In 2020, the European Commission launched the European Green Deal, an ambitious policy framework targeting climate neutrality across the European Union (EU) by 2050. Central to this initiative is the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), a policy designed to ensure that products entering the EU market are deforestation-free. The EUDR mandates that companies conduct rigorous due diligence to verify that their supply chains are free from deforestation, forest degradation, and associated human rights violations. However, while the regulation represents a significant step forward, it has limitations. The EUDR’s scope is restricted to deforestation occurring after 2020, follows the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) narrow definition of forests (excluding critical ecosystems like wetlands and mangroves), and applies only to seven key commodities: cattle, wood, cocoa, soy, palm oil, coffee, and rubber. Nevertheless, the EUDR holds profound implications for West Papua and Indonesia, where agribusiness expansion and related investments have been linked to widespread environmental destruction and human rights abuses.
Delays and Dilution: The EUDR Under Pressure
When the EUDR was formally adopted in June 2023, its implementation was slated to begin on 30 December 2024. However, intense lobbying from Indonesia, other producer nations, industry groups, and certain EU member states led the European Commission to propose a 12-month delay. This proposal sparked a contentious debate within the European Parliament, where the European People’s Party (EPP) and far-right factions sought to further weaken the regulation through a series of amendments. Notably, in the weeks leading up to the vote, the Indonesian Embassy engaged in meetings with several far-right MEPs. The 12-month delay was approved through the adoption of the amended regulation in December 2024, granting the Indonesian government and other opponents additional time to potentially undermine the regulation’s effectiveness and find alternative markets with less stringent environmental controls. According to the current status of the resolution, the European deforestation regulation will come into force on 1 December 2025.
Risk Classifications and Human Rights Concerns
A key feature of the EUDR is its classification of countries into low-, standard-, or high-risk categories, which will determine the level of scrutiny applied to their exports. However, European NGOs have raised alarms that the European Commission may fail to adequately account for human rights violations and illegal activities in its risk assessments. This oversight could undermine the regulation’s ability to address the root causes of deforestation and forest degradation, particularly in regions like West Papua, where environmental destruction is often intertwined with systemic human rights abuses.
West Papua’s Forests: A Global Climate Asset Under Threat
The Indonesian government has consistently framed the conflict in West Papua as an economic issue, claiming that increased investment in natural resource extraction and agribusiness will solve the crisis. However, these investments have often fuelled environmental degradation, social conflict, and human rights violations, exacerbating the very problems they claim to address.
West Papua’s forests are not only vital to the livelihoods, cultures, and survival of Indigenous peoples but also play a critical role in mitigating the global climate crisis. The island of New Guinea is home to the world’s third-largest tropical rainforest, a biodiversity hotspot that stores more carbon per hectare than the Amazon or Congo Basin. These forests are also integral to the Coral Triangle, a marine region that supports over 75% of the world’s known coral species and is recognised as a global conservation priority. Yet, West Papua’s forests are under increasing threat from deforestation and degradation driven by palm oil expansion, logging, mining, and infrastructure development. These activities not only devastate local ecosystems but also release vast amounts of stored carbon, exacerbating the climate crisis.
Deforestation Trends in West Papua: A Growing Crisis
Over the past two decades under Indonesian rule, West Papua has lost or degraded more than 800,000 hectares of forest. While deforestation rates across Indonesia began declining in 2015, the opposite happened in West Papua, particularly under Jokowi. According to Greenpeace, 40% of Indonesia’s palm oil-related deforestation since 2015 has occurred in West Papua, and PUSAKA found that the deforestation rate in 2010-2019 was more than double the preceding decade. Furthermore, an additional 1.9 million hectares of forest in West Papua are already allocated as concessions for palm oil and timber, signalling the potential for further devastation.
The Prabowo Administration: A New Era of Environmental Risk
The new president, Prabowo Subianto, has declared that Indonesia will accelerate the decline of West Papua’s forests under his rule. In one of his first acts as president, Prabowo travelled to Merauke to promote the National Strategic Project (PSN) of Merauke Food and Energy Zone, which seeks to convert 2 million hectares of indigenous forests into rice paddies and sugar cane plantations. This project has been rejected by the Malind and Yei indigenous people who own these forests, and their protests have been met with threats and intimidation by the Indonesian military. Prabowo has also dismissed environmental concerns about palm oil expansion with the absurd claim that plantations do not cause deforestation since oil palms have leaves.
The EUDR represents a critical opportunity to curb deforestation and protect the rights of Indigenous communities in West Papua and beyond. However, its effectiveness will depend on the EU’s willingness to resist pressure from industry and producer nations, enforce robust due diligence requirements, and prioritise human rights in its risk assessments. In 2024, the Permanent Peoples Tribunal found that the Indonesian government and private corporations are “failing to adequately meet their legal and ethical obligations to West Papuans and their environment as set out by the State’s national laws and regulations as well as international treaty obligations,” with the ecological degradation intrinsically linked to efforts to obliterate the indigenous people of West Papua. If the EUDR is to have any credibility, it must classify this situation as ‘high-risk’ in the benchmarking process and closely monitor the implementation of the regulation by companies operating in Indonesia.
