Abstract
Indonesia’s energy and food security policy priorities include achieving a biodiesel fuel blending ratio of 50% (B50) and self-sufficiency in rice production through the development of nationally planned food estates. However, these initiatives pose substantial challenges, including the threats of mass deforestation, land conversion and emissions, as well as competition between food and energy crops. Here we assess the potential land-use and emissions implications of meeting Indonesia’s ambitious biodiesel targets and rice production goals. Using an improved high-resolution land cover map, multicriteria evaluation and production scenario modelling, we analyse the spatial trade-offs between forest conservation, food security and biofuel expansion. Our findings indicate that achieving the biodiesel B50 target by 2030 will require extensive land conversion, including 4.85–8.55 million hectares of land, while efforts to achieve rice self-sufficiency could convert up to 2.3 million hectares, with notable overlap between food and energy production zones. Associated emissions—360–3,753 MtCO2e for oil palm and 509–1,297 MtCO2e for rice—could surpass historic emissions events, undermining Indonesia’s climate commitments. This research underscores the need for more integrated land-use planning balancing economic development with environmental sustainability and calls for enhanced policy frameworks that mitigate trade-offs between food and energy production.
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Data availability
Data for Figs. 2–6 are available via GitHub at https://github.com/Jiehonglou/Indonesia-land-use-dilemma. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
We processed data using R, ArcGIS and ArcPy. We produced maps using ArcGIS and graphs using R, Excel and draw.io. All relevant codes are available via GitHub at https://github.com/Jiehonglou/Indonesia-land-use-dilemma.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Greenpeace Indonesia, H. Baral, A. M. Maulana and D. Gaveau for assistance in data collection. We also thank participants and attendees of the conference ‘Indonesia’s Role in Addressing Climate Change in Southeast Asia’ hosted by the University of Maryland School of Public Policy on August 15, 2024 and CGS Research Seminar attendees for their valuable comments.
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C.V.S., J.L. and T.C.H. conceptualized the study. J.L supervised the project. C.V.S., K.J.P., M.A.S., L.C.L. and K.S. collected data. K.J.P. contributed to land cover map creation. M.A.S. contributed to development of spatial analysis methods. C.V.S. conducted the analysis and wrote the initial draft. C.V.S. and K.S. contributed to the visualizations. C.V.S., K.J.P., J.L., T.C.H. and L.C.L. contributed to the drafting of the manuscript, and C.V.S., J.L. and M.A.S. edited the final manuscript. A.S. and N.H. reviewed the manuscript and provided comments.
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Squire, C.V., Lou, J., Parker, K.J. et al. Land-use optimization for food security, bioenergy and forest conservation in Indonesia.
Nat Sustain (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-026-01923-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-026-01923-7
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