December 4, 2025 | 05:55 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Environmental groups say Indonesia’s commitment to preventing the climate crisis is weak. Instead, the government is busy selling carbon offsets.
THE Fossil of the Day award for the Indonesian delegation in the final days of the COP30 climate change summit in Belem, Brazil on November 15, 2025 showed the face of Indonesia in the eyes of the world. The “award” was presented by Climate Action Network, an international environmental network, to criticize the Indonesian government for celebrating fossil energy at a conference held to prevent the use of dirty energy.
Fossil energy is the root cause of global warming. It is obtained through extraction, dug out of the ground in a way that damages the environment, and when it is used, it produces greenhouse gases that damage the atmosphere. It is these greenhouse gases that cause global temperatures to slowly rise, changing the climate, disrupting the seasons and causing natural disasters.
Twelve days of negotiations involving 195 nations in Belém were focused on how the world could prevent this temperature rise. This can only be done by reducing the production of greenhouse gases. Indonesia put forward a pledge to the United Nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 31.89 percent from 1.3 billion equivalent tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2030. But the means of doing it do not reflect integrity in climate mitigation.
Climate Action Tracker, which monitors global emission reductions, says that Indonesia’s greenhouse reduction target is “critically insufficient,” and is not adequate to support the target of limiting the temperature rise to 1.5 degree Celsius above the 1870 pre-industrial level. On November 20, 2025, The Guardian carried a lengthy article about Indonesia’s poor commitment to climate mitigation in an article titled Why Indonesia’s Coal Mindset has to Change.
As well as glorifying this dirty energy, Indonesia’s style of mitigation is also misguided because of the inclusion of carbon trading. The Indonesian pavilion was turned into a “carbon store” offering 41 projects to anybody wanting to buy them. Carbon trading, as we know, is an opportunity for greenwashing.
This magazine’s coverage of the carbon trading mechanisms by no means covers all of the schemes. Timber, coal and even oil companies have established new subsidiaries to become involved in restoration projects so they can also participate in carbon trading. These carbon concessions also encroach on land belonging to indigenous people, which triggers social conflict.
Carbon trading is an instrument recognized as a market mechanism for reducing emissions. Those producing emissions can redeem them with those who have reduced them using technology or establishing forests to absorb them. But without integrity and an inclusive mechanism, carbon trading is simply a masquerade of climate mitigation.
Global warming occurs because of excessive production of emissions for development and to drive growth. Therefore, the way to prevent it is to reduce them through the use of cleaner energy sources. If oil, natural gas and coal are still celebrated as energy sources for growth, development will continue to damage forests, and businesses will still displace indigenous people, and carbon trading will be nothing more than a pretext for mitigation.
The Indonesian government has not grasped or understood the essence of this. Carbon trading is a bonus, respecting the environment through a commitment to clean energy and communities is the main focus. The climate crisis is not an opportunity to seek profit without any integrity in sustainability.
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