Indonesia will be swearing in its eighth president Prabowo Subianto on Oct. 20, following his landslide election victory in February of this year. Prabowo will inherit the world’s fourth most populous country, with the third largest surviving area of tropical forest, and an economy poised to become the world’s sixth largest by 2027. Yet, he will also be inheriting a legacy of fossil fuel dependence, with 81% of the country’s energy derived mostly from burning coal, and persistent deforestation, with Indonesia’s annual forest losses remaining the fourth largest in the world. This means that Prabowo is faced with a thorny policymaking dilemma between encouraging economic growth and maintaining long-term environmental health for Indonesia.
Many observers believe Prabowo will favor the continuation of policies implemented under his predecessor Joko Widodo, nicknamed “Jokowi,” whom he had previously served alongside as minister of defense. Jokowi’s policies often placed human interests at the forefront, even at the expense of nature. Prabowo has expressed his desire to continue such a development model and had even overseen Jokowi’s failed food estate program, commenced in 2020, that sought to create farmlands for enhanced food security. The program has, however, yet to yield any harvestable crops. Instead, excavators have been abandoned on wastelands to rust. Prabowo and his vice president Gibran Rakabuming Raka, who is Jokowi’s eldest son, have stated they will continue this project.
Prabowo described key policies during his campaign to boost the economy, including creating a free lunch program for 83 million students and upsizing his cabinet. Less clear are his plans for mitigating environmental harms and associated Indigenous peoples’ rights violations in Indonesia. Jokowi’s incomplete Nusantara Project — a planned new political capital about twice the size of New York City replacing the fast-sinking Jakarta — has clawed through East Borneo’s forests by constructing major highways and is projected to displace at least 20,000 Indigenous people. Prabowo has committed to continuing progress on this $32 billion relocation. Recent ambitions to produce electric vehicle batteries by scaling up mining of Indonesia’s nickel reserves — already the world’s largest at 22% of global reserves — have sparked fears of further deforestation and destruction to Indigenous peoples’ livelihoods.
In order to move Indonesia off of this perilous path, Prabowo must be urged to gradually deconstruct the entrenched interests of fossil fuel stakeholders, including himself. According to the Mining Advocacy Network, Prabowo is the sole shareholder in PT Nusantara Energy, a coal company in East Kalimantan, and a shareholder of PT Nusantara Kaltim Coal. Of the top 10 countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions, Indonesia is the only one doubling down on coal. Continuing fossil fuel subsidies, which have totalled $12 billion so far in 2024, would further hamper Indonesia’s transition to renewable energy. Although it is difficult to seemingly disavow campaign backers from the fossil energy sector, encouraging a gradual energy transition by guaranteeing “soft landings” for fossil interests might be possible. These can be achieved by aligning domestic carbon credit markets with international standards to enable the exporting of carbon credits to international off-takers, or by providing green bonds to make investments in renewable energy technologies perceived as less risky.
The Prabowo-Gibran campaign had also hailed renewable biofuels produced from palm oil as a potential remedy to increasing energy needs. However, the expansion of palm oil plantations is certain to exacerbate deforestation in Indonesia. Prabowo should reimplement moratoriums on granting new licenses for clearing forests, which previously expired in 2021, and instead examine how to optimize the efficiency of palm oil and nickel production using land already cleared for those purposes. Prabowo should also ratify the Indigenous Peoples Bill, which was first proposed in 2009 but still hasn’t been passed. The bill would serve as Indonesia’s first instance of legal recognition for the existence and rights of Indigenous communities and would require the government to obtain their consent for the management of their lands.
We should approach the incoming Prabowo administration with cautious optimism. Vigorous advocacy from the international community, including ourselves, could persuade him that he would rather his legacy be associated with a revolutionary, just and green transition, rather than one marred by dirty fossil fuels, which could trigger a shift in fiscal and policymaking priorities. One can then hope that Prabowo will breathe fresh air into Indonesia’s cross-cutting sustainability issues and cement its status as a global economic and environmental powerhouse — two imperatives that need not be mutually exclusive.
