A Climate Sham: Jokowi's Empty Promises at COP28 proposal at COP28: Solution or Threat?

COP28 meeting on December 1, 2023: The conference hall seemed empty when Jokowi delivered his speech.

A Climate Sham: Jokowi's Empty Promises at COP28 

On December 1, 2023, at the COP28 summit in Dubai, Indonesian President Joko Widodo took the stage to address the world. The hall, however, was nearly empty. According to multiple sources, a number of participants walked out as Jokowi spoke—an unusual but telling gesture of dissent at a global climate forum. The president’s claims may explain why.

Jokowi confidently declared that Indonesia would achieve Net Zero Emissions by 2060 and that the country had already reduced its carbon emissions by 42 percent, along with a decline in deforestation rates. As a proposed contribution to global climate solutions, he also called for technological and financial support to develop large-scale food production zones in Indonesia, claiming that such initiatives could help feed the world.

These declarations, however, are difficult to take seriously.

Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of nickel—a critical mineral in electric vehicle production—has already sacrificed 25,000 hectares of forest to mining activities in the past two decades. With more than 765,000 hectares of forestland now under nickel mining concessions, an additional 83 million tons of CO2 emissions could be released into the atmosphere. The environmental cost is staggering.

And the energy sector tells a similar story. Since 2000, Indonesia’s carbon emissions from energy consumption have more than doubled, reaching 600 million tons by 2021. Far from becoming a green energy leader, the country has entrenched itself among the world’s top ten CO2 emitters.

Worse, the so-called “Food Estate” projects, promoted by Jokowi as climate-smart agriculture, have already displaced numerous indigenous communities. Rather than enhancing food sovereignty, these megaprojects have devastated customary lands and biodiverse forest ecosystems—resources that are essential to genuine climate mitigation.

The president’s rhetoric does not match the country’s reality. If anything, the proposals put forward by Jokowi at COP28 are more a threat than a solution. Indonesia, often celebrated as the world's second green lung after the Amazon, is being stripped of its forests through illegal logging and corporate-backed deforestation in places like West Papua and Borneo. These actions are facilitated in the name of development, but their primary beneficiaries are multinational investors, not the climate or the people of Indonesia.

Climate change is a global crisis that demands honesty, accountability, and courageous leadership. Greenwashing and empty promises, especially on the world stage, do nothing but deepen the crisis. Indonesia has a crucial role to play in climate action, but only if its leaders are willing to face the truth: development that destroys forests, poisons seas, and displaces the vulnerable is not progress. It is disaster, dressed up in diplomatic language.

At COP28, the world did not turn away from Jokowi. It walked out. And that, perhaps, speaks louder than any speech ever could.