Time for Indonesia to enact the climate change law
T
he World Meteorological Organization reported last year that global greenhouse gas concentrations reached record levels in 2024 and continued to rise into 2025, confirming that the climate crisis is accelerating rather than slowing down. The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6, 2023) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) further warned that many climate impacts were no longer future projections but were already unfolding today, with some becoming irreversible on the human timescale.
The first “global stocktake” under the Paris Agreement, conducted during COP28 in Dubai in 2023, showed that even if the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of 194 countries were fully implemented, the world would still fail to remain within the 1.5-degree-Celsius pathway.
This signals that the current pace of climate action remains insufficient, while the window to avoid the most catastrophic impacts is rapidly closing.
As a result, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and intense worldwide, and Indonesia is increasingly exposed to these risks. The World Bank ranks Indonesia 97th out of 181 countries in terms of vulnerability to climate impacts, reflecting high population density in hazard-prone areas and a strong dependence on natural resources for livelihoods and development.
At the same time, Indonesia remains among the world’s top 10 greenhouse gas emitters, based on national emissions estimated by combining fuel consumption data, sector-specific emission factors and electricity system data (International Energy Agency, 2025).
Addressing these challenges requires an overarching, coherent and comprehensive climate law (London School of Economics/LSE, 2024).
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View More NewsletterIndonesia now stands at a critical legislative moment: The Climate Change Bill proposed by the Regional Representative Council (DPD) has been included in the 2026 National Legislative Program (Prolegnas). The academic position paper for the Climate Change Bill identifies three key foundations: the protection of human rights, Indonesia’s biogeophysical vulnerability to climate change and the country’s obligation to fulfill its international climate commitments.