Methodology
Counter-impact analysis
I began this research with Poso Energy’s ANDAL (Environmental Impact Analysis Report) for what the company calls the “Poso River Improvement” (2019), which legitimise the lake’s outlet dredging as an improvement. However, this involved not only removing the riverbed but also enacting socio-ecological violence on the communities living there. This part of the investigation focuses on the dredging of the Poso lake outlet, where 2.5 million cubic meters were removed in 2019. This marked the point when Poso Energy’s socioenvironmental violence intensified, especially due to the floodgate operation in 2019, which submerged 426 hectares of farmland (266 hectares claimed by the Indigenous community). None of this was analysed in the ANDAL. Of the 185 pages, most describe the short-term technical effects of dredging and the empty promise of developing Poso Lake’s outlet area as a tourism destination.
open →Community testimony
The report serves to recollect the collective memories of their struggles over everyday life, a life marginalised and repressed by the state and corporations since the project began. This spatialisation of the research is based on the fieldwork commenced on 27 June – 24 July 2026. The primary interlocutors are the Pamona Indigenous leaders, farmers, and fishers who led the community resistance against Poso mega hydrodams, as well as local activists, journalists, academia, and Community Social Organisation (SP Sintuwu Raya Poso and JATAM Sulawesi Tengah).
open →Ethnographic Groundtruthing
In this research, I use groundtruthing to situate my spatial research with the communities living in the Poso hydroecology. I borrow the term groundtruthing from remote sensing, where I analyse what happened through satellite images and use them as a starting point for deeper ethnographic research on the ground. It mainly commenced in the lake’s outlet and Sulewana village, where the mega dams are situated, and in the five villages (Peura, Sulewana, Tokilo, Meko, and Pamona) where the socioecological violence has happened in the past two decades.
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