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View all search resultsWhat COP31’s climate bridge can learn from Indonesia
COP pledges are won or lost far from conference halls. If climate finance cannot bridge the gap to local communities in provinces, global targets will remain out of reach.
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An employee sweeps a footpath on July 18, 2022, in the Mangrove and Proboscis Monkey Conservation Area (KKBM) in Tarakan, North Kalimantan.
(Kompas/Raditya Helabumi)
I
n the remote seaside village of Liagu, North Kalimantan, I stood beside aquaculture ponds dotted with mangrove trees, where women were laying out milkfish to be cleaned, deboned and packed for market. A villager told me these mangroves provide a healthy nursery for fish and shrimp in the ponds, but as the mangroves degrade, the families who depend on these ponds see their livelihoods threatened and the shoreline creep closer, risking erosion and floods.
Liagu will not be in Antalya when COP31 opens on Nov. 9, but it made me wonder: How do commitments made in conference halls become real change in places like this?
The focus of this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31) is on implementation. Its Climate Implementation Bridge (CIB) aims to turn national climate plans into investment-ready projects. That is the right focus.
The CIB rightly includes national implementation architecture, but in a country as vast as Indonesia, much of the groundwork that unlocks investment happens at the subnational level, and that is where greater support and attention are needed. As countries gather to discuss this bridge soon, Indonesia can offer insights, especially into enabling climate action to better reach local communities.
Since the early 2020s, under the guidance of the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) has focused on Indonesia’s provinces. We have scaled up our support, embedding our teams in provincial administrations and local planning agencies and working closely with local investors and financing institutions.
Two core insights stand out.
First, beefing up subnational plans is critical, as this allows national climate and decarbonization priorities to be localized.
