LAST UPDATED: OCT/2025. Indonesia officially submitted its Second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) on October 27, 2025, meeting the UNFCCC update with targets for 2035.

Indonesia's new NDC is aligned with Asta Cita, the national strategic vision formulated by the current president and vice-president, Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka. The vision, titled "Indonesia in Progress toward Golden Indonesia 2045," guides the country's development and will be implemented through eight missions that make up Asta Cita.

The main change introduced by the new NDC is greater transparency in defining its climate targets. Instead of using a baseline based on a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, which projects how emissions would evolve in the absence of new policies, the country has adopted a historical reference year, 2019. As a result, mitigation targets are now defined based on the emissions observed in that year.

Another new feature is that the NDC now dedicates a specific section to climate adaptation. The Indonesian government considers that adaptation and mitigation efforts must be addressed in an integrated way, as an essential element for strengthening resilience and protecting food, water and energy resources. In this context, the goal of climate change adaptation in the country is to reduce risks, expand adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience and decrease vulnerability across all sectors of development. To achieve this goal, Indonesia states it will focus its actions on three main dimensions of resilience: economic resilience; social and livelihood resilience; and ecosystem and landscape resilience.

Indonesia states that its new NDC will require an estimated total investment of US$472.6 billion to meet its targets.

Indonesia's mitigation targets cover five key sectors: energy; industrial processes and product use; waste; agriculture; and forestry and other land use. They also include gases beyond CO₂, such as methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).

The document reaffirms the country's commitment to peak greenhouse gas emissions around 2030, projected between 1.34 and 1.49 GtCO₂e. For 2035, a reduction in these emissions is projected, with estimated levels between 1.25 and 1.48 GtCO₂e. In addition, the NDC mentions Indonesia's long-term strategy of achieving net-zero emissions by 2060.

Also on mitigation, the NDC highlights two operational plans that also function as targets: Zero Waste Zero Emission and FOLU Net Sink 2030, an initiative aimed at transforming the forestry and land use sector into a net carbon sink by 2030.

The Zero Waste Zero Emission plan aims to achieve zero waste by 2040 and zero emissions by 2050, through structural measures. Examples include: implementing the 3Rs principles (reduce, reuse and recycle), landfill waste recovery, eliminating open burning by 2030, and banning new landfills from that year onward, with full closure of operations by 2040.

The FOLU Net Sink 2030 initiative, meanwhile, seeks to ensure that the forestry sector absorbs more greenhouse gases than it emits by 2030. Presented as one of the pillars of Indonesia's new NDC, the plan prioritizes reducing deforestation, sustainable forest management, and the restoration of forests, peatlands and mangroves, along with strengthening environmental enforcement and the creation of economic incentives and financial mechanisms.

The Climate Action Tracker (CAT, 2025) assessment classified the NDC as "Critically Insufficient." This means that if all countries adopted targets with the same level of ambition, global warming could exceed 4°C by the end of the century. Although the document brings advances in methodological transparency—such as replacing the 2010 BAU baseline with a historical reference year (2019) and expanding greenhouse gas coverage—these changes do not translate into a significant increase in climate ambition in the short and medium term.

According to the CAT, the NDC allows emissions to keep growing over the coming decades, concentrating more substantial reductions only after 2035, with a view to climate neutrality by 2060. In addition, the country maintains strong reliance on the land use and forestry sector as its main mitigation pillar, including the goal of turning it into a net carbon sink by 2030. This strategy, however, is considered risky given the sector's historical instability, marked by deforestation, wildfires and pressure from agricultural and mining expansion.

At the same time, emissions from the energy and industry sectors continue on an upward trajectory, driven by continued coal use and the expansion of carbon-intensive activities. In this context, the absence of any commitment to phasing out coal stands out—especially considering that Indonesia is one of the world's largest exporters and its electricity sector is heavily dependent on this fuel.

Indonesia submitted its Long-Term Strategy for Low Carbon and Climate Resilience to the UNFCCC in 2021, setting out the country's strategic vision for achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 or earlier, conditional on expanded international support in financing, technology transfer and capacity building. The document seeks to align national climate action with inclusive socioeconomic development, combining emissions mitigation, adaptation, and economic growth with targets for prosperity, job creation and poverty reduction.

In recent years, the Indonesian government has made progress in integrating this long-term vision into its main climate and sectoral planning instruments. The neutrality target has been incorporated into strategic policies in the energy and forestry sectors, while the country has also strengthened its institutional architecture through the 2025 submission of the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) 2026–2030, an important milestone for incorporating climate resilience into national and subnational planning. The NAP consolidates previous initiatives and organizes priorities, targets and implementation mechanisms for adaptation on the path to 2035.

At the core of Indonesia's climate strategy is the commitment to gradually reduce dependence on coal and expand the share of renewable sources, notably solar, geothermal, wind and bioenergy. The energy transition process is presented as one that must occur fairly and inclusively, with attention to the socioeconomic impacts on workers, communities and regions dependent on carbon-intensive activities, through reskilling policies, social protection measures, and green job creation.

The country's climate agenda also assigns a central role to the conservation and sustainable management of tropical forests, peatlands and other strategic ecosystems, recognizing their relevance both for reducing emissions and for increasing climate resilience. At the same time, the new NAP prioritizes five systems essential for adaptation — food, water, energy, health and ecosystems — and proposes actions based on risk assessment, continuous monitoring and coordination between different levels of government.

In addition, Indonesia reinforces the importance of international climate finance, technological cooperation, and the mobilization of public and private investment as means of enabling its transition to a resilient, low-carbon economy. Through this, the country seeks to consolidate its position as a developing nation committed to global climate action, without giving up social inclusion, equity, and the reduction of inequalities.