Coalition Questions Biodiversity Action Plan, Note for the Indonesian Delegation at COP17

Civil society coalition JustCOP assesses Indonesia's biodiversity commitment as strong on paper but weak in practice. The Indonesian Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (IBSAP) 2025–2045 possesses good content but lacks authoritative standing within the existing legal hierarchy. Experts noted that commitments from conventions are not automatically implemented, necessitating translation into regulations and policies to ensure action.
The review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF) at COP17 provided an opportunity for a global assessment of implementation progress, highlighting the interconnection between biodiversity protection, climate crisis, and development as Indonesia faces a multidimensional challenge. The Working Group on Indigenous People and Community Conserved Areas Indonesia (WGII) gathered recommendations for the Indonesian delegation concerning the KM-GBF and community rights.
The group's recommendations emphasized strengthening participation in determining the substance of the KM-GBF and IBSAP, enhancing national reporting to serve as accountability mechanisms for communities, recognizing community contributions to implementation, operationalizing traditional knowledge mandates, ensuring adequate financing, respecting tenure security for indigenous peoples, pushing conservation reform via targets like 30x30 inclusive of community rights, guaranteeing knowledge sovereignty, ensuring policy alignment across sectors, and preventing development from reinforcing biodiversity loss.

* The Indonesian Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (IBSAP) 2025–2045 has good content but lacks standing in the hierarchy of laws and regulations.
* Giorgio Budi Indrarto stated that Indonesia has a biodiversity strategy reference with good content but lacks strong authority.
* Commitments from conventions must be implemented through regulations and policies.
* The Working Group on Indigenous People and Community Conserved Areas Indonesia (WGII) produced ten recommendations for the Indonesian Government delegation attending COP17.
* Biodiversity protection, climate crisis, and development cannot be separated due to a multidimensional crisis faced by Indonesia.
* Indonesia has built a more participatory approach in information gathering regarding the Seventh National Report (Natrep 7).
* The WGII recommended ensuring implementation of KM-GBF principles related to human rights for indigenous peoples, local communities, women, and the younger generation.
* Recommendations included strengthening national reporting as accountability mechanisms for government agencies and community elements.
* Recommendations asked for the recognition of community contributions to IBSAP and KM-GBF implementation through voluntary reports.
* The delegation was asked to operationalize Article 8(j) regarding traditional knowledge, local wisdom, and indigenous peoples' rights.
* A recommendation sought strengthening financing and fiscal reform for biodiversity implementation due to a funding gap in the KM-GBF.
* Recommendations included ensuring tenure security for indigenous peoples and local communities regarding land and resources.
* The delegation was asked to push for conservation reform through the 30x30 agenda based on principles of justice.
* The delegation was asked to ensure justice and sovereignty of knowledge regarding traditional knowledge and genetic resources, requiring consent and benefit-sharing.
* Recommendations called for policy synergy between biodiversity targets, climate change mitigation, and resource management across sectors like spatial planning and finance.
* A recommendation urged that development and investment policies must not reinforce the main causes of biodiversity loss.

The narrative reveals a tension between aspirational commitments—represented by documents like IBSAP and the KM-GBF—and the structural realities of governance and implementation authority within Indonesia. The core pattern observed is the gap between 'on paper' commitment and 'in practice' execution, which JustCOP explicitly identifies as weak implementation despite strong documentation. This points to a systemic issue where high-level frameworks fail to penetrate the legal and administrative structures necessary for tangible change.
The recommendations generated by WGII reveal a crucial shift in focus: moving from state-centric compliance to recognizing community agency, knowledge systems, and tenure rights as essential components of biodiversity governance. The call for national reporting beyond international obligations signifies a push for internal accountability mechanisms that prioritize local experience over top-down metrics. This suggests an underlying challenge in institutional capacity: how to operationalize global frameworks while genuinely empowering localized decision-making regarding land use, resource access, and traditional knowledge.
The demand for financial reform alongside recognition of tenure security and the integration of justice principles into conservation targets (like 30x30) suggests that ecological goals are inseparable from socio-political structures. The implication is that effective biodiversity protection requires decolonizing the architecture of conservation itself, moving away from state-controlled conservation areas toward community-managed frameworks. The focus on knowledge sovereignty and ensuring that development policies do not cause dispossession points toward a deeper critique: current governance systems are structurally configured to prioritize external economic imperatives over localized rights and ecological integrity. The missing link appears to be the institutional capacity and political will to truly embed participatory, rights-based approaches into regulatory enforcement.