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The year 2025 did not start from ground zero. Instead, it arrived with a burden that had already accumulated since the end of 2024. In the final weeks of that year, the government announced a plan to open up to 20 million hectares of forest areas for food and energy estate projects. It was a decision that immediately triggered various anxieties, not only because of its massive scale, but because it recalled an old pattern of development models a spatial expansion that leaves behind conflicts, ecosystem degradation, and long-lasting social scars.

The plan became a "New Year's gift" that was never asked for. As the calendar turned, the public had not yet had time to process the end-of-year shock. Instead, the year 2025 opened in an atmosphere full of question marks. What will be the fate of the forests that have been the primary mainstay of Indonesia's climate commitments? What will be the fate of indigenous communities and villages whose living territories continue to be eroded by large-scale economic projects? And how does the state intend to balance food and energy ambitions with increasingly fragile ecological limits?

Not long after that, nature spoke, and its voice could no longer be ignored. Since the beginning of the year, floods emerged in various large and small cities. Moving toward the end of the year, BNPB data showed that Indonesia experienced more than 3,000 disaster events. Flooding became the most frequent disaster, followed by extreme weather, landslides, and more than 500 incidents of forest and land fires. This series of disasters was no coincidence, but a reflection of spatial planning that is no longer capable of sustaining the pace of development that ignores the environment's carrying and assimilative capacities.