Indonesia

In Indonesia, many groups suffer from exclusion, including religious minorities, victims of human rights abuses, indigenous communities, disabled persons, transgender individuals, and vulnerable children, even as the country enjoys steady economic growth. Building on the government’s commitment to improve public accountability and performance through inclusive development, the Foundation’s ambitious Peduli project has been helping to improve services, social acceptance, and policies for the most marginalized. Significantly, the project increased interactions with local government officials and other stakeholders to improve social assistance for thousands, including education rights and legal identity services. With support from Australian DFAT, we trained and supported local champions, and helped 3,149 indigenous people receive national ID cards and birth certificates.

Indonesia’s forests are among the largest and most biologically diverse in the world: they contain 10-15 percent of the world’s known plants, mammals, and birds. But deforestation destroys two million hectares (roughly two million football fields) per year, devastating local communities and swelling greenhouse gas emissions. Ineffective regulation and widespread corruption in key sectors such as mining, palm oil, logging, and paper have hobbled the nation’s response. The Asia Foundation’s Environmental Governance Program, SETAPAK, funded by the UK Climate Change Unit, supports sustainable forest management tied to local communities. SETAPAK and its partners’ efforts have helped achieve 15 percent of the government’s 2019 target of 12.7 million hectares of community-managed land, protected 3.6 million hectares of forest in North Aceh, and led to the revocation of 501 noncompliant mining permits. This year, we made further progress revitalizing the Tesso Nilo ecosystem, home to some of the largest unbroken stretches of rainforest remaining in Indonesia.