- What timeline options were delegates debating?
- How did the timeline discussions unfold?
- What were the main points of disagreement?
- Why is the IPCC in a ‘serious funding crisis’?
- How have scientists reacted?
- What other issues remain unresolved?
- How are the IPCC AR7 reports progressing?
- How might the IPCC use AI and enhance gender inclusivity?
Yulia Indrawati Sari is a lecturer in international relations at Parahyangan Catholic University, in Bandung, Indonesia, specialising in environmental issues. Frans Siahaan is an independent consultant on environmental governance.
At COP29 in Baku, Indonesia made an ambitious pitch for its carbon market, with newly elected President Prabowo Subianto’s brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, leading the charge.
The delegation presented Indonesia as a global carbon trading powerhouse, signalling a dramatic shift from the previous administration’s caution. Prabowo has pledged to raise $65 billion by 2028 through carbon credit sales to fund reforestation and conservation.
With the official launch of international carbon trading in January 2025, Indonesia is positioning itself as a major supplier. But who will benefit from this booming market – and at what risk?
In a study seeking to answer this question, we applied a political economy approach to the forestry and land use sector. Our findings – published here for the first time – draw on interviews with carbon developers, government officials, palm oil representatives and civil society groups, conducted between November 2023 and October 2024, during the Jokowi administration.
Big business takes the lead
Indonesia, home to the world’s third-largest tropical rainforest, has long been a prime candidate for carbon trading. Large corporations, especially those in palm oil and timber, are seizing the opportunity, leveraging their vast land concessions to shift business models from exploitation to conservation.
Based on data from the Indonesian Forest Concession Holders Association (APHI), in November 2023, some of the 600 companies holding Forest Utilization Business Licenses have already started investing in carbon-related services. One industrial timber estate company plans to set aside 60% of its 130,000-hectare concession for carbon trading.
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With strong political and economic connections, these companies are actively acquiring forest concessions, merging firms, and lobbying the government to shape regulations in their favour. Industry associations such as APHI and the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KADIN) have pushed for policies that prioritise corporate interests. Yet their history of environmental destruction and Indigenous rights violations raises concerns about whether this shift is truly about emissions reductions – or just another revenue stream.
As one civil society representative working with Indigenous communities put it: “These companies see carbon trading purely as an economic transaction. Their approach is simple: ‘How much do you have? We’ll buy it.’ There’s no real discussion about emissions, climate justice, or Indigenous rights.”
Regulatory hurdles
Despite the enthusiasm, regulatory challenges remain. Companies are concerned that current policies make international carbon trading less attractive, particularly the emission reduction buffer requirement. Under Ministry Regulation No. 21/2022, companies must set aside 10–20% of their carbon credits as a buffer. Designed to safeguard against emissions loss from risks like fires and natural disasters, the buffer ensures credibility, but is viewed by companies as excessive.
“We already allocate 35% for risk management. With the government’s buffer, we’re left with only 45–55% of our credits to trade. The margin is just too tight,” said a representative from an international green investment firm entering the Indonesian market.
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Certification is another concern. Indonesia’s National Registry System for Climate Change Control (SRN PPI) is still underdeveloped and not yet ready to meet widely used global references, making the country’s carbon credits less competitive. The government has also chosen not to make mutual agreements with well-established certification bodies such as Verra or Gold Standard, further complicating credibility issues.
“The carbon trading regulations are still not clear. Although regulations exist, there is still a lack of clarity, especially in the technical processes. Almost all actors who care about the climate – not those in the timber and oil palm industries – are still taking a wait-and-see approach in the carbon market,” one green investor told us.
Risk of greenwashing
Several environmental NGOs have actively prepared to engage in carbon trading, with local organisation WARSI developing best practices for ensuring benefits reach communities. Through the Plan Vivo scheme, WARSI directs carbon revenues into village development and community benefit. The organisation has also created Forest Reference Emission Levels (FREL) to monitor deforestation reductions.
Despite such efforts, scepticism remains. Civil society groups such as the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), Greenpeace, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI) and Forest Watch Indonesia have warned that carbon trading risks becoming a tool for greenwashing, allowing industries to continue polluting while buying credits to claim climate action on paper.
“The real winners in this market are those who already control concessions – especially in a situation where access to financing is difficult. Companies that hold concessions are ‘not clean companies’, [but] often businesses with close ties to political and military elite,” one environmental activist told us.
Without strict safeguards, critics argue, carbon trading could exacerbate existing inequalities instead of driving real emissions reductions. Ensuring fair benefit-sharing and preventing speculative trading will be crucial to maintaining the market’s integrity.
The road ahead
Indonesia’s carbon market is now a reality, but whether it delivers genuine climate benefits remains to be seen. The Prabowo administration’s push for international trading must be balanced with environmental and social safeguards. Will this be a true climate solution – or just another way for big players to profit?
As carbon trading takes off, all eyes will be on how the government enforces regulations, ensures transparency, and protects vulnerable communities.
For now, the rush is on – and the stakes are high.
Ridwan, Alam Surya Putra, and Margaretha Wahyuningsih also contributed to this study.
The post Will Indonesia’s new carbon market be a climate solution or a game for big players? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Will Indonesia’s new carbon market be a climate solution or a game for big players?
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Three countries have been named by the Paris Agreement’s compliance committee for failing to submit a nationally determined contribution (NDC) and repeatedly snubbing offers of help with their climate plans.
After months of internal debate over whether to identify serial non-responders, the Paris Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) named the three countries which have failed to engage with it over their NDCs on Friday.
It named Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and North Korea in a footnote of its annual report, adding that it decided to name them “with a view to facilitating engagement”, adding that representatives of the three nations had been invited to its meeting in early 2027 “with the purpose of identifying any challenges and constraints”.
“The Committee noted the importance of Parties engaging with the Committee in a timely manner, while noting that some delays may be due to the national capabilities and circumstances of the Parties”, the report said.
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Many governments have still not submitted a nationally determined contribution to the UN, breaching a key requirement of the Paris Agreement
In July, PAICC said 12 countries had ignored its repeated attempts to discuss why they had not published an NDC as required every five years under the 2015 Paris accord.
Members of the committee had been divided over whether to name them, but at a September meeting decided to do so in their annual report to the annual climate COP summit.
By the time the report was published on Friday, only Congo, Senegal and North Korea “had not communicated an NDC or submitted a [Biennial Transparency Report] and had not yet responded to any of the Committee’s notifications, despite several reminders issued by the Committee in this regard”.
Rainforest and renewable energy ambitions
The silence from Congo and Senegal is notable because the former is home to much of the Congo Basin rainforest while the latter has sought billions of dollars in climate finance to support its renewable energy ambitions.
After Brazil, Congo has more rainforest than any country in the world. This forest, and the country’s peatlands, absorb huge amounts of greenhouse gas but are fast being lost to expanding farmland, charcoal production, logging and mining.
Senegal signed a Just Energy Transition Partnership with Canada and wealthy European nations in 2023, to help it meet its renewable energy targets under the-then government of Macky Sall. It was chair of the Least Developed Countries group between January 2022 and December 2023.
Tejas Rao, who is researching the PAICC as part of a doctoral thesis at Cambridge University, said the governments of the three countries should engage with the committee.
“Engagement costs these governments very little and the committee has shown it will listen,” he said.
“Silence leaves the committee with no basis to help, and it leaves the [governments] exposed to the narrative that they are simply disengaged,” he told Climate Home News.
Paris Agreement requirement
The 2015 Paris Agreement requires all parties to publish an NDC every five years outlining their emissions reduction targets, with each plan meant to be more ambitious than the country’s last NDC.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in February 2025. While most countries missed this deadline, all but around 30 – mostly small emitters but including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina – have now submitted them.
Over the year, the PAICC – which is made up of government climate officials from developed and developing countries – has been communicating with governments that have not submitted NDCs and trying to overcome barriers to them doing so.
Some nations have cited exceptional circumstances as the reason for not submitting an NDC, a process that requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC, seen by Climate Home News, said that the country’s civil war had led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.
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The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement and so do not have active NDCs, nor does Taiwan, which is not a UN member state.
Rao said that because the PAICC is “facilitative and non-punitive”, naming the countries “is meant to open a door, not close one – the invited consultation is the point”.
“In recent months, governments that explained their constraints, whether capacity, finance or domestic process, have been met with follow-up and support rather than sanction, and the number of silent governments has fallen sharply,” Rao said.
The post Paris Agreement committee names three countries snubbing it over NDCs appeared first on Climate Home News.
Paris Agreement committee names three countries snubbing it over NDCs
Countries have failed – for the sixth time running – to agree on the timeline for publishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) next set of influential reports.
The IPCC’s 65th session (IPCC-65) was seen by many to be the final opportunity for countries to agree on a schedule where its seventh assessment report (AR7) would be published in time for the UN’s second “global stocktake” of climate action.
Before last week’s meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, IPCC chair Prof Sir Jim Skea had warned that releasing the reports in time for the stocktake in 2028 would depend on a timelines being agreed by the end of 2026.
But the week-long meeting descended into fraught disagreements between governments, resulting in Skea “suspending” the talks on Friday evening with no decision made.
Countries were also unable to agree on the IPCC’s budget for the rest of the AR7 cycle, leaving the body with a “serious funding crisis”.
The IPCC has pledged to reconvene the meeting at the “earliest opportunity”; however, it has not yet given an indication of when this will be.
In his concluding remarks, Skea described the Addis Ababa summit as a “profound disappointment” and “among the most difficult IPCC meetings”, according to reporting from the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Some countries have reacted with dismay to the breakdown of negotiations, warning that a failure to have the IPCC’s latest assessments on climate adaptation and mitigation ready for the UN stocktaking exercise would undermine global climate action.
A climate envoy from a Pacific island state said it was a “travesty that a handful of countries continue to delay the IPCC’s reports – the science we need back home to help us save lives and livelihoods”.
Below, Carbon Brief explores the key developments, debates and disagreements at the IPCC meeting.