Indonesia Needs a Stronger Climate Adaptation Commitment and Action

• Climate adaptation, in its implementation, embodies the core of society's adaptability and readiness to the vulnerable climate conditions we live in today. 

   

  Indonesia’s tipping point: its serious actions on its climate commitments must be realized to create stronger communities and lasting impacts for the planet.

Six months after the catastrophe in Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra, caused by Cyclone Senyar and combined with extreme rainfall and the loss of the rainforest, communities faced an unprecedented tragedy. Thousands of lives have lost their homes, families, and livelihoods. While Indonesia was not prepared for climate disasters, the reality is that we are already at the epicenter of the climate disasters.

According to a 2021 report by the ADB, Indonesia is among the top third of countries at risk from climate change, exposing people to high levels of flooding and extreme heat. Between 2035 and 2044, 1.4 million people in Indonesia could be impacted by extreme disasters if no government interventions are made. Among the consequences, up to 308 million people in Indonesia could become more prone to malaria by 2070, according to the World Health Organization.

According to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, these extreme climate events are likely to lead to more catastrophic events in the foreseeable future. Indonesia must cope with potentially more frequent and more potent disasters in the future.

While Indonesia has addressed climate adaptation on a high level in some of its current climate commitments, like the Long-Term Strategy for Low Carbon and Climate Resilience (LTS-LCCR) 2050 and the Climate Resilience Development Policy (2025-2045) 2.0, our engagement with various relevant stakeholders has found that the country needs to seamlessly integrate climate adaptation governance and be more proactive in addressing climate hazards and risks. Doing so will protect lives and help Indonesia recover more quickly when disaster strikes. 

To address the issue, we need to understand that climate adaptation is multisectoral and involves many agencies, but the current governance and coordination system still lacks the capacity to plan and implement the most appropriate responses to the effects of climate change. For example, Indonesia’s reactive climate disaster response, the actions taken after the occurrence of disasters, is inadequate, as demonstrated by the slow response to climate-induced flash floods in Sumatra. This is due to a number of factors, including challenging geographical conditions, limited resources, and a limited budget. Based on this example, Indonesia should establish stronger climate adaptation and resilience governance, centered on a leading institution or agency to coordinate the different agencies and ensure they understand the needs of the situation.

In addition, governance is a vertical issue as well as a horizontal one. The vertical integration of climate adaptation, the process of creating intentional and strategic linkages between national and sub-national adaptation planning, implementation, and monitoring & evaluation (M&E), poses a serious challenge to every large, decentralized country. However, climate adaptation would not be effective without integrating local contexts and having sub-national authorities act on them. Based on our engagement with relevant stakeholders, current vertical integration among multilevel agencies is insufficient to improve local stakeholders' capacity to respond to and proactively address climate change events. This could be because the current Law No. 23 of 2014 on Local Government does not include provisions on climate change management, including climate adaptation actions. Therefore, strong capacity and coordination enhancement is needed among different agencies, sectors, and levels to make climate adaptation more feasible and effective. This could be achieved by integrating climate adaptation into local development planning documents, such as the Local Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMD), and by providing clear incentives and disincentives for local governments to strengthen their capacity and coordination for climate change adaptation.

Furthermore, we need to adopt a more proactive approach that minimizes the adverse effects of climate change on people and nature, with a focus on climate adaptation and resilience. One example of a proactive approach is raising awareness in communities on how to respond to worsening climate disasters, such as future floods and droughts. In Indonesia's latest Climate Adaptation Communication, published in 2022, the government included four adaptation measures incorporating the term 'prevention'. This illustrates that current adaptation action plans are mostly reactive, as the country has yet to determine how to incorporate preventive or proactive measures without first experiencing the effects. Therefore, it is important to incorporate proactive approaches into climate adaptation documents. The government and relevant stakeholders can include terms such as 'prevention', 'disaster management', 'awareness raising', and 'increasing people's adaptive capacity' in the documents. This makes them more actionable and easier for the relevant stakeholders to plan for implementation.

On the other hand, the ENDC document, the country’s climate commitment until 2030, outlines plans for climate mitigation and adaptation, indicating that preventive climate adaptation is required. For example, the government plans to strengthen communities' social and economic resilience and disaster preparedness. However, the measures required for adaptation are more complex than the government's current programme suggests. These measures require comprehensive planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. Therefore, a more proactive approach that couples climate projection data with information and translates it into plans is essential. This could help to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on people and the environment.

The recent alarming climate disasters in Indonesia demonstrate the importance of climate adaptation. We do not want to see similar events and casualties in the future. This calls for prioritizing improved climate adaptation alongside the reduction of GHG emissions to mitigate the climate crisis. Without plans to strengthen commitment and adopt a more proactive approach to climate adaptation management, Indonesia may well experience events similar to those in Sumatra in December 2025.