Beyond the Crisis: How Communities Are Leading Indonesia’s Climate Justice Movement

Since its inception, the VCA programme in Indonesia has been built on a strategic decision: to work across diverse geographical areas rather than concentrate efforts in one location. Indonesia’s vast and varied archipelago means that climate vulnerabilities and local solutions differ from one region to another. By supporting initiatives across islands, cities, and remote villages, the alliance aimed to develop strong, context-based proof of concept for locally led climate action that responds directly to the injustices felt on the ground.

Between 2021 and 2022, VCA Indonesia’s focus was on building strong foundations: organising onboarding processes, capacity-building initiatives, and long-term partnerships. These early investments paved the way for deeper engagement in 2023 and 2024, when we shifted our focus towards enhancing civil society participation, amplifying the voices of marginalised groups, and facilitating collective action. By now, over 3,000 individuals, consisting of women, youth, indigenous communities, and other local actors, have strengthened their capacity to engage in decision-making processes. These communities are not just receiving support; they are becoming changemakers in their own right.

In Asmat, for example, 49 indigenous women from the remote villages of As and Atat stepped into public forums for the first time, building confidence through storytelling, vocational training, and dialogue. In Gedongkiwo, Yogyakarta, the Women Federation didn’t just attend the village development planning forum; they led it, presenting water quality data, pushing for climate-resilient solutions, and ensuring their priorities were documented in the official development plan.

These are not isolated successes. They are the product of deliberate, bottom-up strategies driven by peer learning, cross-regional collaboration, and a strong alliance model. In 2024 alone, the VCA alliance in Indonesia collaborated with 13 partner entities, ranging from feminist groups and indigenous organisations to youth hubs, citizen journalism forums, artists, and religious communities. These collaborations have helped build stronger narratives on climate justice, while expanding the space for public engagement and marginalised voices.

Local voices are also making their way to national and global platforms. At the World Water Forum, Mrs. Tuti from Bandung and Umbu Tri from East Sumba stood before international audiences to share how floods, water insecurity, and traditional knowledge shape their daily realities. At the national level, during Indonesian Climate Week, community representatives raised critical concerns, such as urban sanitation, coastal adaptation, and food sovereignty, directly with policymakers, illustrating how policy must reflect lived experiences.

Thanks to multi-stakeholder forums and advocacy efforts, these voices are now influencing policy. In several areas, local governments have begun allocating village funds to support community-driven climate solutions. This is crucial in a decentralised governance system like Indonesia’s, where village-level policies and budgets can directly reach and empower grassroots communities. The alliance’s advocacy has also reached the ministerial and global stages, where youth and indigenous representatives have raised the urgency of accessible climate finance for local initiatives, and the need to prioritise food systems shaped by traditional knowledge.

This progress, however, does not come without challenges. The political context remains fraught with power imbalances. Following the 2024 presidential election, concerns have grown over the shrinking of civic space, the weakening of human rights protections, and the rise of state-backed mega-solutions, such as food estates, that sideline local knowledge and environmental safeguards. In this landscape, coalition-based work becomes not only strategic but, most importantly, essential.

The VCA’s bottom-up, geographically diverse model has proven that when local organisations are given the space, support, and trust to act, they can drive change at scale. They bring evidence, credibility, and relevance to climate action while holding the line against policies that ignore the lived realities of communities. As we move towards 2025, our focus will shift towards ensuring the sustainability of these efforts, including deepening alliances, embedding learnings, and protecting the civic space necessary for just climate action to thrive.

Because in the end, climate justice in Indonesia is not just about protecting the environment, it’s about recognising and restoring the voices of the people who have been silenced for far too long.