Greening the Ring of Fire: Climate Justice on Indonesia’s Geothermal Island
Emily Yeh, Professor of Geography
As damages from anthropogenic climate change intensify, a rapid global transition to decarbonized energy production has become increasingly urgent. To date, however, this green transition has been fraught with injustice, as already-marginalized peoples who have contributed very little to global warming bear the brunt of dispossession, perpetuating extractive relationships and further exacerbating inequality.
Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country and sixth highest annual emitter of greenhouse gases; its current energy supply continues to rely heavily on fossil fuels. The country has pledged to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by increasing the share of renewable energy including geothermal, in the power generation mix. Indonesia has the largest share of the world’s known geothermal reserves, but its installed capacity (second behind the United States) is only about 7% of its potential. In its quest to become a “geothermal superpower” the government declared the island of Flores a “Geothermal Island” in 2017. Populated by indigenous peoples, Flores has high levels of poverty and low rates of household and industrial electricity consumption. However, implementation of geothermal has been very slow because of community resistance due to concerns about land dispossession, pollution, induced seismicity, loss of livelihoods, and risks of lethal accidents. Indigenous peoples have resisted by refusing to sell their communal land and insisting on their rights to indigenous territory based on their own cosmologies and lived spatial relationships. State, corporate, and military actors have responded with violence, including kidnappings, detentions and beatings of protests.
Along with Geography alumnus Shae Frydenlund (PhD2020; Assistant Teaching Professor, CU 51ý Center for Asian Studies) and two colleagues from Flores, I am working on a project to understand the political economy of geothermal development, how indigenous resistance is mobilized through indigenous cosmologies and spatialities; and how geothermal development intersects with struggles over property rights to communal land. The goal of our project, which spans four geothermal sites across Flores, is to better understand the possibilitiesof forging more just pathways toward a green transition.
Photo 1: "We reject geothermal in Poco Leok"
Photo 2: Farmland in Mataloko ruined by a failed attempt at geothermal drilling, a site which communities now consider a cautionary tale for new geothermal development