Echoes of a Vanishing Forest

Rubbles, mud, dead trees and wood logs stacked on top of one another in thousands. In thousands. Among them: children playing, residents fixing roads, transporting goods from one village to another. That's what I saw when I revisited Aceh, sixty days after the deadly flood that hit the northern Sumatra, Indonesia, in November 2025.

Yes, decades-long deforestation has borne fruit. Ecological vulnerability from altered landscapes in the region is intensifying, and is further worsened by ongoing climate change.

As a child, I grew up listening to my parents' stories about their hometown in North Sumatra, Mandailing Natal. In their memories, the forests were alive towering trees, winding rivers, and land that sustained entire families. Those forests were home.

Today, much of that home is disappearing. The lands are slowly being transformed under policies that prioritize profit over people. In the last decade, about 1. 4 million hectares of forest across Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra were cut down to make way for mining, oil palm plantations, geothermal development, and other private businesses.

For my parents, witnessing this change has been a quiet grief. For me, it is an inherited one, watching a place central to my family's story is slowly being erased.

When I went to Sumatra after the disaster struck, that grief became more biting. Over 1, 178 deaths were reported across the affected areas. More than 55, 000 families were displaced, and many communities remained in temporary shelters, even months later.

When I saw survivors still living in tents, fasting through the days of Ramadan while rebuilding their lives, I am reminded of my parents' stories and the forests that lived in them.

​​Through this series, I want to show that environmental loss is not only about natural ecosystems it is also about people, culture, and justice.

I hope that communities like those in northern Sumatra are not left to bear the costs of climate change alone, and that the stories of the land and the people who depend on it are not lost.