When Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto called on U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House earlier this week, the two leaders spoke of their shared commitments on a range of issues, including the clean energy transition, sustainable agriculture and sustainable fisheries.
Just over three weeks earlier, however, there was little mention of any of these in Prabowo’s fiery inauguration address in Jakarta. And for observers in Indonesia, it’s this nearly hour-long, unscripted speech, more than any carefully crafted communiqué from White House staff, that more accurately reflects the new president’s approach to climate change and environmental issues at large.
“The presidential speech strongly indicates that [Prabowo] won’t pay much attention to the three planetary crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution,” said Susan Herawati, secretary-general of the Coalition for Fisheries Justice (KIARA), an advocacy group.
In that Oct. 20 speech, Prabowo called for Indonesia to be energy self-sufficient: “We have been blessed [with] plants such as oil palm can produce diesel and gasoline,” he said, adding that Indonesia also has “a lot of coal.”
The country relies on coal for two-thirds of its grid electricity, and the government’s idea of a clean energy transition is to gradually phase it out with biofuels and biomass — burning processed plant matter in place of fossilised plant matter. This despite a growing chorus from the science community that burning biofuels and biomass can be even more carbon-intensive than burning coal.
King coal
Even then, this phaseout, starting with the early retirement of 13 coal-fired power plants by 2030, doesn’t apply to captive coal plants — those that serve specific industries and not the grid. This segment of the energy sector is on an explosive growth trajectory, primarily to process the nickel and other metals needed to build batteries for electric vehicles and other “clean energy” applications.
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At COP29, Indonesia’s representatives acted like traders selling carbon credits. They also touted the country’s carbon capture potential. There wasn’t a single narrative about protecting people during this crisis.
Uli Arta Siagian, campaign manager, Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI)
This defeats the purpose of the green transition agenda itself, which is to lower greenhouse gas emissions by switching from fossil fuel-burning vehicles to EVs, and also undermines Indonesia’s climate goals, according to the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL).
The Jakarta-based think tank says the new government should stop issuing new permits for captive coal plants and increase monitoring of existing ones, deemed largely responsible for a 21 per cent rise in Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2022.
The country’s currently on track to build enough captive coal plants to exceed its self-imposed emissions cap under the Paris Agreement by double by 2030. A 2022 study by the Institute for Essential Service Reform (IESR), a Jakarta-based think tank, and the University of Maryland, U.S., says it should be going in the other direction and quickly winding down plants. The study projected that Indonesia would need to cut its coal power generation by 11 per cent in 2030, by more than 90 per cent in 2040, and completely stop burning coal by 2045.
“Making coal an option for Indonesia’s energy self-sufficiency contradicts the country’s commitment on climate change,” said Syaharani, ICEL’s head of environmental management and climate justice.
Finance Minister Sri Mulyani said recently that the early retirement of coal plants (from which captive plants are exempt) would continue, but also raised concerns over the cost of both retirement and of upgrading the grid for renewable energy.
However, an analysis by climate nonprofit TransitionZero estimates that, when accounting for air, water and climate costs, the average operating cost of coal in Indonesia is 27 per cent higher than that of clean energy. And by 2030, replacing fossil fuels with renewables will save Indonesia between US$15.6 billion and $51.7 billion when accounting for air pollution costs, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.
Carbon trading
A key climate policy that the Prabowo administration often touts as a solution to climate change is carbon trading.
During the 29th United Nations climate summit (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, Prabowo’s brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, who represents the Indonesian government there, highlighted carbon trading as one of the country’s key issues.
Addressing world leaders, he said Indonesia is committed to developing a robust carbon market, starting with optimising 557 million tons of verified carbon credits available in the country.
Hashim also highlighted Indonesia’s vast salt aquifers, which offer a carbon capture and storage capacity of nearly 500 gigatons. He noted that several multinational companies have shown strong interest in these multi-billion-dollar projects.
These are all false solutions to the climate crisis as they would allow companies to keep emitting carbon as long as they buy carbon credit, said Uli Arta Siagian, forest and plantation campaign manager at the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI).
By highlighting carbon market and carbon capture and storage during the climate summit, Prabowo’s administration is treating climate change as a business opportunity, rather than a crisis that needs urgent action, she added.
“At COP29, Indonesia’s representatives acted like traders selling carbon credits. They also touted the country’s carbon capture potential. There wasn’t a single narrative about protecting people during this crisis,” Uli said as quoted by Kompas daily.
Bhima Yudhistira, the executive director of the nonprofits Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), questioned the scientific validity of carbon trading because carbon emissions produced by burning fossil fuel differ from the emissions absorbed by forests.
“Fossil fuel emissions remain in the atmosphere for a long time, whereas forest absorption deals with different types of emissions. This fundamentally undermines the assumptions behind carbon trading,” he said.
Fuel and food
Bioenergy development is another focus of the Prabowo administration, inherited from the previous government, that experts say constitutes a “false solution” to the climate crisis.
The previous president, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, rolled out an ambitious program to establish massive sugarcane plantations and channel an increasing portion of Indonesia’s palm oil production into developing biofuels. He also promoted the rise of “energy estates”: vast concessions of fast-growing trees that can be processed into biomass pellets to burn alongside coal.
The government touts these forms of bioenergy as being cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels, but growing the feedstock calls for deforestation on an industrial scale, according to ICEL. A 2020 study by researchers at the University of Indonesia estimated that achieving a blend of biodiesel with 50 per cent palm oil-derived biofuel, which the government plans to do as early as 2025, would require establishing 9.29 million hectares (23 million acres) of new oil palm plantations — an area nearly the size of South Korea.
New oil palm and sugarcane plantations are part of the government’s “food estate” program, begun under Jokowi and embraced by Prabowo. The rationale, as outlined in his inauguration speech, is to boost Indonesia’s food security — even though much of the palm oil and most of the sugar produced will be turned into biofuels.
Regardless of the crop, however, critics say the food estate program is poorly conceived, pointing to near-identical projects by previous governments that failed spectacularly and left a trail of deforestation and displacement of Indigenous and forest-dependent communities.
The most recent such example came during the Jokowi administration. In 2020, he announced a food estate project in Central Kalimantan province, on the island of Borneo. That was the same region where, more than 20 years earlier, the Suharto regime rolled out its Mega Rice Project (MRP).
The million-hectare (2.5-million-acre) MRP ran from just 1997-1998, abandoned when it became clear that the peat soil that had been cleared and drained wasn’t suitable for growing rice. In the end, the MRP’s lasting legacy was a wasteland of drained and degraded peat that has since burned nearly every year during the dry season, spewing out a choking haze and large volumes of carbon emissions.
A report by watchdog group Pantau Gambut found that the 2020 project had become a repeat of the MRP: large portions of cleared land remain unused and abandoned as the majority of the land designated for the project was poorly suited for rice and other crops. Only 1 per cent of the area in the former MRP site is actually suitable for agriculture, according to the report.
The result has been lands overgrown with shrubs or taken over for oil palm plantations, the report found.
Downstreaming platform
Another program inherited from the Jokowi administration (in which Prabowo was defense minister) is the “downstreaming” of commodities: processing of minerals in-country to boost their export value. The central commodity in this program is nickel, a key component in electric vehicles batteries, and Indonesia has in abundance.
Yet despite its “green” aspirations, the nickel industry in Indonesia has been devastating on both the climate and environmental fronts. It’s a major consumer of coal, and its mining, particularly on the islands of Sulawesi and Maluku, have caused widespread deforestation and pollution.
A new report by environmental NGOs Satya Bumi and Walhi found that the expansion of the nickel industry has devastated the tiny island of Kabaena at the tip of Southeast Sulawesi, polluting the sea and harming the nomadic Bajau sea tribe, whose culture inspired the Hollywood movie Avatar: The Way of Water.
This puts downstreaming in the same category as Prabowo’s energy transition and food estate programs as misguided policies that carry severe environmental and social risks, said ICEL’s Syaharani.
“The food estate [program], blue economy, downstreaming projects and other projects have been proven to be false climate solutions,” she said.
Any claims they make to fighting climate change are just greenwashing attempts, she added.
“Projects that are touted to be climate actions turn out to be business as usual that emphasise large-scale investments and tend to create new problems and make people more vulnerable to climate change,” Syaharani said.
Political picks
It’s not just programs that Prabowo has inherited from Jokowi; he’s also chosen to keep many of the same ministers from the previous administration with ties to corporate interests, and added even more.
At least four of Prabowo’s cabinet members have connections to influential Bornean tycoon Andi Syamsudin Arsyad, popularly known as Haji Isam. Isam’s business empire, a network of around 60 companies engaged in palm oil and coal, among other businesses, has been implicated in large-scale deforestation and conflicts with Indigenous and forest-dependent communities.
Isam reportedly provided logistical support for Prabowo’s presidential campaign, and was later named the point person for the food estate’s expansion in the Papua region, including the establishment of yet another million hectares of rice fields. That project, backed by a strong military presence, has also raised concerns over large-scale deforestation and displacement of Indigenous Papuans.
The first cabinet member linked to Isam is Amran Sulaiman, the agriculture minister under both Jokowi and Prabowo. He’s a cousin of Isam’s and previously serve as a director at an Isam company.
Then there’s the deputy forestry minister, Sulaiman Umar, Isam’s brother-in-law and head of Prabowo’s campaign team in South Kalimantan province.
The new transportation minister, Dudy Purwagandhi, was previously an executive at two of Isam’s companies, while the public works minister, Dody Hanggodo, was a director at a company controlled by two of Isam’s adult children.
Amran denied allegations that Prabowo retained him as agriculture minister because of his connection with Isam, telling local media that “We’re professional.”
A fifth cabinet member who’s reportedly been linked to Isam is the environment minister, Hanif Faisol Nurofiq. Though there aren’t any apparent ties between the two, investigative media outlet Tempo previously reported that they’ve been close since Hanif headed the forestry agency in South Kalimantan’s Tanah Bumbu district, where Isam hails from.
Isam has disputed that account, but regardless of whether there are any ties, Hanif’s appointment as environment minister still raises doubts over the future of environmental protection in Indonesia, said Andi Muttaqien, executive director of Satya Bumi.
“This is because the government’s economic policy tends to focus on using natural resources aggressively, particularly in the mining sector and food estate,” he said in a press statement.
Hanif, meanwhile, said he’s committed to increasing environmental protection and to improving environmental enforcement in the extractive industries. “Everyone has to follow the regulations,” he said.
Backsliding democracy
All these concerns over the future of environmental and climate policies in Indonesia come amid shrinking civic space, with a recent rise in the criminal persecution of human rights and environmental defenders, as well as government critics. These have come in the form of defamation lawsuits, harassment campaigns, intimidation, and both physical and online attacks.
In 2021, Luhut Pandjaitan, Jokowi’s chief minister in charge of investments and recently appointed by Prabowo to helm the National Economic Council (DEN), accused Greenpeace Indonesia of spreading misinformation related to the country’s deforestation rate after the NGO criticised the president. He used that incident to threaten an audit of Greenpeace and other foreign NGOs operating in the country.
That same year, Luhut filed a defamation lawsuit against two prominent human rights defenders, Haris Azhar and Fatia Maulidiyanti, after they pointed out — correctly — that the minister has links to mining companies operating in the Papua region. Extractive companies there are frequently accused of rights violations against local communities, backed by a heavy security presence because of the fact that the Papua region is a quasi-militarised zone to quell a long-simmering separatist movement.
In January this year, a court in Jakarta acquitted Haris and Fatia of all the charges.
Most recently, in September, an unidentified group disrupted, intimidated and behaved aggressively toward protester in a climate march in Jakarta.
Activists say these incidents highlight a regression in the country’s civil liberties under Jokowi, at least in the areas of freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association. They warn this trend could worsen under Prabowo, making it more difficult and dangerous for journalists, activists and academics to hold the government accountable.
Prabowo, a former military general who’s been accused of numerous human rights violations, has at times been critical of the media, especially when it comes to their coverage of him or his activities. He’s also made multiple statements criticising academics who criticised his controversial statements or program proposals, raising concerns among academics that they might have to censor themselves during Prabowo’s presidency to avoid reprisals.
Other activists have aired similar fears of being targeted and intimidated by government trolls or even the intelligence agencies.
This civic backsliding is reflected in Indonesia’s declining democracy index, as measured by The Economist Intelligence Unit, which hit a 14-year low in 2020. While it improved in the latest ranking, in 2023, the score of 6.53 still leaves Indonesia categorised as a flawed democracy.
ICEL says it’s important that the new government strengthen the country’s democracy and protect civic space. But Prabowo gone on record as saying that democracy is “very, very tiring” and “very, very messy and costly.”
Without a healthy democracy and strong civic space, Indonesia’s natural resources will continue to be at risk of overexploitation for the sake of economic development, according to Bella Nathania, ICEL’s acting deputy director for programs.
“Without strong commitment to guarantee public participation, Indonesia will move further away from inclusive democracy,” she said. “The increasing trend of repression and criminalisation [of environmentalists] requires urgent attention. The government has to protect the rights of environmental defenders and civil society who voice their concerns.”
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.
