Acheh & Northern Sumatra Floods Are Not Natural Disasters

Cyclone Senyar exposed decades of environmental destruction and denial of self-determination

At the end of November 2025, Cyclone Senyar tore across Southeast Asia. Heavy rain triggered floods and landslides in central and southern Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Acheh, and northern Sumatra. Rivers overflowed, hillsides collapsed, and families across the region watched their homes disappear under water and mud. Media coverage frequently placed the devastation in the context of extreme weather and climate change, while connections to deforestation and long-term environmental degradation were raised more unevenly and often without sustained scrutiny.

In Acheh, the story runs deeper.

As floodwaters rose, entire villages were swallowed within hours. Families fled with what they could carry. Children slept on damp floors in makeshift shelters. Clean water disappeared, and roads linking rural communities to emergency assistance were cut off. Yet the devastation did not begin with Cyclone Senyar. The storm merely exposed what had already been weakened.

Upstream forests had long been stripped away. River systems had been altered. Land had been cleared and converted without the consent of the communities who depended on it. When the rain came, there was little left to slow or absorb it. While Senyar affected multiple countries, its impacts were not evenly distributed. In Acheh, the cyclone did not create the disaster—it revealed one.

As the UNPO policy paper Peoples and the Planet: Self-Governance, Land Rights and Climate Justice* (October 2025) makes clear, environmental catastrophes affecting unrepresented and marginalized peoples are rarely sudden or unavoidable. They are often the foreseeable outcome of long-term environmental degradation, land dispossession, and systematic exclusion from decision-making. This analysis draws on the paper, which examines how environmental destruction intersects with the denial of self-determination among unrepresented peoples worldwide. Acheh fits this global pattern with painful clarity.

Across the regions examined in the UNPO report—Kabylia, Western Togoland, South Moluccas, and Ahwaz—environmental harm is shown to function not merely as ecological damage, but as a method of political control. Forests are cleared, rivers diverted, and land transformed through extractive policies imposed without local consent. Over time, these actions weaken livelihoods, fragment communities, and erode the material foundations of cultural and political life. The report describes this process as “slow violence”: harm that accumulates quietly until a crisis makes it impossible to ignore.

Acheh’s floods must be understood through this same lens. For decades, large-scale deforestation and land conversion have reshaped the region, often justified in the name of national development. Natural flood buffers were removed, watersheds destabilised, and soil left exposed. When Cyclone Senyar delivered intense rainfall in late November 2025, the landscape was already primed for catastrophe. The floods were not an anomaly; they were the predictable outcome of governance choices.

The UNPO report stresses that environmental destruction becomes especially devastating when communities are excluded from environmental governance. Control over land and natural resources is not merely an economic issue; it lies at the heart of the right to self-determination, as recognised in international law through the UN Charter, the International Covenants on Human Rights, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Meaningful participation, including Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), is essential if peoples are to protect their environment and determine their future.

In Acheh, environmental governance remains overwhelmingly centralised. Decisions affecting forests, plantations, and land use are made far from the communities who bear the consequences. Traditional ecological knowledge—rooted in generations of interaction with land and water—is routinely sidelined. This exclusion has direct consequences when disaster strikes. Flood preparedness and response are shaped by the same top-down structures that produced vulnerability in the first place. Communities are treated as recipients of aid rather than as rights-holders with agency, knowledge, and legitimate claims.

The humanitarian crisis following the Cyclone Senyar floods demonstrates how quickly environmental harm becomes a human rights issue. International bodies now recognise the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, acknowledging that environmental degradation undermines the enjoyment of all other rights. In Acheh, flood victims faced shortages of clean water, adequate shelter, sanitation, and healthcare. These were not momentary inconveniences but conditions that rapidly escalated into prolonged suffering.

As *Peoples and the Planet* makes clear, failure to prevent foreseeable environmental harm—or to respond adequately when disasters occur—can amount to a violation of human rights. This is particularly acute when authorities restrict or obstruct international assistance despite overwhelming need. Disaster response thus shifts from a logistical challenge to a political decision with profound human consequences.

Another troubling parallel between Acheh and the UNPO case studies is the securitisation of environmental and humanitarian space. In regions associated with self-determination movements, environmental defence and civil mobilisation are frequently criminalised. Activism is framed as a threat to national unity, and disaster response is tightly controlled by security forces. Acheh reflects this pattern. Grassroots volunteers and community initiatives often operate under pressure, while aid distribution and information flows are treated as matters of control rather than care.

Such approaches do not enhance safety or resilience. Instead, they suppress independent action, discourage local initiative, and shield decision-makers from accountability. As the UNPO report argues, when environmental protection and disaster response are militarised, the people most affected are rendered voiceless.

Climate change undeniably intensifies the risks faced by Acheh, but the UNPO paper cautions against using climate change as a convenient explanation that obscures responsibility. Climate change acts as a force multiplier, amplifying vulnerabilities created by political and economic decisions. In Acheh, heavy rainfall becomes catastrophic not simply because the climate is changing, but because forests have been cleared, land mismanaged, and local stewardship displaced. To focus on climate alone is to misdiagnose the disaster.

Although Acheh is not explicitly included among the UNPO report’s case studies, it meets every analytical criterion used in the paper. Acheh is a distinct people with a strong land-based identity, a history of political marginalisation, and a territory reshaped by extractive policies enforced through centralised and militarised governance. Its vulnerability to climate-related disasters is inseparable from these structural conditions. Acheh is not an exception—it is a missing case in a global pattern of environmental injustice affecting unrepresented peoples.

Reframing the Cyclone Senyar floods as political and rights-based events is therefore essential. As *Peoples and the Planet* demonstrates, disasters in such contexts are not merely emergencies to be managed, but symptoms of deeper denial of self-determination. Until Achehnese communities are recognised as legitimate custodians of their land—with real authority over forests, waters, and disaster preparedness—floods will continue to recur, and suffering will continue to be framed as inevitable.

The lesson from Acheh, as from Kabylia, Western Togoland, South Moluccas, and Ahwaz, is clear: environmental justice cannot exist without political justice. Protecting the environment requires recognising peoples not as obstacles to development or passive victims of disaster, but as rights-holders whose knowledge, consent, and self-governance are essential to any sustainable future.

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**Source**

* Peoples And The Planet: Self-Governance, Land Rights And Climate Justice (October 2025).

https://academy.unpo.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Peoples-And-The-Planet-1.pdf