The action was held by around 70 or so protesters from the Papuan Student Alliance (AMP) and the Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua (FRI-WP) who held the demonstration to demand the closure of the Freeport copper and gold mine in Papua.
FRI-WP spokesperson Surya Anta said that the international community must take a position on the forced incorporation of West Papua into the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI).
“Since May 1, 1963 until now, West Papua’s was removed from Holland’s decolonisation list without the West Papuan people knowledge”, said Surya.
Surya also accused Freeport of being an entry point for the colonisation of West Papua on the grounds that the first work contract between Freeport and Indonesia was signed in 1967.
Meanwhile the Act of Free Choice (Pepera) which resulted in the incorporation of West Papua into the NKRI was held in 1969. Surya said that the Pepera was manipulated and undemocratic.
Dorlince Iyowau, a resident of Timika who took part in the action, added that Freeport’s presence in Papua has not brought prosperity or peace to the West Papuan people.
“Violence against the people and damage to the environment by waste tailings discarded into the Ajkwa River is a concrete form of Freeport’s colonial presence”, said Dorlince.
In a press release received by Tirto, the FRI-WP and the AMP made nine demands, three of which were the closure of PT Freeport, the withdrawal of the TNI (Indonesian military) and Polri (National Police) from Papua and self-determination for the people of Papua.
The release also stated that based on a report by the Papuan Institute for Human Rights Studies and Advocacy (Elsham) in 2002, numerous cases of violence have been committed by security forces in Papua.
The report notes that thousands of people have died, scores have disappeared and hundreds more have been arrested and tortured. In addition to this, it also notes places of worship that have been burnt down, villages and other locations that have been destroyed, many of which have yet to be properly documented.
The demonstrators began leaving the Freeport offices at around 3.15 pm. Similar actions are planned to take place simultaneously on April 7 in several different cities including Yogyakarta and Semarang (Central Java), Bandung (West Java), Surabaya and Malang (East Java), Makassar (South Sulawesi), Palu (Central Sulawesi), Ternate (North Maluku) and Papua itself. (*)
When it comes to global climate issues, attention this past year has focused on the United States’ decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, or China and India’s rapid shifts to clean energy. Meanwhile, the world’s other major greenhouse gas emitter is being ignored. Indonesia, a country that, depending on the scale of its now-seasonal fires, can be the
world’s third to sixth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has done little to implement policies that would enable it to meet its already weak
Paris agreement goals.
In fact, many of its actions are pushing the country in the opposite direction, toward greater emissions. This includes government plans to build over 100 coal-fired power plants alongside the push to expand palm oil production and increase local biofuel consumption. Factor in the massive expansion of a car-centric transportation infrastructure, including new highways across the archipelago, booming air travel, a growing middle class, and, unlike many of its Asian neighbors, very little investment in renewables, and you have the recipe for a climate disaster. It’s not just Indonesia’s fault – the failure to scale up climate finance has meant that programs meant to stem deforestation have yet to bear fruit. Indonesia’s failure, since Paris, to address its emissions, could have global ramifications and if things continue on the business-as-usual path, critically damage global climate goals.
“Indonesia is too big to fail when it comes to climate because it is such a big emitter… because of deforestation and peat burning,” said Jonah Busch with the Center for Global Development. “It certainly makes it a lot harder to meet international climate goals if you have such a big emitter that [has] continued its big emissions.”
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Indonesia’s Global Importance
Indonesia is a country that, despite its size and regional importance, regularly is forgotten or ignored on the global stage. This applies to climate issues as well. Despite its important role in the global fight against climate change, it gets little attention compared to other major emitters. Part of the reason is due to the uniqueness of its emissions. The other countries mentioned above are major emitters due to energy use, transportation, or air travel, the key focus of most international climate attention thus far.
“In climate in general, forests are underappreciated, not given enough attention, and marginalized in policy,” said Busch. “When a lot of people think about climate and greenhouse gas emissions, they only think about emissions from fossil fuels.”
On the global scale, forests matter, and land use is responsible for about a quarter of global emissions, with Indonesia the undisputed leader in this category. Yet, while the United States’
withdrawal from the Paris Agreement last year made headlines, as do India and China’s commitments and actions, Indonesia has drawn little attention, and that’s a problem. Jakarta arguably matters more. The U.S. withdrawal from Paris was a blow, but
state and regional-level action likely means the country will still achieve its climate goals, and both India and China are actually on pace to
blow past their commitments. Indonesia, however, has made little progress, with emissions still growing.
According to an
analysis from the World Resources Institute, the country must made major changes if it is to have any hope of meetings its climate goals: an unconditional 26 percent reduction in emissions as compared to business-as-usual by 2030, which rises to 41 percent with international support. Indonesia needs to cut land-based emissions by about 80 percent to have any chance to achieve that goal.
“World leaders recognized the crucial role of forests in climate change mitigation in the Paris climate agreement and pledged to halt deforestation by 2020,” said Ratri Kusumohartono, forest campaigner with Greenpeace Indonesia. “However, in spite of these commitments, the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests…shows no sign of slowing down.”
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is partly to blame. His administration has not taken forest protection seriously enough, focusing instead on economic development. This leads to some worrisome discrepancies. After the 2015 fires, Jokowi made some positive moves, such as creating a
Peatland Restoration Agency, and, last year,
extending the 2011 Deforestation Moratorium put in place by his predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. At the same time, he is
pushing forward with plans to build over one million hectares of palm oil and sugar plantations in Papua. His government has also been
fighting against the European Union’s proposal to limit palm oil biofuel imports because evidence shows they do little to combat climate change due to – yes – deforestation and fires. His positive moves are more than negated by these steps, along with the evidence that deforestation is continuing mostly unabated.
Untapped Potential
The lack of action means that Indonesia has also fallen behind several developing nations in tackling climate change. This includes Brazil, which was,
until 2014, the leading emitter of land-based emissions in the world, due to the rampant deforestation of the Amazon. But since the turn of the millennium, the country has
made remarkable progress, mostly due to actions taken under then President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. There is much that Indonesia could learn from what took place in its similarly tropical, energy-hungry South American counterpart.
“You can’t say it’s impossible to reduce deforestation; you have this example of another country that has done it. If one country can do it, [Indonesia] can do it,” said Busch.
It’s not just India and Brazil that are leading the way. As mentioned above, China is dramatically cutting back on coal consumption; India is leading on solar. Even smaller neighbors are steaming ahead. Thailand’s
solar industry is booming, and even Bangladesh has installed rooftop solar systems on
over 3.5 million homes. There is no reason that Indonesia, with its large, growing economy cannot be replicating these models to reduce emissions and build up its clean energy portfolio.
If things continue as planned, Indonesia’s emissions could be much, much worse, with potentially disastrous consequences for the global environment. As an emerging economy, Indonesia has rapidly growing energy demands, but currently, it plans to meet future demand through
the building of dozens of coal-fired power plants. Furthermore, its fast growing transportation sector is necessitating imports of more oil and natural gas. As the United States grows its domestic oil industry and China reduces is dependency on imports, Indonesia could become the world’s largest oil importer
as soon as 2019. It is also projected to
become a net importer of natural gas by 2020. If Indonesia fails to stem deforestation and continues with a coal, gas, and oil dependent energy infrastructure, its emissions could skyrocket.
Indonesia’s size makes it crucial to the global climate. Quite simply, there is no hope without action in the archipelago. Right now the focus is on forests, but in the future, its energy usage could be just as important. The other risk is, of course, to Indonesia’s economy. If its neighbors move toward clean energy and Jakarta sticks to coal, gas, and oil, the costs to public health and the environment could be huge. A
study from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) echoed that fear. The irony would be that Jokowi’s economic development plans could actually fail if they don’t consider the costs of sticking to dirty energy.
“Renewable energy is already cheaper than coal in many markets around the world, and Indonesia can benefit hugely from this trend,” said Yulanda Chung with IEEFA in a
press statement. “We think Indonesian planners are far less ambitious than they could be in development of solar, especially, and that a more progressive and modern approach would be in the best economic interest of the country.”
In fact, Indonesia is well endowed and could make a shift. It has ample sun, wind, wave, and geothermal energy potential, and there are some small, nascent signs of hope.
Some lawmakers are pushing for better legislation to promote renewable energy. There is even a
Green Economy Caucus in Parliament that wants to promote sustainable development. But they are far too small, and lacking in ambition.
For now, though, Indonesia’s forests are still being cut down, and it is lagging behind nearly all of its neighbors in adopting clean energy. If things don’t change, the world’s most ignored big emitter could be the one that dooms the global climate.
Nithin Coca is a freelance writer and journalist who focuses on cultural, economic, and environmental issues in developing countries. Follow him on Twitter @excinit.
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3) What will Jokowi's legacy be in climate change?
HANS NICHOLAS JONG JAKARTA-BASED ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALIST
Jakarta | Mon, March 26, 2018 | 05:05 pm
Indonesia will have its next presidential election in April next year, which will also mark the end of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s first term.
While there’s still one year left before the next election, political debates have dominated talks in the nation.
Climate talks, however, remain tragically absent as policymakers are busy trying to hold on to their powers through political maneuvers, despite the fact that Indonesia is one of the largest greenhouse gas-producing countries in the world, largely due to deforestation, peatland degradation and forest fires.
What politicians, including Jokowi, forget is that the fate of the people they’re supposed to be serving depends on whether we manage to mitigate the impact of climate change.
Indonesia is among the countries with the highest risk of being affected by climate change as many of its islands
could disappear from rising sea levels.
A government official last year
said Indonesia had already lost 29,000 hectares of land due to rising sea levels in the northern part of Java Island and other regions, about the size of Hawaii's Honolulu.
And if the government doesn’t act fast, we could also lose Jakarta, the capital city from where it rules the country.
Jakarta is
sinking so fast that it could end up underwater due to rising sea levels and more extreme weather brought by climate change. At the same time, locals illegally drain groundwater because they are facing a shortage of water supply, further sinking the capital. As a result, about 40 percent of Jakarta now lies below sea level.
Jakarta is also on the brink of water crisis, akin to what’s happening in South Africa’s Cape Town, which is in the grip of a drought that could bring it to become the first city in the world to run out of water.
Prolonged drought caused by climate change might escalate the risk of a water crisis in Jakarta.
All this begs the question, why does the government treat climate change like an afterthought?
In order to successfully mitigate the impact of climate change, one needs to have robust and strong climate policies.
Yet, Indonesia’s existing climate policies have been criticized for not being strong enough, especially compared to other top emitters like
India, which is set to take a global leadership position in the transportation sector following its government announcement to
ban the sales of diesel and petrol-powered vehicles by 2030, thus allowing only electric cars to operate in the country.
As a top carbon emitter, Indonesia
has pledged to reduce its emissions growth by at least 29 percent over business-as-usual levels by 2030. That means it can emit no more than 2 gigatons of carbon dioxide that year.
But an
analysis by Washington-based think tank World Resources Institute (WRI) shows that barring no drastic measures, Indonesia will miss its emissions reduction target.
According to the analysis, even if Indonesia fully implements its existing policies in the land-use and energy sectors, the country will only slash its carbon emissions by 19 percent, a far cry from the country’s target of 29 percent emissions reduction.
Indonesia’s target has also been criticized for not being stringent enough. Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific analysis tracking climate action,
gives Indonesia’s commitment an “insufficient” rating as it’s not consistent with holding warming to below 2 degrees, let alone limiting it to 1.5 degrees.
Indonesia’s efforts to achieve its climate target are also deemed to be weak. In
the latest Climate Change Performance Index, an instrument which evaluates and compares the climate protection performance, Indonesia
ranked 37
th out of 56 countries and the European Union, falling under the classification of “low-performing country” because of its high deforestation rate and lack of bold action to phase out fossil fuels.
Indonesia’s energy policy is filled with contradictions. On one hand, the government wants to promote renewable energy. But at the same time, it also wants to continue to rely on coal as its main energy source.
While Indonesia aims to boost the use of renewable energy in power generation by 2025, increasing its portion in the energy mix from 12 percent in 2017 to 23 percent in 2025, coal will remain the primary source for energy in the country with 54.4 percent in 2025.
Worse yet, the government plans to shift its focus to using coal again after 2025, increasing the portion of coal in the energy mix to 58.5 percent by 2027, according to a
recent report by
The Jakarta Post.
Indonesia’s coal policy is at odds with the rest of the world. Globally, a coal phase-out campaign is gaining momentum, supported by commitments from 34 countries and subnational entities.
As a result, only seven countries initiated new coal power construction at more than one location in 2017.
And yes, Indonesia is one of them.
Indonesia’s continued reliance on coal will lock the country in a high-carbon economy and threaten to derail its climate policies and actions.
As Jokowi approaches the end of his first term, he has the power to make a decision that might serve as a turning point of his leadership.
Does he want to end his leadership with weak climate policies that left his people at the mercy of extreme weather and rising sea levels brought by climate change? Or does he want to make climate change his top priority to protect the lives of the hundreds of millions of people he has sworn to lead and to protect? Does he want to be a climate leader not only for Indonesia, but also for other countries threatened by climate change?
It’s not too late for Jokowi to put stronger climate policies in place by curbing the deforestation rate, phasing out dirty fossil fuels and ushering a new era of low-carbon development, among other things.
Indonesia has many untapped opportunities, especially in renewable energy, that it can harness.
With its large amounts of hydropower, Indonesia
has the potential to generate 788,000 megawatts of electricity through new and renewable energy.
A 2017
report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) also shows that Indonesia can afford to cancel at least nine coal projects as the country’s future electricity demand growth has been greatly overestimated. Failure to do so will force Indonesia to pay for energy it’s not using for decades.
And Indonesia could also do more to curb deforestation rate and plant trees, which soak up carbon dioxide as they grow, so much so that it is considered to have the single largest potential for storing carbon of any land-based natural climate solution.
According to data from the government, there are 24.3 million ha of degraded land out of 190 million ha of forest areas in Indonesia.
The government
aims to rehabilitate 12 million ha of degraded land by 2030, or 800,000 ha per year. Yet, our state budget only allocates enough money to reforest 200,000 to 300,000 ha of degraded lands per year. And there hasn’t been any information on how much progress has been made in the reforestation program.
But since limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees by 2100 would involve removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, reforestation is an essential component of climate change mitigation that the government can’t ignore.
Lastly, the government could strengthen its forest moratorium to further curb the deforestation rate. Currently, the moratorium only applies to new licenses on “primary” forests and peat swamps.
Critics of the moratorium say it is poorly enforced and that it should also cover all forests, not just primary forests. A primary forest is an ancient forest, as opposed to a “secondary” regenerating one.
By improving enforcement and renewing the moratorium through 2030, we can reduce emissions by 188 million tons of carbon dioxide, according to the WRI. Expanding the moratorium to include both secondary forest and forested areas already licensed out to developers could further reduce emissions by 427 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2030.
But time is ticking fast.
Some experts believe we only have two years left to take drastic actions on climate change before the goals laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement become almost unattainable. And while progress in renewable energy has been made,
new data released by the International Energy Agency revealed that carbon emissions from the use of energy rose again by 1.4 percent in 2017, after three flat years.
The rise in carbon emissions was spurred by an increase in fossil fuel demand last year, including the global coal demand which rose by 1 percent after a two-year decline. Therefore, Indonesia should act immediately and aim for 1.5 degrees if it wants a chance to survive.
Currently, Jokowi
is focusing on developing the country’s economy and building infrastructure all over the archipelago to help develop underserved and remote regions. But all of Jokowi’s efforts to bolster Indonesia’s economy and people’s welfare will be for naught if he ignores climate change, as there will be no jobs on a dead planet. (kes)
***
Born in Indonesia, Hans Nicholas Jong is a Jakarta-based environmental journalist. Before joining mongabay.com in 2017, Hans worked for The Jakarta Post
for five years. Having covered a wide range of issues from the elections to the economy, Hans found his passion in the environment. Being surrounded by people who dedicated their lives to protecting the environment fueled Hans’ interests and desire to write about the complexities of environmental issues in Indonesia and other countries.
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