Inside Indonesia’s Climate Movement: A Discussion With Eno

What Inspired You to Get Involved in the Climate Movement?

Philosophically, I’m against apocalypse. Years ago when I was very much a liberal, I came across a series of articles in the New York Times about climate change and had several discussions with my best friend about the climate crisis. I just couldn’t believe that we’re facing the possibility of extinction. But another world is possible and I’ve taken great inspiration from the determination of other activists around the world.

My initial interest to act on the climate stems from me having had the time to read and discuss global issues through my International Relations studies in university – if I hadn’t learnt about international politics I probably wouldn’t have become familiar with global movements and joined one myself. My involvement in the climate movement allowed me to dig deeper into the root causes of societal and ecological issues, and learn about alternative solutions to the current system – and I ended up getting involved in other social-justice movements in Indonesia, a Socialist Youth organisation in Indonesia and then other international organisations.

You’re Involved in the Green Student Movement Training by Friends of the Earth (Foe) Indonesia, How Did You Find Out About It and What Does the Training/Learning Entail?

I found out about it from a friend and completed my training over three days at the foot of a mountain, paid for by FoE Bali. We learned about the FoE Indonesia movement, environmental law and politics in Indonesia, environmental and human rights issues, and various environmental collectives and efforts in Bali. My background is in International Relations so I had some existing knowledge about domestic politics and law in Indonesia, and this training allowed me to gain a deeper level of knowledge about environmental issues in Indonesia. Also, when you’ve already spent some amount of time dedicated to something you’ll more be committed to it. I felt like I needed to be more committed to the environmental cause, and participating in the Green Student Movement training allowed me to become more committed to the environmental cause.

You’re also volunteering as Indonesia Focal Point of phase 4 Mock COP SOS-UK – can you explain what this entails?

My role is to lead engagement in the Mock COP ‘Teach the…’ series of grassroots projects: Teach the Teacher, Teacher the Parent and Teach the Politician. These projects support and empower young people to talk about the climate crisis, its effect on young people around the world, and what people (in varying positions of power) can do about it, and tackle three key areas in a young person’s life – school, home and society. I recruit, mobilise and support volunteers in my country to take part in these projects at the local level. I also communicate with national delegates attending the Mock Education Ministers Summit.

Taking action in all of this is a self-actualisation because you realise that you’re a part of the global citizen and have a sense of purpose towards the earth. It makes you feel responsible for taking care of the earth’s living and non-living things. A realisation from these experiences that I’ll always remember is that people are fed up with how things are getting worse every day – people want the shitty things to change but at the same time, the majority still find it hard to believe that systems change is possible. The climate emergency – and planetary boundaries as a whole are seen as problems that can be easily solved once the left-wing government or working class dictatorship takes power. Hence, people’s focus is to build a political movement first.

“What fuelled me further was the general lack of awareness about these issues in my community.”

People think that anomalies in the weather are natural seasonal changes – these extremities aren’t understood as anthropogenic climate change. Firstly, information about climate breakdown rarely appears in the Indonesian media. If strange anomalies such as extreme heat, prolonged drought or an unprecedented crop yields failure occur, the media barely connect it to climate breakdown. Sadly, the mainstream media owned by the conglomerates portrayed it as just seasonal, natural weather changes.

Raising awareness is made harder because learning about the science of climate breakdown hasn’t been popular for Indonesians – even for tech-savvy or well-educated communities: Indonesian students were amongst the lowest scorers in their understanding of global issues, including climate change, with only six other countries ranking lower than Indonesia in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Global Competency Study. Because our education system isn’t science-oriented it’s difficult for many to grasp the complexity of the climate emergency.

Most people see the climate emergency as a big disaster event which will happen in the future and as something natural and inevitable – leading people to question why we need a mainstream climate movement at all. But what they haven’t realised is that the impacts of climate change have been creeping into our daily, seemingly-normal lives in the form of, for example, a reduction in sleep quality for those without air conditioning and skyrocketing prices of rice and bread. Never before have we seen such a high increase in vegetable prices over here – Indonesia is an agricultural country, it’s outrageous! Also, the hotter weather has limited the time that we can spend outside, reducing the earnings of people who have to work outside which has increased levels of depression and violent acts/crimes amongst the population.

Are There Any Differences in How the Working and Middle Class Approach the Climate Emergency in Indonesia?

The climate being a ‘middle class thing’ is sort of the case in Indonesia. As John Bellamy Foster argues, Marx theorised a rupture in the metabolic interaction between humanity and the rest of nature emanating from capitalist agricultural production and the growing division between town and country. And there’s definitely a division between how people mobilise for climate issues in towns and cities, versus those living in the country and more rural areas. Middle class people mostly live in cities and far from nature – this is where climate protests usually take place, often in the form of demonstrations called “climate strikes”. Yet in the country and more rural areas where the peasants and farmers live, experiencing the impact of climate breakdown first-hand through failed crop yields, they are doing demonstrations called “protests against crop yields failure.” And even though the language they’re using is totally different, the peasants and farmers are part of the climate movement too.

As a Working-Class Person, How Has Your Experience of the Climate Movement Been?

It’s been challenging because the climate issue is an everything issue. In Indonesia, communicating climate-related information is tricky which is partially due to the restriction of our rights to exercise democracy. There are some legislation articles which restrict your rights to exercise democracy and several activists have come to harm by the problematic Criminal Codes. Pro-democracy activists have observed and called Indonesia as a country run by the oligarchy government, and working class activists are cautious towards actions by oligarchs and their followers which would harm us financially. Indonesian Socialists have analysed that it happens because the process of the democracy-forming in Indonesia hasn’t finished, and we are not yet characterised as a democratic nation-state. As a lot of countries in the global South, the Earth Defenders in Indonesia have also been jailed and killed easily – indigenous people in particular, thus the risk is double for an indigenous working-class climate activist.

I also have (inattentive type) ADHD that affects how I manage my time and finances. Yet the people in the climate movement have been progressive on neurodiversity and the solidarity with working-class activists who are neurodivergent is an invaluable growth of inclusiveness for any movement building. As Karl Marx himself once said, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”