Photos and text by Yoppy Pieter

A week before the flood hit, the water from the forest changed.

In 2015, residents of Damaran Baru, a small village on the edge of the Leuser Ecosystem in Aceh, Indonesia, noticed sediment clouding the usually clear streams. Just days later, a devastating flood brought debris and mud down the slopes of nearby Mount Burni Telong and into the villages downstream, damaging houses and displacing hundreds of residents for more than a month.

For the women who would later form Mpu Uteun, it was the moment something shifted. Trekking upstream they discovered the Weh Gile River – known as “Crazy Water” due to its propensity to flash flooding – had been affected by a landslide, caused by illegal logging in the area. The forest soils dislodged into the river had made an already hazardous flood threat more dangerous and destructive.

Sumini, who now leads the Mpu Uteun rangers, would later tell the Associated Press “I looked at it and thought, ‘This is what caused the landslides and disaster.’”

Damaran Baru sits within the Gayo highlands of Aceh. This is a landscape of steep terrain, tropical monsoon rains, and some of Southeast Asia’s most important and biodiverse rainforest. The village borders the Leuser Ecosystem, a vast and ecologically critical area. The forests surrounding Damaran Baru function as a buffer zone for the Leuser Ecosystem while also regulating water flow, stabilising soil, and supporting biodiversity. Crucially for the livelihoods of local villagers, the Gayo highlands are known for their coffee, a premium crop with strong domestic and international demand that is a primary source of income for the area. That same demand has pushed some farmers and loggers to expand illegally into protected forest areas, clearing land at the expense of the watershed that the communities below depend on.

“Deforestation is a challenge we have to face, and sadly it is happening faster than conservation activities,” Sumini says.

A grassroots organisation called Burni Telong, named after the local mountain, had already been warning loggers and villagers about the dangers of deforestation before the 2015 flood. Afterwards, the urgency was impossible to ignore.

In 2017, a group of women from Damaran Baru attended environmental paralegal training run by the Aceh Forest, Nature and Environment Foundation (HAkA), a local conservation NGO. With HAkA’s support, they established a Village Forest Management Institute  known by its Indonesian acronym LPHK (Lembaga Pengelola Hutan Kampung) and elected one of their own, Sumini, as chairwoman. In 2019, the group received an official village forest permit, giving them legal authority to manage and protect a 251-hectare area of forest bordering the village. They named their organisation Mpu Uteun. In the local Gayo language, this means “the one who owns the forest.”

Today, the rangers of Mpu Uteun conduct regular patrols through that forest. Their work is practical and wide-ranging: monitoring for illegal logging and wildlife hunting, planting tree seedlings and collecting biodiversity data. Community outreach is central to their approach. For Mpu Uteun, conservation is framed as collective responsibility, growing organically out of grassroots community concerns within this ecological and economic landscape and reflecting the interdependence between environmental protection and the sustainability of local livelihoods. This engagement is geared toward understanding how deforestation affects water quality, food security, and the risk of floods and landslides.

Patriarchal political and social structures across the globe mean that women are frequently marginalised in land ownership, natural resource management, and the use of traditional ecological knowledge, often being excluded from the decision making process. In many places, women continue to be confined to domestic roles, reinforcing entrenched gender inequalities. As a result, women are among the worst affected when climate-related disasters strike due to gendered divisions of labour, lack of economic resources, and greater exposure to health and maternal risks and gender-based violence.

Mpu Uteun operates differently.

Traditionally, forest patrol and ranger roles are typically dominated by men. However, most members of Mpu Uteun are women working alongside and being supported by their husbands and sons. This is conspicuous in Aceh, the only Indonesian province governed by Islamic Sharia law.

Mpu Uteun’s challenge of conventional gender roles in natural resource management reflects broader ecofeminist ideas that link women’s involvement in environmental protection with greater recognition of traditional and local ecological knowledge and explicitly connects the domination of nature and the oppression of women. Ecofeminism as a philosophical and political framework argues that patriarchal systems exploit both simultaneously. It holds that the liberation of women and the protection of the environment are inseparable struggles.

Members of Mpu Uteun are also coffee farmers, and the illegal loggers they encounter are often fellow coffee farmers from other villages who may not fully understand the concept of a protected forest. However, some are aware of the regulations but choose to pretend otherwise. In such situations, members of Mpu Uteun must engage in negotiation. Because they understand the social and economic circumstances faced by these individuals, they try to be firm but fair.

“As women, we have a gentle approach when dealing with illegal loggers and negotiate well,” says Sumini. “Men are likely to fight with one another if they come across illegal loggers. Nevertheless, when it comes to route guiding in rugged forest terrain, men play a crucial role as well. After all, we wives carry on our husbands’ pioneering work in conservation.”

During these encounters, illegal loggers are usually asked to immediately stop their logging activities. They are also encouraged to take responsibility for restoring the forest area themselves. As part of this effort, they are asked to plant tree seedlings that have been prepared by members of Mpu Uteun as part of broader conservation initiatives.

At the same time, while carrying out conservation work, members of Mpu Uteun continue to prioritise their domestic responsibilities. They believe that the needs of the household, especially food security must first be taken care of; otherwise, conservation efforts would be difficult to sustain. For this reason, their daily lives involve multiple forms of labour, including managing coffee and chilli plantations, working in the tempeh industry, and preparing meals for their children and husbands.

The floods of 2015 turned out not to be an isolated event.

In late 2025, extreme monsoon rainfall, intensified by Cyclonic Storm Senyar, triggered catastrophic flash floods and landslides across northern and central Sumatra. Among the worst-affected infrastructure was the KKA Road, a vital route connecting the highland communities of Damaran Baru and Takengon to the coastal city of Bireuen. The road was severed in places by floodwaters and collapsing slopes, isolating villages for weeks. The destruction of this vital connectivity means that residents face journeys of five to eight hours on foot or by motorcycle, crossing mud, fallen trees and broken terrain, carrying crops to temporary markets and returning with sacks of rice, cooking fuel and basic supplies.

The events echoed the pattern of 2015, that were the catalyst for the existing community movements to crystallise into Mpu Uteun, and show that their vital work is needed more than ever. Human-induced climate change is making such extreme weather events more frequent and unpredictable. Widespread deforestation, watershed degradation, and poor land-use practices further reduce the landscape’s ability to absorb heavy rains, worsening flooding and slope collapse.

These disasters further expose the vulnerability of upland farming communities who depend on the forest and road connectivity for their livelihoods. For those living in the highlands of Bener Meriah, the work of Mpu Uteun in conserving and restoring the Damaran Baru forest is not just a matter of environmental stewardship, it is an urgent necessity.

Mpu Uteun have made progress. Community patrols have contributed to a reduction in illegal logging in their permitted area, and local participation in forest governance has grown. Mpu Uteun stands as a powerful example of community-led conservation rooted in lived experience, local knowledge, and women’s leadership. They illustrate how community-led management, supported by legal and institutional frameworks can redefine ownership as responsibility, rather than control. Their work protects forests, strengthens resilience to climate disasters, and challenges entrenched gender norms. Mpu Uteun shows how environmental protection, social justice and the health of humans and ecosystems are inseparable, offering a model for conservation that aligns with ecofeminist principles and an emerging Planetary Health paradigm that is both deeply local and globally resonant. 

This project is supported by the National Geographic Society.

---

About Yoppy Pieter

Yoppy Pieter is a visual storyteller and educator based in Jakarta, Indonesia. He shoots a diverse range of subjects with an intimate and poetic aesthetic.

He learned photography in a workshop held by PannaFoto Institute, he  also selected as one of the participants of Permata PhotoJournalist  Grant (2011), Angkor Photo Workshop (2012),the recipient of Erasmus Huis  Fellowship to Amsterdam (2015), South-East Asia & Oceania 6×6  Global Talent Program by World Press Photo Foundation (2017) and the  first Indonesian who received Joop Swart Masterclass by World Press  Photo Foundation (2019).

His photography works were exhibited in  Jakarta Photo Summit #3 (2014), Jakarta Biennale (2015), Photography  for Tolerance and Diversity (2017), Mt Rokko International Photo  Festival (2018), SPECTROSYNTHESIS II exhibition (2019) and published in a book titled Saujana Sumpu in 2016.

In 2018 he and his other friends from various backgrounds developed Arkademy, the educational platform which aims to promote and encourage the use of photography as a  creative medium in critiquing the self, society and the relations  that arise between the two. He also developed an Instagram platform named Heterogenic to embrace the diversity and the richness of Indonesian  visual culture, also for sharing and discussing ideas among Indonesian  photographers.

His works are published in Washington Post, Monocle, Neue Zuercher  Zeitung, Bali & Beyond, National Geographic Indonesia, and DestinAsian Indonesia. His visual culture experiences also lead him to  collaborate with Unicef Indonesia & Ikea Foundation, The Rockefeller  Foundation – Waiting For Health, and Document Our History Now.

www.yoppy-pieter.com | @yoppy.pieter 

Yoppy Pieter is a recipient of the Truth Seeker Foundation Prize 2026. “The Leaves Remember Her Name” is exhibited at The Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film in Singapore from 10 April – 31 May 2026. More info

About the Truth Seeker Foundation

The Truth Seeker Foundation believes that education and enlightenment are the best ways to address many of the social issues we face today. Amongst the many causes the Foundation supports, it advocates for raising awareness of social and environmental issues through photography.

Further Reading