Putri A. Agustina
Niken Pradonawati
Abstract
The late-November 2025 floods and landslides across Aceh, North Sumatera and West Sumatera were not natural disasters in any simple sense. They were the foreseeable result of climate-amplified extreme rainfall colliding with degraded watersheds shaped by decades of land-use change and weak governance.
In Aceh the disaster followed a familiar ridge-to-plain pathway: steep headwaters and mid-slopes generated rapid runoff and sediment, while lowland river corridors and floodplains bore the inundation, housing damage and displacement. As of 27 December 2025 official figures recorded 1,138 deaths and 163 missing across the three provinces, with 449,864 displaced; Aceh alone recorded 511 fatalities. Preliminary reconstruction needs were estimated at Rp 51.82 trillion across the three provinces, Aceh accounting for the largest share at Rp 25.41 trillion, while wider economic losses were put at roughly Rp 68.6 trillion.
This rapid assessment proposes a building back better agenda for Aceh built on a jurisdictional landscape approach that links ecological recovery to long-term socio-economic resilience. It maps interventions from watershed to coast and prioritises four of them: conservation of the remaining natural assets that stabilise hydrology and protect communities, including key forest and peat landscapes; large-scale rehabilitation and restoration in the mid-slope belt and along river corridors where degradation has amplified flood peaks, sediment loads and channel instability; targeted recovery of productive systems — paddy, smallholder oil palm, fisheries and aquaculture, and Gayo highland commodities — through climate-smart, deforestation-free upgrading and restored logistics; and risk-informed settlement re-planning, with strict river setbacks, safer siting and, where unavoidable, managed retreat from repeatedly inundated zones.
The recommendations pair nature-based solutions with engineered measures calibrated to watershed geomorphology, differentiating responses for low-, moderate- and high-relief catchments, and add investment in modernised early warning and last-mile preparedness. Underneath the technical agenda sits a governance reform package: watershed-based authority and planning; strengthened Strategic Environmental Assessment and Environmental Impact Assessment requirements that explicitly account for hydrology, sediment and cumulative impacts; time-bound audits of high-risk permits with revocation where violations are found; One Map-based transparency; and stronger enforcement and anti-corruption safeguards so that accountability matches the scale of harm.
The report concludes that Aceh's recovery must be treated as an investable, multi-year transition rather than a short-term reconstruction programme. That requires a blended financing strategy — national and subnational public finance, philanthropy, multilateral support and private-sector participation, aligned with measurable outcomes in risk reduction, ecosystem services and sustainable livelihoods.
Aceh held about 3.37 million hectares of primary forest in 2001, roughly 59 percent of the province. Global Forest Watch data indicate around 320,000 hectares of humid primary forest lost between 2002 and 2024, clustered along road corridors, the margins of the Leuser ecosystem, and expanding oil palm and smallholder zones — steep, high-rainfall catchments whose hydrological value is disproportionately large.
Teunom, Woyla, Peusangan, Jambo Aye, Tamiang, Kluet and Krueng Aceh carry the highest relief ratios in the province: the steeper the drop from headwater to plain, the greater the propensity to flood. Engineering responses are differentiated accordingly rather than applied uniformly.
Quantitative evidence links forest loss and oil palm expansion upstream to higher flooding incidence at village level in Aceh, with the poorest communities most exposed. Basin studies, including of the Krueng Aceh watershed, show land-use change increasing runoff and reducing infiltration.
Agriculture, forestry and fisheries account for roughly a third of Aceh’s output. Rebuilding the productive base and rebuilding the catchment are not competing budget lines: the commodities depend on the hydrology that degradation removed.
Fragmented forests, altered slopes and sediment-choked rivers reflect a political economy in which profits concentrate upstream while risks and losses are pushed onto downstream communities and public budgets. Without watershed-based authority and permit accountability, the technical measures will not hold.
Suggested citation: Sari, Agus P., Putri A. Agustina, and Niken Pradonawati, 2026. Building Back Better: Rapid Assessment of Possible Long-Term Ecological and Socio-Economic Recovery in Flood-Affected Areas in Aceh. Landscape Advisory, Jakarta.