Silencing Science: How Indonesia Is Censoring Wildlife Research

The clampdown on researchers is part of a long-running attack on foreign conservationists and scientists, says Herlambang Wiratraman, a lawyer at the Gadjah Mada University and founder of the Indonesian Caucus of Academic Freedom, one of the initiators of the planned legal action against the government. The Widodo administration “has excessively controlled all research agencies in the country,” he says.

At the end of 2019, Indonesia’s environment ministry abruptly ended a 25-year collaboration with the international conservation group WWF for monitoring wildlife, effectively banning the organization from the country’s national parks and putting hundreds of staff out of work, after WWF had criticized the government’s handling of a spate of forest fires earlier that year.

Recently, cooperation between environmental researchers and the Indonesian government has begun to break down. Between false official statistics, suspicion towards foreign actors, and sensitive discussions on environmental conservation, Fred Pearce gives a glimpse into the world of Indonesian science and censorship in his piece for Yale Environment 360.