New spatial analysis has linked accelerating deforestation in Indonesia's rainforests directly to wood pellet and wood chip export supply chains, with Japan accounting for nearly 75 per cent of Indonesia's wood pellet exports in 2025.
The research, conducted by Earth Insight with Indonesian environmental organisations Auriga Nusantara and Indigenous group AMAN, reveals threats to over 347 Indigenous territories covering more than 4.3 million hectares, 43 Key Biodiversity Areas totalling 2.8 million hectares, and critical habitat for endangered species including orangutans, Sumatran tigers and endemic Sulawesi wildlife.
The analysis builds on earlier research published in October 2024 documenting deforestation driven by Japanese and South Korean wood-to-energy demand.
Two years on, the new findings reveal an accelerating threat to Indigenous territories and intact forests as Japan's record-breaking wood pellet imports continue to grow.
Gorontalo province on Sulawesi island has emerged as ground zero for the sector, supplying more than 94 per cent of Indonesia's wood pellet exports to Japan and South Korea, with 80 per cent sourced from natural forests.
The analysis identified more than 11 million hectares of total forest cover within wood chip mill haul zones, of which over 6.9 million hectares remain undisturbed.
Chip mill haul zones overlap 3 million hectares of orangutan habitat, threatening Sumatran, Tapanuli and Bornean species. In Gorontalo, forest concessions linked to PT Gorontalo Panel Lestari's wood pellet facility encompass more than 24,500 hectares of tropical moist forest, an area inhabited by the Polahi people, an Indigenous group living in voluntary isolation. Nearly 21 per cent of this area—7,800 hectares—has already been deforested.
The Polahi, whose name means "fugitive" in the Gorontalo language, have inhabited the region's most remote forests since at least the seventeenth century, with cultural practices tied to forest governance informed by belief in forest deities who communicate through dreams.
Researchers describe a system where tiny beings known as the Lati, believed to live in trees and waterfalls, are consulted through ritual before trees are felled or wild honey is harvested. Industrial expansion threatens the cultural survival of a people dependent on intact forests and ecosystems for subsistence.
Earth Insight and others have argued that the premise of forest biomass as renewable energy masks full emissions accounting. Biomass power plants emit 50–60 per cent more carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour than modern coal plants.
The analysis notes that five years ago, more than 500 scientists and economists warned that climate policies treating biomass as carbon-neutral would "create a model that encourages tropical countries to cut more of their forests"—a prediction now playing out across Indonesia, where forests storing vast carbon reserves and regulating regional rainfall patterns are being burned for export as wood pellets, particularly to Japan and South Korea.
