West Papua Watch Maps a Contested Landscape

Field notes

The project separates a newsroom of current developments from a structured issue index, with entries covering Raja Ampat, Lake Sentani, South Papua, conflict and displacement, political status, gender, and culture. Its geographic model includes provincial and generalized cultural boundaries, extraction sites, plantation permits, protected areas, and satellite fire detections. The site also documents limits: public permit layers may be partial, major extraction points are not cadastral boundaries, and unresolved developments are kept off the map rather than assigned an uncertain coordinate.