WRM Bulletin 272 | 24 October 2024The Merauke food production program in Papua: a tragedy foretold
The new program “PSN Merauke”, being implemented at a high speed, might become the biggest deforestation project worldwide, is overlapping with customary lands and will directly affect 40,000 indigenous people.
In 2023, Indonesian president Jokowi´s administration announced a food production program of 2 million hectares in the South of Papua, focused on rice and sugar cane plantations, ignoring that similar programs in the past were complete failures, leading to massive land grabbing and rights violations of indigenous peoples, besides more corporate profits.
The new program “PSN Merauke”, being implemented at a high speed, might become the biggest deforestation project worldwide, is overlapping with customary lands and will directly affect 40,000 indigenous people.
