Gender, vulnerability, and power in Indonesia’s climate policies

Indonesia has developed key climate policy documents to guide its adaptation and mitigation agendas while committing to gender mainstreaming and inclusion within its broader development framework. However, there is an urgency to understand if and how these documents advance gender and climate justice. To this end, we examine how gender is constructed and operationalized within Indonesia’s climate policies using feminist intersectional policy analysis. Our analysis of ten climate policies, published by Indonesian ministries between 2010 and 2022, identifies three key issues. First, gender is framed narrowly, often implying a linear relationship between gender and vulnerability, portraying women and marginalized communities as inherently disadvantaged while overlooking their agency, leadership, and the structural root causes of their exposure to climate vulnerabilities and risks. Although women in Indonesia have long demonstrated leadership and agency in environmental struggles, gender is conceptualized in Indonesia’s policies in a reductive manner, reproducing a binary and hetero-patriarchal understanding of gender. Second, policies prioritize top-down institutional knowledge and government perspectives over community-led insights and diverse knowledges. Strategies to amplify grassroots voices remain underdeveloped and perpetuate imbalanced patriarchal power dynamics that limit their influence on decision-making processes. Third, intersectional and diverse forms of leadership and political action are inadequately addressed, despite their critical role in shaping more inclusive and just climate policies. While capacity-building and participation are encouraged, the policies fail to foster models of leadership, policymaking, and programming that embrace diverse community experiences, knowledges, and agency and meaningfully engage local responses, needs, and priorities. Our article underscores the need for contextually grounded intersectional approaches to climate policy, integrating diverse and intersecting vulnerabilities, knowledges, and forms of agency while tackling the root causes of inequalities to promote justice, inclusivity, and transformative climate adaptation in Indonesia and elsewhere.