Double Standards in the Desert: How Indonesia’s Climate Diplomacy is Collapsing Under Fossil Fuel Entanglements

By Firdaus Cahyadi (Adapted and Expanded)

As the international community prepares for the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP31, scheduled to take place in Turkey this November, nations are polishing their climate rhetoric and setting ambitious targets. For Indonesia, the summit represents a critical arena for climate diplomacy. Yet, rather than arriving at the global stage with a robust commitment to decarbonization, Jakarta has severely undermined its own diplomatic standing.

A recent decision by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (KESDM) regarding the auction of the Natuna D-Alpha oil and gas working area has exposed a glaring conflict of interest at the heart of Indonesia’s climate leadership. The ministry awarded the lucrative block to a company linked to Hashim Djojohadikusumo—who happens to be both the younger brother of President Prabowo Subianto and, crucially, Indonesia’s Special Envoy for Climate Change.

While business circles may view the acquisition as a routine corporate transaction, the global climate community sees it as a profound ethical failure. This entanglement of state power, fossil fuel expansion, and climate diplomacy threatens to plunge Indonesia’s international credibility to its lowest ebb.

Chronology of Compromise: A Trail of Fossil Fuel Favoritism

To understand how Indonesia arrived at this diplomatic precipice, one must trace a series of policy decisions and high-level statements that have steadily alienated international climate observers over the past two years.

• Late 2025 (Kadin National Leadership Meeting): Hashim Djojohadikusumo delivered a clear policy signal regarding Indonesia’s energy trajectory, asserting that the nation would pursue a phase-down (reduction) rather than a phase-out of fossil fuels.
• Late 2025 (The Cirebon-1 Reversal): Acting in tandem with Hashim’s signal, Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto announced the government’s decision to cancel the planned early retirement of the Cirebon-1 coal-fired power plant. This move effectively locked Indonesia deeper into coal dependency despite a domestic grid already plagued by overcapacity.
• November 2025 (COP30 in Brazil): Indonesia faced international embarrassment when the International Civil Society Coalition awarded the delegation the infamous "Fossil of the Day" award. The rebuke was triggered by the inclusion of fossil fuel industry lobbyists directly within the official Indonesian government delegation.
• September 2026 (Natuna D-Alpha Auction): KESDM officially awarded the Natuna D-Alpha oil and gas block to a company connected to Hashim Djojohadikusumo. This cemented the perception that the nation’s climate envoy is directly profiting from the very extractive industries driving the climate crisis.
• November 2026 (Upcoming COP31 in Turkey): As Indonesia prepares to send a delegation to Turkey, analysts warn that the shadows of the Natuna D-Alpha award and the Cirebon-1 reversal will hang heavily over the country’s negotiating tables.

Supporting Data: The Natuna D-Alpha "Carbon Bomb"

The Natuna D-Alpha natural gas block is not an ordinary energy asset; it is widely regarded by environmental scientists as a ticking ecological time bomb.

Data from energy analysts indicates that the gas reserves in Natuna D-Alpha contain an astonishing 72% carbon dioxide ($textCO_2$) content. To put this in perspective, extracting gas with such high impurity levels requires an unprecedented scale of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology. To date, no commercial entity globally has successfully and economically separated, captured, and stored $textCO_2$ at this staggering concentration level.

If extraction proceeds, the project risks becoming a catastrophic carbon bomb for Indonesia, unleashing massive greenhouse gas emissions that contradict global net-zero trajectories. Even if technological hurdles are somehow overcome, the financial costs of doing so will be astronomical. This locks Indonesia into a high-cost, high-emission economic trap, forcing the nation to maintain physical, infrastructural, and political dependencies on fossil fuels for decades. Consequently, the integration of renewable energy into Indonesia’s national grid will be indefinitely delayed.

Official Responses and Policy Rationales

The Indonesian government has historically defended its incremental approach to energy transition through the lens of national energy security and economic pragmatism. Officials argue that a developing nation cannot abandon fossil fuels overnight without risking grid instability, economic shock, and energy poverty for millions of citizens.

During various public forums, economic ministers have emphasized that transitional fuels—and technologies like CCS—are necessary bridges to achieve Indonesia’s long-term emission reduction targets. Proponents of the Natuna D-Alpha development argue that monetizing these vast reserves will bring in vital state revenues and secure domestic energy supplies.

However, the government has remained largely silent on the glaring conflict of interest surrounding the Special Envoy for Climate Change. Attempts by civil society organizations to question the ethical implications of the KESDM auction have been met with institutional indifference, reflecting a bureaucratic culture that insulates high-ranking political elites from public accountability.

Implications: The Death of Public Ethics in Climate Diplomacy

The normalization of these conflicts of interest raises a troubling question: Why has the Indonesian public largely remained silent in the face of such blatant contradictions?

To unpack this phenomenon, one can look through the theoretical lens of French philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault argued that power and knowledge are inextricably linked, operating through subtle institutional systems that manufacture "regimes of truth."

In the context of Indonesian climate governance, a specific power dynamic has successfully marginalized the discourse of public ethics. Official rhetoric has systematically replaced ethical considerations with technocratic frameworks focused exclusively on green investments, carbon trading, and GDP growth. Within this manufactured reality, the entanglement of a climate envoy with fossil fuel extraction is normalized as a standard business practice. The prevailing regime of truth dictates that as long as carbon offset mechanisms or green financial instruments are discussed, the fundamental ethical contradiction of expanding fossil fuels becomes invisible.

This structural omission reflects a broader decay within Indonesia’s political ecosystem, where the dual roles of powerful elites as both public regulators and private business owners have long been accepted as business-as-usual.

The Path Forward: Resistance and Accountability

Foucault also posited that power is never absolute; wherever power operates, resistance is inevitably generated. The erasure of public ethics from climate diplomacy is not permanent. It can be challenged and rewritten through renewed civic engagement and radical discourse.

Civil society, academics, and climate advocates carry the urgent responsibility of reintroducing public ethics into the national conversation. The hypocrisy of Indonesia’s climate leadership cannot be swept under the rug of technocratic jargon.

The demands placed upon the country’s leadership must be absolute: Hashim Djojohadikusumo cannot play a double game. He faces a definitive choice. He must either step down from his role as Special Envoy for Climate Change to focus entirely on his extractive business interests, or he must completely divest from fossil fuel ventures to preserve the integrity of his diplomatic mandate.

As Indonesia steps onto the global stage at COP31 in Turkey, the international community will be watching closely. If Jakarta continues to champion fossil fuels while dispatching conflicted envoys to preach climate action, Indonesia’s climate diplomacy will be exposed as hollow—a tragic exercise in greenwashing that sacrifices the planet’s future for elite enrichment.