TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The government is revising Indonesia’s climate commitment document. A weak economy is an opportunity to reduce carbon emissions.
WHILE the world is racing to mobilize the green economy, Indonesia is heading in the opposite direction. The promise to reduce carbon emissions is only a commitment that sounds good but that is far from reality. The policies of President Prabowo Subianto are moving far away from the global agreement to prevent the climate crisis, the impacts of which are becoming increasingly apparent.
The contradiction is reflected in the nationally determined emission reduction contribution set on Indonesia’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). This document is the commitment each nation makes, and is put forward at the annual United Nations climate change conference. Even though there is no sanction, the NDC is the face of every nation in the global action to tackle the climate crisis.
This year, the conference known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP, will take place in Belem, Brazil, in November. Therefore, the NDC document must be handed over to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat in September. The government is targeting deliberations to be finished by the end of this month.
The document was in fact made by the administration of Joko Widodo. Emission reductions were set at 32 percent from 2.9 billion tons of CO2 equivalent through Indonesia’s own efforts, or 43.2 percent with international assistance. Instead of implementing or increasing the target, the Prabowo administration reduced it.
Prabowo has every right to change the climate commitment. After all, Jokowi’s version of the NDC was based on extractive industries, which damage the environment and produce excessive greenhouse gases through hundreds of national strategic projects. But Prabowo’s amended version is no better because it relies on an economic growth target of 8 percent.
Programs in line with climate mitigation will be halted because they are considered as slowing the economy. Plans for reductions of emissions from the agriculture sector, for example, will be relaxed in order to convert forest areas into food reserves and fossil fuel mining.
This is actually no surprise. Since the presidential election campaign, Prabowo’s flagship programs have been food self-sufficiency and down-streaming of natural resources. Therefore, mining and oil palm plantations will be the mainstays of economic growth. Even carbon trading, which provides an opportunity to boost the restorative economy, will be managed in a way that only benefits the elite.
The revised Forestry Law, which is now being deliberated by the House of Representatives, does not touch on sustainable forest management. The discussions have focused more on how to accelerate the conversion of forest areas to boost economic growth, and the Job Creation Law will be used to legitimize environmental damage.
Given the growing geopolitical tensions, world institutions predict weakening economic prospects. The World Bank calculates that Indonesia’s economic growth this year will be less than 5 percent. This weakening could be used by the government to increase the target for emission reductions and to produce more environmentally friendly economic policies. When world growth slows, it is time to give an opportunity for the earth to regenerate itself.
At the 2025 BRICS Summit in Brazil last Tuesday, Prabowo said that Indonesia is already feeling the effects of climate disaster. He made a commitment to prevent it. To stop this becoming simply empty words, the best preventative measure would be to increase emission reductions through environmentally friendly policies contained within the NDC.
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