supply chains for processed foods, cosmetics, and biofuels. Domestic biodiesel policies further illustrate how energy strategies function as demand engines within broader commodity chains. Meanwhile, the timber appearing as a symbol of disaster—logs swept away by floods—is under investigation, including possible links to illegal logging or land clearing for plantations and mining, tied to transnational timber trade networks. Across these chains, ecological and social risks—flash floods, landslides, habitat loss—remain concentrated in production areas, while added value moves along trade and industrial routes far from disaster zones.

Within this framework, the state does not act as a neutral guardian of public interest, but as a mediator aligning regulation, spatial planning, and licensing regimes with global market demands. Collusion between political elites, bureaucrats, and business actors is not an anomaly, but the normal functioning of an economy oriented toward extraction and raw commodity exports. When environmental regulations are weakened, concessions expanded, and forests opened in the name of development, what is actually being protected is Indonesia’s position within global production chains—not ecological sustainability or citizen safety.

In such conditions, public responses often turn quickly toward practical solutions: moratoria on permits, concession reviews, law enforcement, or even crowdfunding (patungan) to buy forests. These measures matter, but they risk remaining superficial if they fail to address deeper structural causes. Without understanding how disasters are produced by broader political-economic structures, proposed solutions easily become short-term fixes—managing symptoms without addressing roots. Critical reflection is therefore essential—not to delay action, but to ensure that responses do not reproduce the same extractive logic in greener, more technocratic packaging.

Conclusion

Recurring disasters in Sumatra can no longer be understood as natural events alone. Yet neither can they be explained simply by poor forest governance or the greed of a few business actors. These ecological disasters are products of a global political-economic formation rooted in colonialism, transmitted across regimes, and continually reproduced in modern forms. They result from how the world organises production, distribution, and accumulation—with regions like Sumatra positioned as zones of extraction rather than spaces of life.

Public criticism often stops at concession permits, governance failures, or state–corporate collusion. These critiques are necessary but insufficient. If they go no further, we risk repeating the same explanations after every disaster without confronting underlying causes. What must shift is the analytical lens—from policies and actors to the structures of production and commodity circulation shaping ecological and social landscapes.

In the colonial era, as Ann L. Stoler shows, plantations functioned as core machines defining how land, forests, labour, and villages were imagined and governed. Today, that logic has not vanished—it has expanded. Plantations now intertwine with mining, timber, energy, and global value chains controlled by multinational corporations. These global production structures determine how forests are converted, how disasters are framed as “risks,” and how solutions are packaged—often as technocratic patches that leave extractive logic intact.

Understanding ecological disasters in Sumatra therefore requires us to keep asking—and to ask further: not only who issued permits or who caused damage, but how the global economic system produces the demand for destruction in the first place. Without the courage to shift this perspective, disasters will continue to occur—not as anomalies, but as near-inevitable consequences of a system that treats nature as a resource and peripheral regions as recurring casualties.

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Khalid Syaifullah is a sociology lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, State University of Surabaya, and a researcher at Yayasan Daulat Umat.

Wardatul Adawiah is a sociology lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, State University of Surabaya, and a research consultant at the Center for Forestry Organizational Capacity and Institutional Studies (FORCI), IPB University.

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References

Farid, H. (2015). ‘Indonesia’s original sin: mass killings and capitalist expansion, 1965–66.’ In The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Reader (pp. 207-222). Routledge.

Gellert, P. K. (2010). ‘Extractive regimes: Toward a better understanding of Indonesian development.’ Rural sociology, 75(1), 28-57.

Gellert, P. K. (2019). ‘Neoliberalism and altered state developmentalism in the twenty-first century extractive regime of Indonesia.’ Globalizations, 16(6), 894-918.

Reynolds, A. (2022). Human rights in the age of Southeast Asian extractivism. New Mandala. https://www.newmandala.org/human-rights-in-the-age-of-southeast-asian-extractivism/

Scott, P.D. (2015). ‘Still Uninvestigated After 50 Years: Did the U.S. Help Incite the 1965 Indonesia Massacre?’ Asia-Pacific Journal, 13(31):e2, 1-17.

Stoler, A. L. (1985). Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra’s Plantation Belt, 1870-1979. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Suwandi, I. (2019). Labor-value commodity chains. Monthly Review, 71(3), 46-69.

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Cite as: Syaifullah, K. & Adawiah, W. 2026. “Asking, and Asking Again: Understanding the Roots of Ecological Disasters in Sumatra” Focaalblog March 11. https://www.focaalblog.com/2026/03/11/khalid-syaifullah-wardatul-adawiah-asking-and-asking-again-understanding-the-roots-of-ecological-disasters-in-sumatra/