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COP27: Indonesia can lead the global ‘just’ climate transition
Indonesia still needs to catch up in meeting its governmental target of a 23-percent renewable energy-share mix by 2025, with renewables now accounting for 11 percent of the total.
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Indonesian way: Hostesses greet participants and delegates at the Indonesia pavilion inside the Sharm el-Sheikh International Convention Center, on the first day of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Nov. 6, 2022. (AFP/Ludovic Marin )
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e United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, is frequently portrayed as a clash between developing and richer nations, as poorer countries argue that wealthier states should pay more in compensation for damage caused by historical greenhouse-gas emissions.
This is a pivotal issue, and a meeting in Germany for the 12th Petersburg Climate Dialogue (PCD12) this summer underlined an enormous rich-poor gulf in which the at-risk climate-sensitive countries, most often developing countries, have a hard time dealing with climate damage.
Yet the gloom is overstated, because COP27 also provides a pivotal opportunity for developing and lower-income nations to help show the way in the transition to clean energy, which is critical for developing states, such as Indonesia, in tackling carbon emissions and meeting UN targets on climate-change issues.
Transitioning to inclusive green economies will be hard for developing countries whose living standards are well below western levels. Therefore, the transition must be fair, not only for the environment but also for economic prosperity, social justice, rights and social protection for all, ensuring no one is left behind. This is called the climate “just transition”.
As we focus on emerging economies, “just transition” provides essential opportunities for a country like Indonesia, a nation of more or less 17,500 islands that faces an existential challenge from rising seas and other catastrophic effects of climate change. Indonesia ranks as the seventh-most vulnerable country to climate-change impact and at the same time ranks eighth in its contribution to the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions.
The climate poses both a risk and an opportunity.
This transition to clean energy will not be painless or risk-free in any country. Still, risks are mitigated in a nation like Indonesia because we are relatively well-positioned for developing renewables with numerous indigenous sources such as geothermal, solar, wind, hydropower and biofuels.
