JAKARTA: Indonesia is facing calls for a bolder climate commitment ahead of the United Nations climate talks, as the country is sitting at the forefront of the global environmental crisis, with multiple ecological disasters that have triggered public discontent and regional distress.
The 31st UN Climate Change Conference (COP 31) will kick off on Nov. 9, bringing together world leaders, as well as business and civil society group representatives in Antalya, Turkey. During the two-week conference co-hosted by Turkey and Australia, representatives will negotiate ways to fast track the implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which sets the target on the global temperature rise by the next century.
A UN climate report issued on Oct. 21 suggested that the Earth will unavoidably slip past the 1.5 degree Celsius warming target in the Paris Agreement in the next few years and warned countries to focus on the task to make the period of warming “overshoot” as limited as possible.
As mandated by the 2015 agreement, Indonesia has submitted the second edition of its climate pledge document, known as the Nationally Determined Contributions, which outlines the pathways to gradually reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2060.
But the commitment has been widely lambasted, with critics accusing the government of still championing fossil fuels over renewable energy to support economic growth. Environmentalists have also claimed the government is resisting the halting of projects that require land and forest conversion, which potentially leads to the emission of more greenhouse gases.
Indonesia’s overall climate action is “critically insufficient” to meet the threshold to mitigate the climate crisis, according to independent research coalition Climate Action Tracker.
The unchecked greenhouse gas emissions have been blamed on heightened climate-related disasters in Indonesia, including the cyclone-induced floods and landslides that hit northern Sumatra last November.
More than 1,200 people were killed, with forest degradation and the climate crisis both blamed for the intensified hazards and destruction. Recently, wildfire emissions in Indonesia have surged to the world’s highest following months of peatland and forest burning across large swaths of Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua.
A prolonged and intensified dry season due to a “Super El Niño” is among the factors that have fanned the blazes. While the scientific community has yet to reach a consensus, latest studies suggest that global heating may be leading to stronger El Niño events that occur in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.
Toxic haze from the fires across Indonesia has blanketed many cities and reached neighbouring countries, triggering street protests in several regions and harming people’s health and lives.
An analysis published on Thursday (Oct 29) by the Center for Research on Energy Clean Air (CREA) suggested that wildfire smoke in Sumatra and Kalimantan had caused 3,560 deaths in September, higher than the 1,750 toll caused by urban and industrial air pollution across Java.
“The government must review its policies, prioritise clean energy and avoid false solutions that risk increasing emissions,” CREA analyst Katherine Hasan stressed. Without transitioning away from fossil fuels and prioritising the right to public health, Katherine argued Indonesia would risk making “false promises” at the Antalya summit.
As the climate crisis intensifies, people worldwide, including in Indonesia, are turning to the courts to hold governments and major polluters accountable for environmental destruction and disasters. President Prabowo Subianto’s administration is currently facing two separate lawsuits over alleged negligence in preventing and handling the 2025 Sumatra floods and recent wildfires in West Kalimantan. The government has denied all of the accusations.
Four residents of Pari Island in Thousands Islands regency off the coast of Jakarta have also brought a climate lawsuit against Swiss-based cement giant Holcim in 2023 in a Swiss court. The court declared in late 2025 that the lawsuit was admissible, opening the legal avenue for the case to be examined.
Arif Pujianto, one of the plaintiffs, seeks financial compensation for climate-related loss and damage over the company’s significant contribution to global emissions, despite Holcim not operating on or near Pari Island.
The 41-hectare island is projected to sink by 2050 due to the rising sea levels. “The impacts of the climate crisis are entirely new to me, as nothing like this ever happened during my childhood,” Arif said during a discussion hosted by the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) on Thursday.
Nina Burri, a lawyer for NGO Swiss Church Aid (HEKS) that supports the islanders, raised a hope that the string of environmental disasters occurring across the globe would inflict awareness among world leaders and businesses to step up their climate pledges in Antalya.
“We demand that countries and businesses fulfill their climate pledges and that they provide reparations for climate damage,” she said on Thursday. “We’ll keep the pressure up.”
Earlier this month, the government appointed mining tycoon Hashim Djojohadikusumo, who is also the younger brother of President Prabowo Subianto, to lead Indonesia’s COP31 delegation. It will be his third time leading the country’s delegation for the climate summit since 2024.
“We will arrive in Antalya with a solid national position, a clear agenda and a commitment to strengthen international cooperation,” said Hashim, a special presidential envoy for energy and the environment, in a recent briefing. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
