Adi Renaldi

Walking briskly barefoot under the dense canopy of tropical rainforest on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, Said Tolao showed no signs of slowing down despite his 76 years.

Tolao, of the Ngata Toro Indigenous community, has been a forest guard for more than half a century, patrolling from dawn till dusk and reporting illegal logging and farming to his Indigenous Council, which can then issue heavy fines.

Indonesia's government hopes an initiative to turn millions of hectares of land, including forests and peatlands, into farmland will reduce the world's fourth-most populous nation's reliance on food imports to feed a booming population.

Food estates, or large-scale commercial plantations to raise strategic crops, are at the centre of the plan that environmentalists warn will require razing trees and ancient peatlands that store vast amounts of planet-heating carbon dioxide and exacerbate the climate crisis.

Indonesia's parliament could pass a long-awaited Indigenous rights bill this year that would help protect communities and critical ecosystems, according to lawmakers and activists.

The bill, which has been languishing in the legislature for more than 14 years, has been placed on a list of top priority bills for 2025 called Prolegnas.

Ahmad Solihin used to can tuna; now he drives a cab.

Like many Indonesians, the 28-year-old is a victim of overfishing and climate change, twin forces that have hobbled what was once a thriving industry.

The tuna catch is down, retail prices are unreliable and thousands of jobs have gone as the fishing industry takes a hit, with all parts of the sector affected.

Environmentalists are warning that Indonesia's ambitious plans to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060 rely too heavily on biofuels and risk a new wave of deforestation in the world's third-largest rainforest.

Heavily dependent on coal, Indonesia needs to transition away from fossil fuels and seeks to generate 75 gigawatts of electricity from renewable resources over the next 15 years, compared with 13 gigawatts today, said presidential envoy Hashim Djojohadikusumo at the U.N. summit on climate change last month.

Leaning against the hull of a fishing boat, Eko Sulistiono could not hide his disappointment at the day's catch at the Kedonganan Port in Indonesia’s province of Bali.

The 58-year-old dockworker has spent more than 20 years unloading yellowfin tuna, squid, skipjack tuna and decapterus at the port. But the haul has significantly decreased in recent years, which scientists believe has been caused by rising ocean temperatures.

Indonesia has pledged to hit net zero emissions by 2060, banking on renewable energy and sustainable fuels to replace coal and hit a target that most environmentalists say is out of reach.

During the recent COP29 climate summit in Baku, Jakarta reiterated a pledge to wean itself off coal power, reach 75 gigawatts of renewables in the next 15 years and to phase out fossil-fuel power plants.

When Jayden Goh started his battery recycling company in 2019, he was betting that rapid electrification of everything from cars to energy storage would make salvaging critical minerals from spent cells a pressing demand in Southeast Asia.

Five years later, the Malaysian entrepreneur’s EcoNiLi has expanded from its original small facility in West Java to operate four factories in three countries with annual capacity to recycle 86,000 tonnes of lithium-ion batteries, which are used by electric vehicles.

Indonesia accounts for more than half of the global palm oil supply, the world’s most widely used vegetable oil that is found in everything from food to cosmetics to fuel.

But environmentalists fear surging demand for the versatile product may drive mass deforestation in Indonesia, home to the world’s third-largest tropical rainforest, and exacerbate the global climate crisis.

A grand new state palace shaped like the mythical bird Garuda towers over a dusty construction site: a mass of steel and concrete emerging from the once-pristine forests of Borneo.

It is the centrepiece of Nusantara: Indonesia's new capital city, and the president is already hard at work inside.