ASPI Climate Action Brief: Indonesia
At the G20 Summit in London in 2009, Indonesia made a voluntary commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2020 which it later inscribed under the Copenhagen Accord — agreeing to cut them 26% against the business-as-usual (BAU) trajectory through its own efforts, and 41% if it received sufficient international financial support. Indonesia’s move was seen as ambitious at the time, especially for a developing country. Following its 2009 announcement, Indonesia enacted key legal and policy instruments including its National Action Plan on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Reduction and a mechanism to coordinate its GHG inventory.
Indonesia’s highest emitting sector, forestry, has long been of top concern for the country’s overall emissions reduction. As the host of the UN’s COP13 Climate Change Conference in 2007, Indonesia helped push through the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) mechanism that provides a framework for sustainable forest management by generating large-scale financing for conservation. Indonesia was among the first countries to join REDD+ and has since rolled out a series of policies and laws to implement it domestically, including its REDD+ National Strategy in 2012.
To tackle emissions from its second-highest emitting sector, energy, Indonesia released its National Energy Policy in 2006. This policy’s so-called optimal energy mix only targeted for renewables to exceed at least 5% by 2025. It was in 2014 that the Indonesian government updated its National Energy Policy to target at least 23% renewables in its total energy mix by 2025.
After the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, Indonesia updated its pledge to focus on a 2030 emissions reduction target of 29% reductions below BAU and 41% reductions with international support. It officially submitted these targets to the UN’s climate change body in its first official Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) in 2016.
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