Deforestation in Melawi Regency Today. The international community’s support is urgently needed to prevent it before a natural disaster occurs. Personal documentation.
What is happening in Melawi is no longer distant news. It is happening now. In real time. Right before our eyes.
The last strongholds of Borneo’s tropical rainforest are collapsing. One tree at a time.
The songs of birds are fading. Replaced by the harsh growl of machines. The forest does not fall quietly. It crashes. It breaks. It disappears.
Ancient trees, standing for centuries, fall within minutes. The land is then reshaped. Ordered. Cleared. Replanted with oil palm in endless lines. Clean to the eye. Empty in spirit.
This is not progress. This is erasure.
A Tragedy on the Hills of Melawi: When the Earth Loses Its Memory
On the hills of Melawi, the silence has been broken. Not by life. But by steel.
Giant trees fall with a thunderous force. Meranti. Ulin. Tengkawang. Names that once carried meaning. Now reduced to timber.
Roots that held the soil for generations are ripped out. The ground loosens. Rivers turn brown. Sediment flows downstream. Fish disappear. Birds scatter in fear.
Between 2001 and 2024, Melawi lost around 210,000 hectares of tree cover. Nearly a quarter of what once stood. In just a few decades. The loss released about 140 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
From 2021 to 2024, most of the destruction happened in natural forests. Not plantations. Not degraded land. But living ecosystems.
What we are witnessing is not just deforestation. It is the removal of memory. The memory of the Earth itself.
From Living Forest to Silent Plantation
Once, these forests were alive in ways we are only beginning to understand.
They regulated water. Stabilized climate. Protected the soil. Sustained the Dayak people with food, medicine, and wisdom rooted in generations.
In 2020, nearly half of Melawi was still covered by natural forest. That number continues to fall.
Across West Kalimantan, tens of thousands of hectares vanish each year. Replaced by monoculture. Repetition. Uniformity.
Excavators, instruments of power and hegemony, move like “giant hands,” toppling trees in Melawi’s primary forest that have stood for thousands of years. Personal documentation.
Oil palm spreads where biodiversity once flourished. The forest, once layered and complex, becomes flat. Predictable. Controlled.
Floods come more often. Soil weakens. Rivers choke with mud.
What was once a living system becomes an industrial surface.
Policy and Reality: A Fractured Line of Protection
There are policies. There are moratoriums. There are promises.
Yet on the ground, the forest continues to fall.
Companies operate without fully aligned permits. Thousands of hectares exist in legal uncertainty. Authorities issue warnings. Enforcement remains uneven.
At the same time, small farmers face restrictions. Their land is sealed. Their livelihoods questioned. Tension rises.
This is the fracture. Between law and reality. Between intention and action.
And in that fracture, the forest disappears.
A Global Call: Save Borneo. Save the Heart That Sustains Us All
This is more than a regional crisis. This is a global warning.
Borneo is one of the oldest rainforests on Earth. A vital carbon sink. A sanctuary of life found nowhere else.
It is part of what the world calls "The Heart of Borneo". Not a metaphor. A living system that breathes for the planet.
When Melawi burns. When its forests fall. The impact does not stay local. It travels. Through air. Through climate. Through time.
To the environmental defenders. To scientists. To policymakers. To the global community.
This is the moment to act.
Stand with the forests. Support indigenous guardians. Demand transparency. Strengthen protection for primary forests. Monitor what is happening. Speak about it. Do not look away.
Because once the forest is gone, it does not simply grow back.
And when the heart of Borneo weakens.
The world feels it.
by Rangkaya Bada
