• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
SPECIAL REPORT: ‘Defuse the Climate Time Bomb’ with Net-Zero by 2040, Guterres Urges G20 March 20, 2023
Devastating Impacts, Affordable Climate Solutions Drive IPCC’s Urgent Call for Action March 20, 2023
Window for 1.5°C ‘Rapidly Closing’, IPCC Warns March 20, 2023
Swift Action, Inclusive Resilience Vital in Face of Overlapping Climate Hazards March 20, 2023
Shift from Fossils to Renewables is Quickest, Cheapest Path to Cut Emissions, IPCC Report Shows March 20, 2023
Next
Prev

Front-Line Protests, Solid Research Drive Indonesia to Quit Coal, Protect Biodiversity

October 31, 2019
Reading time: 3 minutes

USAID Indonesia/Flickr

USAID Indonesia/Flickr

35
SHARES
 

From the transition off coal, to protecting the biodiverse islands that helped inspire the theory of evolution, a combination of front-line protests and solid research is pulling Indonesia toward a more aggressive response to the climate crisis.

With thousands in the streets demanding the country live up to its climate commitments, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) released a study on Indonesia’s renewable energy policy options last month, while The Gecko Project reported 10 takeaways from a successful, years-long fight by the people of the Aru Islands to save their land from plantation development.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
Subscribe

On the energy transition, a team from IISD released a set of findings that “address precisely what Jakarta’s protesters were looking for—solutions to the energy crisis that can be implemented now,” writes Philip Gass, the organization’s Indonesia lead and senior energy policy advisor, with a focus on “concrete ways that Indonesia can break out of its coal dependence and embrace renewables”. The country installed less than a gigawatt of solar- and wind-generated electricity between 1985 and 2017, and will need to double that in the next five years to meet its Paris Agreement target of generating 23% of its power from renewables by 2025.

“Is this even possible?” Gass writes. “Technically, yes. Our study shows that Indonesia hasn’t been using renewable resources to their greatest potential. The experts we interviewed were confident that a few adjustments to Indonesia’s policy approach could boost sustainable energy investments and allow Indonesia to meet its goals in time.”

The report recommended action in four areas: a moratorium on new coal plants, regulatory reforms to support rooftop solar, phasing out coal subsidies while allowing renewables to earn market prices, and shifting from biofuels to bioenergy to reflect concerns about the “economic and environmental sustainability of biofuels in Indonesia”.

Gass reports “spirited” debate on the future of solar versus coal, along with concerns from the Indonesia Renewable Energy Association that the country might be farther from its 2025 target than official reports indicate. “Everyone agreed, however, that it’s absolutely necessary for Indonesia to expand its renewable energy sources, and do this as soon as possible,” he writes. “I walked away feeling that perhaps I wasn’t the only one who felt the urgency behind the student-led climate strikes this week; everyone in the room seemed to understand that now is the time to act.”

In the Aru Islands, meanwhile, The Gecko Project and Mongabay News describe the Save Aru campaign as “one of Indonesia’s most successful grassroots movements in recent years,” defeating a plan to turn more than half of the island archipelago into a massive sugar plantation.

“By the time the Aruese became aware of the sugar cane project, pushed through in secret by a politician who was later jailed for corruption, it was nearly too late to stop it,” the co-published article states. “If it went ahead, it would replace Aru’s rainforests with a sea of sugar cane more than half the size of Puerto Rico, destroying the existing livelihoods and food supplies of tens of thousands of people.”

Gecko and Mongabay stress the “huge odds” the community faced. “In Indonesia, a young democracy still recovering from three decades of military rule, companies usually succeed in their efforts to annex Indigenous lands. The country has consequently become blanketed in concessions for plantations and mines that have provoked thousands of land conflicts.”

In this case, the community’s success relied on 10 key ingredients: using social media to spread the story around the world; conducting their own investigations into a “sketchy” project and the “mysterious” company behind it; pressing “influential institutions” for support; debunking the “pseudoscience” behind the project; finding helpful contacts in government offices; demonstrating widespread opposition to the project; rooting their efforts in local culture and identity; building a prominent role for women as “a powerful and critical component of the movement”; sustaining a “genuine grassroots campaign”; and making the “illegalities in the permit process” impossible to ignore.“In the mid-1800s, the extraordinary biodiversity of the Aru Islands helped inspire the theory of evolution by natural selection,” Gecko and Mongabay write. “Several years ago, however, a corrupt politician granted a single company permission to convert most of the islands’ rainforests into a vast sugar plantation. The people of Aru fought back. Today, the story of their grassroots campaign resonates across the world as a growing global movement seeks to force governments to act on climate change.”



in Asia, Biodiversity & Habitat, Bioenergy, Clean Electricity Grid, Climate Action / "Blockadia", Coal, Energy / Carbon Pricing & Economics, Energy Subsidies, First Peoples, Forests & Deforestation, Legal & Regulatory, Off-Grid, Solar, Wind

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Kern River Valley Fire Info/Facebook
International Agencies & Studies

SPECIAL REPORT: ‘Defuse the Climate Time Bomb’ with Net-Zero by 2040, Guterres Urges G20

March 20, 2023
42
IFRC Intl. Federation:Twitter
International Agencies & Studies

Devastating Impacts, Affordable Climate Solutions Drive IPCC’s Urgent Call for Action

March 20, 2023
628
FMSC/Flickr
Environmental Justice

Swift Action, Inclusive Resilience Vital in Face of Overlapping Climate Hazards

March 20, 2023
19

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

IFRC Intl. Federation:Twitter

Devastating Impacts, Affordable Climate Solutions Drive IPCC’s Urgent Call for Action

March 20, 2023
628
U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement/flickr

Willow Oil Project in Alaska Faces Legal Challenges, Economic Doubts

March 19, 2023
294
@davenewworld_2

Keystone Pipeline Safety Worries Lawmakers after TC Energy Ordered to Reduce Operating Pressure

March 19, 2023
225
Rebecca Bollwitt/flickr

Fossils Stay ‘Oily’, Gibsons Sues Big Oil, U.S. Clean Energy Booms, EU Pushes Fossil Phaseout, and Fukushima Disaster was ‘No Accident’

March 14, 2023
325
EcoFlight

Historic Deal Reopens B.C. Indigenous Territory to Fracking, Promises Land Restoration

March 19, 2023
414
Wikipedia

Fossil Funding Makes Indigenous Resource Network a ‘Propaganda Machine’, Opponent Says

March 19, 2023
63

Recent Posts

Kern River Valley Fire Info/Facebook

SPECIAL REPORT: ‘Defuse the Climate Time Bomb’ with Net-Zero by 2040, Guterres Urges G20

March 20, 2023
42
U.S. National Park Service/rawpixel

Window for 1.5°C ‘Rapidly Closing’, IPCC Warns

March 20, 2023
18
FMSC/Flickr

Swift Action, Inclusive Resilience Vital in Face of Overlapping Climate Hazards

March 20, 2023
19
Kenuoene/pixabay

Shift from Fossils to Renewables is Quickest, Cheapest Path to Cut Emissions, IPCC Report Shows

March 20, 2023
25
Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine/Wikimedia Commons

IPCC Report Charts a Course for Ottawa’s ‘Clean Technology’ Budget

March 20, 2023
26
Kiara Worth, UNClimateChange/flickr

Gap Between IPCC’s Science, National Actions Sets Challenge for COP 28

March 20, 2023
25
Next Post
Danilo Borges/wikimedia commons

Qatar Spends LNG Fortune on Outdoor Cooling to Host 2022 World Cup

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}