Research project
Indonesian Environmentalism from the 1970s to the 1990s: A Global-Local Perspective
- Start date: 1 June 2025
- End date: 31 May 2027
- Funder: British Academy
- Primary investigator: Dr Matthew Woolgar
Description
Thunderheads near Borneo, Indonesia featured in an image photographed by an Expedition 40 crew member on the International Space Station. Image copyright NASA, ID iss040e088891, used under non-commercial usage guidelines.
Understanding the conditions for increasing environmental consciousness in society is a pressing global issue. However, scholarship on the rise of environmentalism has shown a striking bias toward developments in the Global North. This project shifts our perspective on the global environmental movement by foregrounding the interaction between changing international trends, increasing diplomatic engagement surrounding environmental protection and the growth of environmentalism in Indonesia from the 1970s to 1990s.
To do this, the project addresses key ‘contact points’ between global environmentalism and developments in Indonesia. A first strand focuses on Indonesia’s involvement in the World Commission on Environment and Development, a major international committee formed under a UN mandate. A second strand foregrounds the work of civil society, making use of serials produced by prominent environmental NGOs in Indonesia in the 1980s and 1990s. The project will result in conference papers and peer-reviewed journal articles; it will also feed into the preparation for a further grant application.
Together these strands illuminate a multi-level process whereby the Indonesian state and civil society each engaged with international environmentalism, as well as with each other. The Indonesian government engaged with international environmental forums to further its own ideological and political agenda. At the same time, civil society actors in Indonesia worked to build a case for greater environmental protection within a non-democratic domestic space, collaborating with local and international partners. Through this analysis, the project highlights developments in a formative phase of international environmentalism, which saw the crystallisation of discourses and institutions that have had an ongoing impact up to the present.