Arya News - Ahead of COP31 in Turkey, Environment Minister Jumhur Hidayat set six climate priorities for Indonesia—including faster energy transition and increased financing—while stressing that climate goals must not compromise national development.
JAKARTA – Indonesia has defended its climate commitments ahead of the United Nations climate talks, as record-breaking emissions from wildfires at home threaten one of the main pillars of its climate strategy and fuel doubts over its ability to help curb global warming.
Less than a week before the 31st UN Climate Change Conference (COP31) opens in Turkey, Environment Minister Jumhur Hidayat outlined six priority areas for Indonesia’s negotiations, including accelerating the energy transition and securing greater climate financing.
But he stressed that the country’s climate ambitions should not come at the expense of its development agenda.
“Our priorities are energy affordability, workers’ welfare and protection of local communities. We also oppose unilateral measures that disadvantage developing countries,” Jumhur told a press conference on Wednesday.
The summit will seek to accelerate the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. However, a UN climate report issued on Oct. 21 warned the threshold would likely be breached in coming years, urging countries to limit the duration and scale of the overshoot.
As mandated by the 2015 agreement, Indonesia has submitted the second edition of its climate pledge, known as the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), outlining pathways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2060.
A key component of the country’s climate strategy is reducing emissions from the forestry and other land-use (FOLU) sector, including by preventing forest and peatland fires. The government aims to turn the sector into a net carbon sink by 2030, meaning it absorbs more greenhouse gases than it releases.
The target is particularly important as Indonesia continues to rely on fossil fuels to support economic growth, with the government counting on carbon absorption from forests to help offset emissions from the energy sector, a position it has previously defended.
But the strategy is facing a major test as wildfires continue to ravage forests and peatlands across Kalimantan, Sumatra and Papua, releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gases and threatening to undermine the country’s emissions-reduction commitments.
As of Wednesday, Indonesia’s fire emissions for 2026 had reached 195.15 megatonnes (Mt) of carbon, accounting for roughly one-third of the global total, according to periodic data from Europe-based Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS).
The volume is equivalent to the annual emissions of 189 coal-fired power plants.
‘Critically insufficient’
Indonesia’s overall climate action remains “critically insufficient” to meet the threshold needed to avert the worst impacts of climate change, according to the independent Climate Action Tracker.
Environmental groups have also questioned whether the government can achieve its FOLU net-sink target by 2030 given the scale of this year’s fires.
The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) and Greenpeace Indonesia have warned that mounting emissions from forest fires could jeopardize the target, which is central to Indonesia’s broader climate commitments.
“The government’s 8-percent growth target inherently relies on resource exploitation that will drive forest loss, leaving the 2030 FOLU net sink target far out of reach,” Walhi climate campaigner Patria Rizky Ananda said separately on Thursday.
Government officials have acknowledged the challenge, although they maintain that efforts in other sectors could help bring emissions down.
Irawan Asaad, the Environment Ministry’s director general for resource mobilization on climate change, acknowledged that the ongoing wildfires had driven up emissions.
“But we are trying to find sectors that could reduce the emission from forest fires.”
People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) deputy speaker Eddy Soeparno, meanwhile, pointed to forest restoration and the expansion of renewable energy as two ways to reduce emissions and support the government’s climate targets.
“So there’s a significant amount of carbon emissions that will be reduced as a result of this energy transition, which would actually also support our targeted NDCs,” Eddy said.
However, Indonesia’s progress in shifting away from fossil fuels remains slow. As of April 2026, renewables accounted for just 17.89 percent of the country’s energy mix, below the government’s initial target of 23 percent for 2025, according to the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry.
In August, President Prabowo Subianto announced an ambitious plan to develop 100 gigawatts-peak (GWp) of solar power capacity over the next three years, although the government has yet to demonstrate how the expansion will translate into a faster shift away from fossil fuels.
For the third consecutive year, Prabowo’s brother and mining tycoon Hashim Djojohadikusumo will lead the Indonesian delegation at the summit.