Climate Change in Indonesia

0:00 and indonesia and southeast asia where it's starting to get late so thank you for making time to join today's discussion on indonesia and climate change uh we're going to get started in just about a minute so we're going to give everyone from the audience a chance to come in from the waiting room and then we'll begin very shortly all right thank you to everyone who's

0:45 joining today i think we're still getting some audience members coming in from the waiting room uh but in the interest of leaving as much time as possible for discussion at the end i'll go ahead and get things kicked off so my name is courtney weatherby i'm the deputy director of the southeast asia program at the stinson center in washington d.c and i'm delighted to welcome a diverse audience of those calling in this morning both from the united states as well as from southeast asia where it's starting to get late into the evening so today's discussion is jointly hosted by the us indonesia society and the southeast asia forum program at the stimson center the southeast asia forum is an initiative that aims to improve u.s understanding of southeast asia and build bridges between southeast asia policy experts and the academic community

1:30 the forum is chaired by non-resident william weiss and has a mission to promote and facilitate the study of southeast asia at colleges universities and research institutes in the mid-atlantic area of the united states and are particularly delighted to welcome a distinguished panel of international experts today to help contribute to this conversation and dialogue i think i think most of you on the call know indonesia is in a challenging position as an archipelagic nation and one of the countries that's most vulnerable to climate change globally uh so it's a very timely discussion um looking at sort of the challenges for 42 million indonesians living along the coastlines facing impacts from sea level rise as well as millions and tons of millions of others whose livelihoods and daily living will be affected by the

2:16 other challenges of climate change ranging from flood drought and other natural disasters to increase temperature many of these shocks are already felt today so i think there's a real opportunity for us to discuss not only the immediate challenges but the long-term challenges before i hand the session over to ambassador blake as moderator i do want to just note that we hope today's session will be interactive with all of you in the audience so we encourage you to submit questions and comments through the q a function which is located at a button at the bottom of the zoom screen and you're welcome to type questions comments uh or or raise any technical challenges that you see and i will be moderating and managing those questions throughout the session uh and turning to them to pull when we get to the q a uh at the end of the today's discussion

3:01 so please do submit questions as they come up throughout the discussion i'll do my best to get to all of them but i know we have a large group on the call today so i may end up having to combine some of the questions with that said i'm delighted to introduce our moderator for today ambassador robert blake jr who's the senior director leading the southeast asia practice at mclarty associates ambassador blake served for 31 years in the state department in a wide range of leadership positions including u.s ambassador to indonesia so with that ambassador i'm delighted to turn the panel discussion over to you well thank you very much courtney and let me add my own very warm words of welcome to everyone today and salamat malam to all of our indonesian guests for what promises to

3:47 be a very interesting panel on a subject of great importance to us all indonesia is one of the world's major emitters of greenhouse gas emissions but is also a country that has made considerable progress in recent years to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by reducing deforestation rates and scaling up its renewable energy plans its current emissions reductions pledge its so-called nationally determined contribution is to reduce its emissions by 29 from its businesses usual level by 2030 and to reduce it by 41 if it can get international assistance the us and others are encouraging indonesia to

4:33 scale up its climate ambition and private financing to help indonesia do so looks increasingly promising so here to help us unpack all of these issues our three really terrific speakers and let me just briefly introduce each of them our first feature speaker will be ambassador dino patti jalal who is a very old friend and wears many many hats he served as indonesia's ambassador to the united states from 2010 to 2013 before returning to jakarta as to serve as vice minister for foreign affairs he's the founder of the foreign policy community of indonesia which is a non-partisan group that seeks to promote internationalism in indonesia and he's also chairman of the board of

5:20 directors of the world resources institute wri in indonesia our second speaker is the executive director of the indonesian forum for environment known as wali she has more than 20 years of experience working on issues related to the environment development mostly working with ngos on on issues ranging from community planning and organizing to advocacy and campaigning both at the national indonesian level and at the asean level prior to joining wally as the executive director in 25th 2016 she worked in various other positions in wali as well as with greenpeace's southeast asia office

6:06 and the civil society reform for climate justice and last but not least dr richard geo directs conservation international's work in the asia pacific region overseeing ci's work in 13 different countries richard brings more than 20 years of experience working in conservation and conservation science across the globe to this role prior to joining ci he served as the montana state director for the nature conservancy where he led programs that permanently protected more than 250 000 acres of critically important private lands and habitat so a warm welcome to all of our participants each of our speakers will have seven to eight minutes of remarks

6:52 after which we will have a discussion and q a so why don't we start off with ambassador jalal do you know over to you thank you bob and it's nice to see everybody here nice to see you bob we really miss you uh in jakarta you're one of the most uh well-traveled uh american ambassador in indonesia right you travel everywhere so i really envy you and and i want to clarify to everybody that when uh bob referred to me as an old friend you know he was referring to a long-standing friend and i'm not my age right so look uh let me begin by saying uh i think in my view uh climate issue has been somewhat of blind spot uh

7:38 uh to the government in the last four or five years or so you know the focus uh in the jokowi administration despite the fact that he raised the emission target from 26 to 29 at the paris uh cop event uh despite that uh the focus had been on on infrastructure uh economic development um and uh part of that is uh raising the electricity target uh for example to 35 000 megawatt uh much of it uh relies on coal predominantly yeah uh so what that means uh

8:24 is that you know the climate issue uh was really something that is handled by the environment ministry and the 29 target was not furnished with a national uh program right and then corbett hit uh in 2020 uh and everything was about covet it should be of course uh but 2021 uh was a bit has been a bit different right there has been a renewed uh interest uh on on climate uh issues i think uh in a large part because uh the international environment yeah uh china has uh announced that zero emission 2060 biden has returned to paris climate 3d

9:11 and then uh has announced a net zero target as well europe before that japan uh south africa korea and and so on right so uh you know and and then sadly uh president jokowi was invited to give remarks at the abaddon climate summit but so uh externally there is uh a push for indonesia to be more proactive on climate issues and the environment minister established the target of net zero emission by 2070 right but that was protested by i think all uh activists and ngos and think tanks dealing with climate and environment uh

9:56 we participated in the indonesia net zero summit and that was the conclusion that not a single group accepted the net zero emission of 2070 basically because we believe that the carbon stock to rescue the world to limit temperature growth below 1.5 degree is going to run out by 2050 so doing a net zero target by 2070 is just 20 years too late right so there have been a lot of criticism of that in fact my group we organized a video campaign of celebrities uh with a combined follower of 50 million people uh rejecting well not rejecting explicitly by calling for net zero

10:43 emission by 2050 and uh that sort of changed the flavor of this uh because suddenly public opinion has awoken a little bit uh and and uh we have heard since that the debate has moved right uh that for example the ministry for national development has now presented four scenarios for net zero uh mission uh one is uh 2070 target and another scenario is 2060 target and another scenario is 2050 target and then the last one is even 2045 target so those four options will be uh given to the president for his decision minister lujut has even announced 2060 uh or before right and as you know he

11:31 now has uh formed a task force with uh mr senator john kerry secretary john kerry uh on climate change bilateral cooperation between indonesia and and united states so there are movements on this even the pln has made mention of the fact that you know 2045 it is possible uh to uh to achieve net zero emission uh meanwhile the the environment minister remains conservative uh and to me it's rather ironic that the department that deals with environment and climate is the most passive resistant and most resistant and most conservative when it comes to climate emission while the other economy uh the other

12:18 departments are more uh open-minded and more progressive right so i have high hopes that uh before cop 26 uh in in glasgow that uh indonesia should be able to announce a more ambitious target than net zero emission 2070 right and the good news is uh that uh in indonesia in the last four years there's been a steady decline of deforestation right the peak was uh 2016 and that was uh the time i'm looking at my chart here it was about 900 000 hectares of deforestation uh loss right which is quite a bit right but uh by 2017 it's just below 400 000 hectares

13:06 and it keeps producing uh the uh what we call it it keeps reducing uh the rate of uh deforestation and and the data from uh global forest watch uh and also the data from uh the ministry for uh environment and forestry uh more or less uh the same showing the same declining trend even though you know there are differences uh here and there there are differences in methodology the differences in definition of forest there are differences uh in you know other things uh still both data sets prove that there's been a declining uh uh forced three uh deforestation

13:52 rate in indonesia and you know hopefully this is something that can be maintained but this is not sustainable if you want to reach net zero emission uh let alone if we are to uh you know achieve for example a 50 reduction by 2030 uh which is what uh other many organizations are calling for uh and the 29 reduction that uh bob you mentioned just now uh is seen as being way too uh way too low uh uh compared to what other countries uh uh uh are doing right uh so uh we hope the government

14:38 will will raise uh that ambition that nbc and and should not just count on deforestation issues on land use issues and peatland issues why because the the portion of energy uh in in creating and producing emissions in indonesia is rising uh and it will overtake the portion of deforestation and and and peatland right uh just by way of data [Music] it is predicted by 2022 uh the portion of emission from energy and transportation sectors will be about 51 and by

15:25 2030 uh it will reach uh 60 you know 59 uh to be precise right which means what uh we got to do something on on energy transitions uh and right now the big question is how do you face that whole and that is a big question that the government has not uh provided an answer for because it's not just an economic issue it's also a political issue uh you know the coal lobby is very strong in indonesia right and you know you know the politics quite well uh bob right so uh there's a lot of big questions uh the big challenge as i said is uh phasing out coal reforming the energy system maintaining the trend of deforestation in indonesia and

16:13 the ability for the government to establish an ambitious net zero emission target not 20 70 but hopefully 2060 or even 2050 but for that to happen the president must make it a presidential agenda and that has not happened yet the moment that becomes a presidential agenda the ministers the different departments will fall in place uh and will be more coordinated uh to reach that target yeah maybe i'll stop there and we'll continue later wonderful that's a terrific overview thank you very much dino um our next speaker is over to you okay uh thank you ambassador blake it's a pleasure to join in this

17:01 discussion this evening or in the morning your time so let me share my screen for short presentation okay okay so as uh have been said before that climate change or climate crisis is happening already in indonesia and it is not something that we are looking ahead but it's already here in indonesia and as the recent tropical cyclone in

17:46 uh isn't satangara proof that it's also confirmed by the climate agency in indonesia that it is the impact of climate change so early this year we experienced uh two climate induced uh disasters uh first is the tropical cyclone and uh previously also the floods big flats in south kalimantan that drawn almost the entire province and of course it's not only about extreme weather or climate uh induced but it's also about

18:32 the loss of the environmental carrying capacity or ecosystem carrying capacity that make it worsen so as also mentioned indonesia is not only a victim but also a contributor so indonesia is currently one of the largest emitter from of greenhouse gases and we know that uh the two major sources of this emission is the deforestation and uh the other one is the uh from the energy sector especially uh from uh burning of fossil fuels

19:18 that is yeah still in our energy mix is part of the big biggest share of the energy mix in indonesia so here's the annual co2 emission in indonesia according to our in data so in 2019 indonesia emits about 600 million tons of co2 and if we compare this with the carbon budget we know that ipcc the intergovernmental panel on climate change issued a report in 2018 about carbon

20:05 budget in order to uh to keep the temperature increase under 2 degrees celsius is about 580 gigaton globally and we in indonesia while he together with some students university university students we look at the gap between what is currently emitted and also what is the carbon budget actually for indonesia if we consider the climate justice perspective so according to our calculation uh actually indonesia uh in order to

20:54 reach a 66 probability to achieve 1.5 degrees celsius we only have like 14.8 gigaton and if it's uh to achieve 50 probability maximum we only have like 20 20 gigaton so if we compare this with the 600 million annual emission then it means we only have like uh yeah less than three years uh before we uh use up our carbon budget so it is really impressive that

21:41 indonesia really doing the emission reduction very sharply not only because it is to make indonesia on track with the 1.5 degree target and also paris agreement but also the the most impressive thing is about the disaster indonesian people millions of indonesian people every year like millions of them have to be a climate refugee because they need to leave their homes due to the climate induced disasters like

22:29 flash floods extreme weather and also landslides and also thousands of homes destroyed and also a lot of public facility like health and also education facilities are all destroyed due to this this disaster so for indonesia for indonesian people and also for indonesian government the reduction of emission it is really about their obligation to the citizen it is not only about contributing to the global target but also mainly they need to think about

23:16 their obligation towards its citizen because why i said like this because right now it still seems like in the mind of our government we are being pressured by international or by other countries to reduce emission that it will mean slowdown of economy and etc etc but they forgot that their main obligation is towards the people and millions of people women children and they are all under the threat of disasters they they don't have

24:02 security from the risk of the disaster this i think what the government needs to think when they talk about emission reduction and all that or other responsibility so uh yeah talking about coal as main source of our energy right now about 80 percent of our energy source uh coming from coal if we look at the global coal deposit actually indonesia owns very little only 2.6 percent of the global deposit but we are uh one of the i think top two uh

24:49 if it's not the uh the first uh or the largest exporter of coal so um this year or last year our coal production is about 550 million ton and this year the government just recently announced that they are going to increase the production of coal to uh almost 600 million ton so talking about commitment to reduce emission and lately we also hear that some of our minister

25:36 and also electricity companies saying that they they will reduce the use of coal there for us activists or environmental organization in indonesia it's just a top because what is done already is that they are increasing the production of core instead of reducing it so i'm going to yeah so if we talk about energy transition uh you know we still have challenges although we already set up target about 23 percent of the energy mix

26:22 to be renewable by 2025 but if we see the plan and also the the current trend uh it's not going to happen and some of the things that we as society and especially also government avoid to talk about is about how coal business is highly politically connected if we see many parliamentarian members and even the current cabinet members there many of them have a connection with a core business some of them own coal mining

27:09 some of them also part of this core business as well and another challenge so um we talk about energy transition is also about the myth of chip coal so core is considered cheap because uh we know that all the externalities about the pollution about the health impact and also about the uh the pit the left behind open pits it is not taken care of so the health cost must be borne by the people and also the pollution like in jakarta for example we see that

27:56 jakarta is surrounded by several core power plants and the pollution in jakarta is quite severe actually we the citizen of jakarta is waiting for the decision of the court tomorrow about the pollution that we sued the president the governors and also several ministry to fix or uh revise the uh air pollution standard for jakarta so this is i think i'm already almost done okay yeah so about the uh

28:41 criticism that uh already said by ambassador uh dino that we see also the wave of uh crit uh critical voice from the young generation yeah uh not only about the highly political connection in the government and also with business sector but also related with climate change so we see that this is a potential that there are increasing awareness of the young people to call for action to government to fulfill their obligation yeah i think i stopped there thank you wonderful thank you very much uh our last speaker is dr richard geo so richard oversee you

29:27 well it's uh malam everyone solomon peggy good morning good evening uh i'm senior vice president for conservation international uh i'm based in singapore i'm american i've been with ci for about three years and have been writing out the pandemic in singapore for the past 18 months we have got about ci has about 300 staff in our field programs around all throughout southeast asia and the greater pacific you know china cambodia philippines uh new zealand fiji samoa new new caledonia but today what i'd like to talk about is how finance and conservation and climate are all coming together right here in indonesia where i i where i am today in jakarta is like three days into a five-day

30:13 quarantine and i actually get to go out in the field something i haven't done in over a year 18 months to see some of our field projects and you know see our field staff uh you know in west papua next week um and you were we'd see our honor to have this responsibility and and opportunity to work with you know with local communities and ministry of environment and the government of indonesia on marine and forest conservation mostly in west papua and sumatra and today i what i would like to emphasize is the context of how important these forests and peatlands and mangroves are to the world um and uh you know i can't overstate

30:58 that the more the science comes out that this is a critical place for all of us to come together to address the climate crisis so that's that's bottom line for my talk so next slide um there's a lot of complicated and important climate science you know we know a lot about reducing greenhouse gas emissions but one fact is often forgotten and that's nature is over a third of the solution you know over 10 gigatons per year of potential you know emissions reductions or mitigation um from nature it's actually much more than a third 37 next slide um and these natural climate solutions are so efficient in the way they can be used to fight climate change they you know when you invest in them they provide

31:43 lots of different kinds of returns you know including biodiversity we're a conservation organization interested in biodiversity so things like endangered species and forests and fresh water production you know natural capital food and fisheries for people uh and most of all the tree is just a great technology you know evolved over millennia to breathe in carbon dioxide and lock it up in solid form you know we don't have to like engineer these massively over uh overly complicated like plants to sort of suck in carbon dioxide you know we have the technology and that's nature next slide another important thing to remember is these ecosystems have evolved over hundreds of thousands or millions

32:29 of years and if they're destroyed the carbon that's housed there can't be recovered in our lifetime even if you go and restore the ecosystem and replant the trees it's not the same the carbon has been released and it's reduced the world's budget for you know what we have to do to keep the planet from catastrophically warming so keeping irrecoverable ecosystems intact is a key part of addressing the climate crisis um and again very forgotten because you know we get wrapped up in in you know the focus on you know uh technology and reducing emissions in other ways the next slide despite these simple facts nature's 37 percent of the solution cheap efficient uh easy way to do

33:18 to address climate change it only gets two percent of the funding yeah just every time i think about this i'm just amazed so um you know we won't but i won't go into that but today i want to address that question is why is indonesia critical right in that 37 and why should that 2 increase go first to indonesia next slide well if you look at the data indonesia is the most important place in the world for natural climate solutions to happen yeah that's just a fact it's got the most carbon of carbon in these carbon dense ecosystem types especially peatlands

34:04 mangroves tropical forest the big three of carbon density uh the the top three you know carbon rich nations indonesia brazil democratic republic congo right on top there you know of those three indonesia far and away has you know the government that has uh the greatest ambition to really address climate change you know and nature together um so um you know and the government has made real progress you know there's been a moratorium on new palm oil that concessions designated no deforestation and primary forest regulations and the countries objectively has reduced deforestation but yet it's probably the most

34:50 underfunded opportunity to address the climate crisis you know again nature is 37 percent of the solution only gets two percent of the of the funding indonesia is the most important country in the 37 percent we need to figure this out next slide markets are starting to catch up to the reality of climate change um you know in these these carbon markets both uh compliance markets and voluntary markets you know are increasing fast you know the top shows that uh the compliance market since 2017 last three years or so have increased five times uh in the voluntary market for for um carbon credits have doubled in the last couple years um but but if you look closely at the bottom number it's a small number

35:35 it's less than a billion dollars is the voluntary global voluntary carbon market you know and that that there's estimates that that could be 200 billion by you know by 2050 and should be you know we need to accelerate this um but two facts here one is not all markets incentivize natural climate solutions they're mostly alternative energy markets um and the other is we need new instruments to deploy this capital at scale you know there's huge interest from the private sector to invest in climate change you know and to be part of the solution but getting that capital onto the ground where it can make a difference is a whole other thing the next slide but there are some new instruments like the restore fund announced a couple months ago by apple

36:21 you know it was just a starter of 200 million um specifically focused on accelerating solutions to to climb to natural solutions to climate change and it's a partnership between goldman sachs apple and conservation international tim cook personally announced it on the stage um so and there's been lots of these big corporate announcements about you know investing you know making uh ambitions towards net zero and investing real money like balance sheet treasury money towards that solution next slide governments are also in the game uh this just from today uh singapore has announced 2.38 billion singaporean dollars yo for climate related investments so the

37:07 monetary authority just announced this that you know they're they're asset managers um one of them will be a natural climate solution uh sort of you know class um but yeah many governments are really interested in this so again how can these sorts of commitments translate to actually addressing the problem that two percent okay next slide there's great promise in this idea of blended capital you know uh and really thinking about larger at-scale financial instruments you know indonesia has long relied on in other developing countries have long relied on bilateral or multilateral support from donor governments you know but that's you know to address

37:54 the climate crisis on the timeline we need it's really not enough so combining these efforts with private sector investment so the funding can hit the ground and support communities that live in and around these critical ecosystems that are really out interacting with nature as part of their daily life um we can't ask those people to to give up uh economic development options so to ask them to help us in the world reduce emissions and address the climate crisis we have to help provide alternative livelihoods and that's what this kind of funding can do you know so if we think about what it means like the apple announcement what should that mean for communities uh the way we think about it in uh

38:39 conservation international is it should be for funding for people and projects you know with governments with communities that keep these ecosystem ecosystems attacked they avoid deforestation they provide new kinds of alternatives you know for developing livelihoods and generating wealth you know like strategies like social forestry you know uh that that can provide development in the forest with led by communities as an alternative to deforestation um and again uh you know these are things that the government is really leading that ngos like ci are are here to support uh and it's it's also interesting to me what things i would call conservation i've been in

39:25 the conservation business for you know a long time 20 30 years or something uh things i would call conservation like training and capacity building for forest rangers is really a climate change strategy you know more than building a windmill or developing a new kind of battery it's like having rangers out there that are stopping illegal activities like illegal logging um having you know social enterprises come in with new ways for local communities to make money that aren't drawing down natural resources these are all ways to address climate change and these are all things we need to do so next slide uh so just sort of to conclude here um you know indonesia will be on the world stage going forward and really

40:11 in the next few years uh the presidential regulation for carbon is is coming out and we're all we're all waiting with great hope for that and you know standing by to help implement and and raise this kind of blended capital to help deploy and make it a reality uh the g20 will be in indonesia in in you know next year uh you know there's these big international convenings coming up and we look i look forward to seeing indonesia lead and we're standing by to sort of support government and people to really help capitalize on this extraordinary opportunity and i think everybody here just the fact that we're here together this this convenient is like self-selection so i feel like i'm probably preaching to the choir about the importance of indonesia and

40:58 the importance of us pulling together you know and and addressing this big opportunity so thanks so much richard thank you for a really terrific uh presentation um i i just want to ask three quick questions of our speakers and then i'll turn it over to courtney and i'd like to just ask people to to answer in the shortly as possible in you know one minute or less let me start with dino do you know you you work a lot with uh young people in indonesia and we all know that people under 30 represent about half of the population of indonesia um how would you assess their kind of awareness of climate change and their growing concern about it and to what extent do you think there kind of can be a force for pushing the government to do more

41:44 thank you bob first uh the young people are in my view are most environmentally conscious uh why do i say that uh several years ago you would not uh think about uh plastics uh issue uh concern about plastics in the ocean but now it has become a a national norm uh and why because the young people uh care about it so so there's a very strong plastics movement in indonesia they haven't caught on on the climate issue for some reason and uh so when i talk to young people and i tell them about the statistics the danger what will happen in a four degree world and so on uh you know a lot of them are quite surprised uh

42:31 to hear this right so so i think it's a matter of more and more young people need to be awakened uh to uh you know the climate danger our strategy now is to to connect uh climate safety and climate uh change uh issue to centennial indonesia centennial indonesia as you know bob 20 45 hundred years indonesia everybody is so proud of it uh and uh you know to anticipate that but the only narrative missing is what happens if that 2045 centennial indonesia live in a hot world and nobody has asked a question before until you know a number of activists including my organization raised that you know do you want to live

43:17 in a world that is uh you know significantly harder uh with all the implications politically economically socially and and so on right so so uh the young people i think are raising their awareness where and i think more more young champions on climate issues will emerge terrific thank you very much you have a beautiful picture of kalimantan behind you um one of the big questions uh that people are wondering about now is the indonesian government's plan to move the capital from jakarta to kalimantan and the environmental impact that that would have um has your organization taken a position

44:02 on that we may have uh she may be frozen why don't we come back to uh can you yes we can hear it yeah sorry my connection is unstable no worries did you hear the question uh no not yet sorry the question was you you had a beautiful picture of kalimantan in as your background uh many are are following very closely the question of whether indonesia will move its capital to kalimantan it's been delayed several times and what the environmental impact of that would be certainly there would have

44:49 to be deforestation but i wondered if while he has taken a position on that yeah uh we did we do oppose the plan because uh we don't think it would solve the problem of over development in jaffa and instead of fixing the problem it will only move the problem to kalimantan because we know when we build another city it means we need more uh cement we need more woods we need more you know many raw materials in order to to build this new city and uh

45:37 we also see that the argument of the government to move the capital to kalimantan is just like out of the blue it never spoken during uh for example president's campaign or during the whole period uh the first period yeah so it's a kind of uh [Music] we cannot see uh what is the the scientific background uh behind this uh besides you know uh some taken from that research you know just a cherry-picking justification so yeah i think it's uh it's better that uh the government uh

46:23 seriously uh reducing the ecological footprints of the development among others the carbon emission instead of adding more by doing more infrastructure that is destroying the forest because we know uh part of the iskalimantan especially in the the northern part uh it's going to be also the target for the development of the cement factory the cars the cars mountain uh it will be targeted uh to be exploited for this new capital good thank you uh richard you talked very very

47:08 eloquently about how indonesia is the most carbon-rich nation now but and therefore the opportunities for climate finance and how those the various climate finance instruments are multiplying so i guess the question is how to how to marry up those two opportunities and make sure that indonesia can benefit from that finance what what's your sense with that you know that i think that is absolutely the question um one of my favorite quotes more recently is you know professionals or amateurs talk about strategy professionals talk about logistics so how do we actually do this what are the logistics of taking the ambition of all these companies and you know hopefully in a pre-competitive way

47:54 apply that to the problem of you know developing you know communities and you know transferring the wealth that's needed from you know the rich world to the developing world um you know and sort of doing these uh doing the kinds of interventions that's needed to you know to to grow communities and uh you know build capacity and reduce emissions um so you know i think i think government and you know and and and others have have a a good plan in place and now it's just sort of like trying to implement the plan um you know the indonesia just designated a new special envoy on climate um and are really reaching out to you know you know to other countries to really come in to

48:40 help so i think this idea that it's they're not alone and that you know we need to pull together around this you know first in the region around the world i think is is a really important thing terrific thank you courtney let me turn it over to you and you can um take some questions from our audience yes and thank you everyone for submitting your questions please do keep them coming as we go through the discussion and i'll endeavor to get through as many of them as i can so their initial question i was going to ask was about jakarta but i think the ibuya has already answered that uh relatively quickly so i'm instead going to shift to not a logistics but a strategic challenge in implementing indonesian leadership on climate change so one of our attendees raised the point that leadership on climate change issues inside indonesia has often been hindered

49:26 by competing domestic interests at both societal and ministerial levels so can any of our panelists comment on practical steps to overcome some of those inter-ministerial competitions or inter-sectoral competitions including sort of challenges of patronage well uh if i can take a shot at it i think that the position of the president will be a game changer and the president has begun to [Music] develop ownership of climate issues uh i think he's still in

50:12 the learning process uh i mean to be honest i think he was a bit surprised during the biden climate summit you know he was number 17 uh in the order of speaking and you know he had this uh net zero emission in 2070 and everybody else one by one start talking about net zero by 2050 you know you can imagine the president i'm sure he's looking left and right you know i think hey why am i the only one that would be speaking about 2070 when everybody else talking about 2050 you know so so i i i think the president and i hope will make it a presidential agenda because that's the only way that the competing interests uh would would fall into line and and

50:58 you know president yoko is quite decisive you know when when he feels that he owns an issue uh he he can be you know uh he can put his foot down uh and and you know even fire people who do not tow his line you know as he has proved on several occasions right but but really the game changer is uh the president has to be there and make it a presidential agenda and hopefully uh re-uh convene the council on on climate uh i forget what the name was in the past it was something like a council national council on on climate change which can determine a coordinated and

51:43 comprehensive strategy on what you call a climate issue yeah thank you so i i know actually i i'd love to comment on that um you know i think leadership is all about thinking about what's best for the greater good here and longer term as well you know carbon's going to go i think the prices are going to go up and eventually be so much more valuable than they are today so you know i think um kind of betting on that value is a good bet and you know i i i hope that the leaders in indonesia and around the world can can see that and uh and lead us there

52:32 so i think one one challenge which is referenced by multiple panelists today is the portrayal of uh policy decisions is often either being economic development-oriented or climate-oriented and sort of the lack of of clear tying these two aspects of development together so we had a couple attendees who have asked sort of the the way that indonesian law is on jobs looking for instance at the job creation omnibus law um you know what what are the impact that those have on climate targets given that they are prioritizing economic investment and job creation and is there an opportunity to more clearly tie these two uh often separate policy tracks together given that workers are um you know workers average citizens are some of the um the greatest impacted by climate

53:18 change yeah uh can i respond to that question yeah i think it's a the old way of thinking yeah uh uh contra how to say uh make uh environment or climate uh face to face in opposition with the economic propose because if we look at the impact of disasters the cause of disaster it is uh it's never calculated in in our economy for example the 2015 forest fires in indonesia the world bank made calculation that it actually cost the people the

54:06 society 200 billion u.s dollar it's like 10 of our income or our state budget so this kind of externalities never calculated in our economic indicator because it's all being paid by the people by the citizen the government if we look at the disaster hundreds or thousands of houses homes are being destroyed is government to uh rebuild fully all of them no yeah so i think when we talk about uh this thing uh the the impact and also uh

54:52 the the benefit or the economic benefit from uh exploited exploitation of the natural resources in in reckless way uh we need to talk about this issue as well and i i also want to uh relate with uh richard just presented that community-based natural resource management or giving access to community it also means uh economy it means a community can be a producer can uh make the economy so it is uh i think outdated thinking uh when you you know make this kind of a contradiction and related with the job creation if you

55:39 look at the the content of this job creation law it's actually a threat to environment because for example it can change the spatial plan without the approval of the parliament for infrastructure project or for strategic project it also uh making people further from the rights to information participation and decision making um and also it uh yeah it it also omit the the 30 percent of the forest state forest area in in its provinces

56:27 so i think job creation law will only make the situation worsen instead of making it better thank you uh you know i think the you know i'm a member of indonesia's chamber of uh commerce uh kardin uh and i i think one of the biggest paradigm shifts that should be accomplished is for indonesian business to understand that

57:12 the new climate economy is here to stay and will will expand and if you embrace it a green economy will actually create more jobs give you more capital more technology uh reduce in inequity uh and so on that paradigm has not been uh embraced by the indonesian uh business community right uh and and i think uh you know it's important to to start uh changing mindsets uh because if climate change uh is uh is our climate targets are gonna be achieved uh the majority of the tasks would be uh on on the private sector uh so yeah i

57:57 just want to flag that up here yeah and you know just the business of carbon credits it's a big business and to do it here in indonesia there's tremendous value creation that can happen uh you know ranging from you know how going out and monitoring and reviewing and evaluating these carbon projects every year uh just just the ecosystem around purchasing and trading carbon credits like here in jakarta the the financial ecosystem supporting the projects to to get to compliance you know it takes technical ability and creates jobs uh and then there's the downstream development of different product lines

58:42 associated with you know the alternative products you know that have come out of these projects um and then you know you know there's there's supply chains on there so this is really a new business that as i mentioned the market is just is is nascent it's a new market and indonesia has the supply and can develop the ecosystem and the value here so you know as as i said before this is a tremendous opportunity uh to develop the country in a very in a sustainable way in a new way that we haven't seen before in the and i'm world going to pick up on sort of the some of the challenges that you raised in your presentation and right now richard because we had a question specifically for you about the challenge of blended finance not yet gaining traction among indonesian

59:29 private sector actors uh so the the commentator noted this mainly right now driven by global corporations intergovernmental organizations and philanthropy so can you talk about how ci and other actors uh plan to work with the indonesian government communities to build a coalition that would support nature-based solutions that's inclusive of indonesia's private sector uh sure you know i think that uh you know it's more of a bias of what i talk about and you know i'm american and with an international conservation organization so in a lot of ways it's more of what i'm familiar with so i'm probably glossing over some of the the domestic efforts um led by government uh around uh you know getting blended finance sort of you know standing up and running um you know

1:00:17 indonesia was one of the first if not the first to do a uh a green bond you know a sovereign bond uh for investing in forests um and has just been you know one of these leaders and sort of thinking innovatively about you know how finance can go hand in hand with with community development and achieving the sustainable sustainable development goals uh you know i think more recently um the president has sort of uh you know and the ministers you know notably um uh ministers minister ct uh minister of uh kyle hicka have really made a push towards you know reaching the nationally determined contributions

1:01:03 and and make making sure that all these international and local efforts really add up to something um so so that kind of leadership i think is is what's what's needed and um you know there's there's there's also some new like public private um entities like the uh uh the natural capital carbon and communities um coalition that's that's being led through the coordinating minister lou hood um sort of under the under the uh leadership of the president so you know i think i think you know as part of the triharta karana forum so there's a number of domestic domestic coalitions that are really starting to gain momentum so we had a handful of questions about

1:01:48 forest fires and carbon impacts so one of our attendees noted that since 2015 there's been a lot of progress and a lot of common commentation about sort of indonesia's success in reducing deforestation however indonesia hasn't experienced a major el nino phase event since the 2015 time frame so you know attendees are curious if we can talk about whether we expect there to be you know further challenges during the next el nino phase um and whether the problem is truly diminishing and these policies are sort of setting the stage for continued uh dropping rates of deforestation or if there's further work that's needed to sort of entrench these successes given future climate variability and el nino glenia trends

1:02:47 i go after well uh i mean that's a big question if the four year uh declining trend in deforestation will will be sustained but but definitely uh part of the reason why that has happened uh aside from the fact that we have had no el nino uh in the last three years or so is because uh there has been uh quite stronger government enforcement uh on on the deforestation uh issue right and and we expect that uh to be uh to be the case uh to to continue and of course there's the other uh factor that the price of palm oil uh declined yeah uh in in in recent years

1:03:33 uh that has uh an impact as well uh covet uh has not proved to be an impact uh that that explains uh why there's lesser deforestation uh this is based on empirical uh data uh and uh if you there are people who say hey you know this deforestation has slowed down because there are no more force to chop but but the empirical data on the ground uh shows that uh in uh forest rich provinces like aceh uh west kalimantan papua and west papua these are provinces that are rich with forests the rate of deforestation there has also uh declined uh quite uh

1:04:19 significantly right so uh you know i'm quite optimistic but you know the government can be complacent uh about this the momentum has to be maintained and government uh enforcement uh policy uh needs to be uh you know continuously uh uh reinforced yeah yeah and i i think part of it is there's a role for the private sector to play it's part of the reason that i that these just top-down results-based payments for reducing these emissions is just not enough it's important but it's not enough you know because just measuring nationally and seeing that the emissions have gone down and getting payment for that it doesn't go always go all the way down

1:05:05 to the farmer who's trying to clear land so they can make a living and then setting peatlands on fire but if that's a carbon project that is run by a private developer that has real skin in the game that those carbon credits are verified every year and sold on the marketplace and that money comes back to the community that's the way that the private sector can really start addressing these these those kind of issues like fire can i just jump in one second on richard's point which is uh to add that uh there's an important effort underway and has been underway in in sumatra now for some time what they call fire free villages which is the an effort by april and others to incentivize villages

1:05:51 preventing fires and they pay them for their success and that has actually had uh quite a lot of success in preventing fires and i think something like 750 000 hectares of land in sumatra so so i i just like to reinforce what richard said about the importance of the private sector getting involved in the fire prevention effort to supplement the government's efforts yeah i just want to add that uh yeah i agree with er adino has said that but yeah i think we need to really uh keep the momentum going uh because when uh talking about climate change one of the solutions that are now being discussed is about biofuel and

1:06:38 also biomass from woodchip yeah especially when we talk about coal-fired power plants they will reduce the the coal but they will actually mix co-firing it with the the biomass from wood chip so this is i think another threat that we need to look at if we talk about forest natural forests because most of this commodity will be harvested from uh big plantations for for example from palm oil and also from or something like that so yeah i'm going to shift topics slightly we

1:07:24 had a number of questions that raised interest in discussion of collaboration on climate change so obviously today's conversation is focusing primarily on indonesia but when you look at the region many countries in asean are among the top most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change impact so there's a clear opportunity for asean to collaborate more directly so we had you know a couple questions uh you know do you do those on the panel see asean working together on a significant manner on climate change we had a specific question about whether any of you see interest in asean in carbon tax policies that would be coordinated locally or perhaps at a broader basis and finally on the the human security and hard security side impacts of climate change is a clear opportunity for collaboration in terms

1:08:11 of sort of humanitarian assistance disaster reduction and then harder security considerations that impact national policy so very broadly um can our panelists comment on the opportunities they them that's beer for collaboration yeah i think besides the the impact several countries in asia is also actually indirectly contributing to what happens in indonesia if we talk about deforestation for example like the financiers from malaysia or singapore and also the company's home country i think some of this

1:08:56 country they actually already have a law that we have to say give punishment for uh companies that uh operating abroad that will give impact to singapore for example uh so i yeah i think um because the nature of asean is not really an enforcer yeah uh they they have uh a kind of soft law but uh you know the culture of asean is not really uh going into you know intervention to the countries so i think if um if asean want to go

1:09:44 further as a region that are more impacted most one of the most region that will be impacted by climate change i think asean can also show leadership collectively and looking at comprehensive comprehensively different aspects of their economy especially that will contribute to the uh to the worsening of the climate crisis and make change a serious change towards a you know more climate-friendly economy that can also beneficial for the whole region

1:10:29 because uh then uh accumulatively i think uh it can also uh be contribution to the to the global climate efforts and uh as they're the most uh vulnerable regions then asean can also uh become leadership become leaders if in uh just want to say something about richard's presentation about how small finance is allocated for the you know the nature or the restoration of the ecosystem then it could i think create a big impact as well

1:11:17 yeah i would say um you know when you're creating when any nation state is creating a domestic market for carbon you know even you know inclu including a regulated market that that can be designed in such a way that the markets around the region can be linked you know because places like singapore they have demand for carbon but they don't have any supply so they will need to you know if they have a carbon tax that includes nature that could qualify they would need to go into the region or into the world to invest in projects that can help them meet that now the worry is if you know money from a place like singapore goes to indonesia

1:12:02 then they're exporting all the carbon and they can't meet the ndc which is a real worry but i think i think setting up these these linked markets so that um there's like a tax or a fee or a percentage of split between you know the country of origin and the buyer so you know there's examples of this coming up around the world there's a you know a pacific alliance growing in central america um you know these are all fairly new ideas you know that have come up since the paris agreement so you know there's definitely something that that that the markets are much stronger if they're together than if they're each one separate and independent i can add one thing uh you know asean

1:12:48 has asean leaders have issued common positions or statements on climate change right not all the time but uh intermittently they haven't done that the challenge is that you know you have these asean declarations and statements but they're usually not followed by uh operational policy uh measures right uh so uh you know i would love as a citizen of asean i would love to see uh you know strong uh asean collaboration on on uh renewables for example right uh on controlling uh pollution and on energy transition and and uh you know

1:13:34 sharing technology green technology and and so on uh but but uh unfortunately what what i see now is just you know uh statements by asean which are good and positive and solid but hasn't been followed by strong operational measures within or among asean countries well thank you all and i think we're about at times so i'm gonna have to stop asking questions here but we've got about 18 questions left many of which are on i think very important questions about implementation and and next steps so with that in mind i think we can certainly say that there's interesting further conversations on this topic and

1:14:20 on that note i'd like to turn briefly to david merrill from the us indonesia society to talk about some of those opportunities thank you coordinator hey david hi everyone nice to see all my uh long time friends um we think this is the most important topic for this year and beyond without question and we want to help everyone um build forward a specific knowledge of climate change subjects uh under the general chapel of today's talk so accordingly uh yusundo plans a three-part open forum

1:15:07 series this year starting very soon on how the us and indonesia can cooperate on climate and the environment part one will be on renewable energy in indonesia opportunities and challenges to meet climate goals and to do that one we're going to draw on the many renewable energy experts who we assembled to speak at our recent two-week legislative partnership program with a commission seven on energy of indonesian parliament uh held in cooperation with them that went extremely well we were careful to give background information not advice but they appreciated it and

1:15:54 as a result we have a group of 11 worldwide experts on geothermal all the different renewable energy topics for indonesia and we'll just it'll be a challenge to pick just a few of those for that talk uh but geothermal solar wind hydro will all be among those covered um so that's one uh part two would be more on the topic how richard jalal talked about and bob blake also suggested at a recent meeting climate uh finance for indonesia unlocking investment opportunities to reduce emissions the role of the u.s and other country investment and financing climate actions in

1:16:41 indonesia both from the idfc the international development finance corporation and direct private capital uh also of course multi-uh national development banks multilateral development banks um and part three well um it's also um richard's topic a lot but everyone's topic today will be on sustainable agriculture in indonesia the importance of agriculture and forestry and climate change of sustainable agriculture agricultural technology and related venture capital how these are growing and promising new areas and also um subject coast indonesia's core objective

1:17:27 which is more education of indonesia's in agriculture indonesians and agricultural technology at u.s universities the u.s universities have this they're welcome they're welcoming indonesians and the challenges of how to get them particularly through the lpdp process which pays their uh everything um which is lagging um but we're going to mention that as well so we think the time is very right for this it clearly fits in with both government's agendas even if uh indonesia is still um finalizing but um it's the topic of the year and furthermore um andino and i know this from way back we see this as

1:18:14 part of our ongoing responsibility as ngos to help build out the public engagement component of the u.s indonesia's strategic partnership so we will be helping not only the public but we'll the governments will appreciate it as well and uh so we're looking forward to uh a robust uh series of programs and of course we'll be uh cooperating appropriately with our partner institutions thank you thank you david and with that i just want to let my colleague bill uh thank you you know join us briefly to thank everyone and close things out thank you uh patna corn thank you courtney and thank you very much david for for your comments this has been a a great session on what we all know is a

1:19:02 is a really important problem and we're uh delighted that the southeast asia forum could could raise the issue with our uh our great and good partner uh yucindo this partnership which is now almost a year old has produced two i think really good uh unusually good uh um seminars and we look forward david and to uh uh to all uh look forward to more uh er uh uh discussions on this subject and and others also want to thank our moderator ambassador bob blake again a wonderful job thank you very much ambassador blake and of course our three very distinguished uh panelists and

1:19:48 uh most important i guess our audience especially the students faculty members and researchers in indonesia and the us and elsewhere thank you so much for joining us and for your excellent questions we can never get to all of them but they all matter to us so thank you for raising the issues that you did this session is part of the southeast asia forum series on climate change in southeast asia and we will continue the series in in the fall and beyond we have one more southeast asia forum webinar this spring on june 30th when we'll be talking about security issues like the south china sea please watch our southeast asia forum web pages on the stimson center website for

1:20:34 more information until then thank you all for joining us and participating in this very very important session today we look forward to many more until then stay safe and well