Seeking policy change in Indonesia under Prabowo
By Theodorus Ng | October 10Indonesia 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.
