Aversion or Inertia? A Research Programme to Understand the Prospects of Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Agriculture in Indonesia

In Indonesia, agricultural regulation is entirely adaptation-focused. No specific mitigation obligation is present in the country’s body of agricultural law. The situation does not facilitate a strong agricultural mitigation policy in the country, and, as a matter of fact, Indonesia’s planned actions on emission-reduction in agriculture are narrow, vague, and lacking in ambition. What is not clear, however, is whether the emphatic adaptation focus in Indonesia’s body of agricultural regulation reflects entrenched social values about the role of agriculture. For it might also be the case that the emphasis on adaptation in Indonesia’s agricultural regulation is simply an instance of “regulatory inertia”, which is to say that it is not reflective of any underlying values-based resistance to the concept of mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture. An inquiry that seeks to elicit the opinion of Indonesian farmers in this respect would throw some light on whether the lack of ambition regarding agriculture’s contribution to the effort against climate change goes deeper than a mere regulatory inertia that perpetuates agricultural protectionism. This, in turn, would help us understand the nature of the risks we are up against with our planned response to climate change.