Climate change as a critical factor to poverty reduction in Indonesia

Poverty reduction has been the top priority of the Indonesian government’s developmental projects. At the age of climate change, however, the implementation of the policy faces greater challenges. Empirical observation gives rise to a question as to why do the climate change mitigation programs fail to bring about favorable effect to poverty reduction? The paper employs an intermestic approach to critically explaining the underlying problems concerning climate change and poverty reduction in Indonesia. The argument is that the political economy of climate change accelerates the existing structural factors which alienate the government from the poor people, and annihilates the moral relationships between the ruler and the ruled. To clarify this position, the discussion proceeds in two main parts. The first section outlines the significant use of the intermestic approach to analyzing the disconnection between climate change and the Indonesian government’s economic policy to reduce poverty. The second section goes on to discern the structural factors which exacerbate the circumstances under which poverty reduction becomes a trivial issue in the ostensibly development policy directed to achieve economic progress. The concluding section reflects what can be learnt from the ongoing situation; on how to bring the state back into the right direction.