Climate change has had a tangible impact on the lives of indigenous and local communities in Indonesia, whose livelihoods are heavily dependent on nature. In Indonesia, the largest emissions are attributed to deforestation driven by the privatization of natural resources through mining, forestry, plantations, and other industries that destroy ecosystems, including the living spaces of communities within them, while creating commodity production systems that ruthlessly deplete natural resources. Ironically, climate negotiations at both global and national levels are dominated by technocratic legal policies. The root of the climate change problem, stemming from resource-exhaustive development, is addressed with technical designs in the form of capacity building, market formation, and technology. We are trapped in a carbon capitalism mechanism.
Relevance to HuMa
Climate change is a real threat to the safety of indigenous and local communities, both in terms of impact and in the ways to address it through policies and other instruments. However, the current schemes to tackle climate change through REDD+ tend to undermine democratic processes in law formation. In this situation, the issue of climate change is highly relevant to HuMa, both in efforts to strengthen community rights and in critiquing climate change mitigation schemes that may potentially infringe upon these rights.
HuMa has conducted research on various climate change issues, monitored the implementation of REDD+ and the moratorium on logging and peatland, and participated in global, national, and local networks regarding REDD+ schemes. All of this has positioned HuMa as an authoritative civil society organization in examining the concepts and implementations of climate change schemes in Indonesia. HuMa has emphasized critiques of the aforementioned climate change schemes and highlighted the importance of community rights and Free and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) in the implementation of REDD+.
HuMa’s Stance
Based on the above relevance, HuMa concludes that the fundamental issues of climate change are: 1.) large-scale exploitation of natural resources driven by the voracious consumption patterns of developed countries and their complete imitation by the new capitalist class in developing countries; 2.) a technocratic response and logic of commodification aimed at addressing climate change; and 3.) the alternative models offered by communities through sustainable natural resource management have not been recognized as effective solutions at the grassroots level.
Based on these conclusions, HuMa positions itself as follows: 1.) HuMa believes that climate change issues should be addressed through the development of movements for social and ecological justice aimed at legal reform; 2.) At the local level, HuMa supports movements to reverse the crisis by realizing the practices of local communities and indigenous peoples as owners, guardians, and managers of their territories and ecosystem services; and 3.) HuMa encourages the roles of local communities supported by Legal Assistants for the People (PHR) to promote wise natural resource management models as solutions for emission reductions in climate change issues.
