JakartaPost-Sept 21, 2023
Political parties have yet to prioritize issues of climate change and energy transition on their platforms, while politicians only talk about them in relation to economic policy, a recent study has revealed. This lack of focus on such issues might be disadvantageous for parties that want to win the votes of young people, who are most concerned about the fate of the Earth, during the upcoming elections. The study, conducted by clean energy advocacy group Indonesia Cerah Foundation, focused on nine political parties that won seats in the House of Representatives during the 2019 election, by looking at news reports published between January 2019 and March this year and each party’s mission statement or manifesto. After crawling through the documents, Indonesia Cerah found that most political parties had not included climate change or the energy transition on their platforms. “They only make any comments when reacting to issues surfacing on mainstream media,” the foundation research association Wicaksono Gitawan said in an online discussion recently. The parties were also unfamiliar with concepts related to the climate crisis or energy transition, such as green jobs, while also not recognizing the impact of climate change on minority groups, such as disabled people, and women. The government has started to push the agenda of climate and energy transition, by working on international financing under the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) scheme, which will be used to retire several coal-fired power plants early. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2023/09/21/what-climate-change-study-finds-political-parties-lack-focus-on-climate-issues.html.
