Featured Image: “Eropa”, the baby elephant adopted by the Delegation of the European Union in Jakarta from the Tangkahan CRU in Gunung Leuser National Park, to encourage conservation efforts and community-based ecoturism. (Sources: EU Delegation to Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam)
The main issues which characterize the bilateral relation between Indonesia and EU over 2015 are mainly about climate change issue and the development of education sector especially higher education sector. There were no significant progress on EU-Indonesia social and culture bilateral relations in the past 2 months. The mass media are still focus on the political and economic issues as their major news rather than social and culture issues. The SHARE Program and the Climate Change Conference in Paris this December could be the main reason for EU to develop their social and culture cooperation in Indonesia this year.
In the education sector, EU has granted several support programs for every educational level in Indonesia as part of their cooperation. The higher education was taking a larger portion in the education cooperation that EU develops in Indonesia. We could see that beside the Erasmus Mundus Program which are launched by EU several years ago, this year EU also launched new program called SHARE. This program aims to develop higher education in ASEAN include Indonesia. The program is planned to pursue student in ASEAN countries to study abroad in Europe through the scholarship that granted by EU. EU actively promotes their education programs to Indonesian students. One of the main events that EU held last November which collaborated with education institutions in 14 European countries was European Higher Education Fair (EHEF). It was held in 3 big cities in Indonesia to attract more Indonesian students to study in Europe. Meanwhile, in basic education, EU has granted 37,3 million euro to support 108 districts and cities across Indonesia to achieve the MSS (Minimum Service Standards) for basic education.
Beside the education sector, EU also has concern on environment issues. As we know, EU is one of the prominent global actor who has major concern in environmental issues. EU itself has encouraged countries around the world to follow their policies which are based on sustainable development. In the other side, as the third country with largest area of tropical rainforest in the world, Indonesia also be the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gasses because of the logging and burning of forest recent years.[1] Hence, EU realized that Indonesia is a significant actor to prevent climate change and started to build cooperation with Indonesian government to implement sustainable based policy. Aside from the government sector, EU also tried to raise the awareness of Indonesian people about the urgency of environmental issues. For example, in this early December, EU has held a climate change concert with the theme “Our Earth. Our Action”. The concert aimed to raise the awareness of Indonesian young people about climate change issue. If we look at the great commitment on the environment issues that EU showed on her foreign policy, we could see that EU and Indonesia would build stronger cooperation further. But, Indonesia has to face the dilemma between environment conservation through sustainable policy and economic development. For instance, the strict standard on Palm Oil Industries which is implemented by EU hurts the smallholder Palm Oil industries in Indonesia. [2]
Along with the end of Climate Change Conference in Paris this December, it would open greater opportunities for EU to build cooperation with other global actors which are considered to have important role in the global climate change mitigation efforts, including Indonesia. EU itself as a global leader in this global climate change mitigation project has to ensure the commitment of other countries in order to achieve their ambitious goals to keep global warming below 2o in 2020. [3] We could be sure that EU would consider Indonesia as the key actor to achieve the goals and build stronger cooperation further especially in the forest conservation and renewable energy. The renewable energy sector would be the potential cooperation sector between Indonesia and EU since Indonesia has committed to develop renewable sector and EU is the pioneer actor in developing renewable energy.[4] The EU ambassador for Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam has stated that EU would continue the environmental program that is started this year and would soon start other environmental programs as part of the social and culture cooperation in the 2016.
Over the 2015 we could see that environment and education was the major focus of the EU-Indonesia cooperation on the social and culture issues alongside with other issues such as health and disaster management. The cooperation has significant impact to strengthen awareness and mutual understanding between two parties as the base of further political and economic cooperation. The pilot project that just started this year such as SHARE would be the foundation for the next cooperation along with the change of Indonesian policy on environmental issues after the signing of the agreement on Climate Change Conference Paris.
Author: Afrizal Meydiantoro.
Afrizal Meydiantoro is undergraduate student in the Department of International Relations Universitas Gadjah Mada, and currently work as research assistant for the media research on Indonesia-European Union bilateral relations in 2015 at the Programme on European Studies, Institute of International Studies.
References:
[1] _’How Can Cheating on Emission be Dissuaded?’, New York Times (online), 8 December 2015, <http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/climate/2015-paris-climate-talks/how-to-keep-countries-from-cheating-on-emissions>, accessed 11 December 2015
[2] _,’Indonesia to Stop Complying with European Union’s Palm Oil Standards’, Indonesia Investment (online), 12 October 2015, <http://www.indonesia-investments.com/news/todays-headlines/indonesia-to-stop-complying-with-european-union-s-palm-oil-standards/item6025>, accessed 11 December 2015
[3] _,’COP21 kicks off in Paris’, European External Action (daring), 30 Novermber 2015, <http://eeas.europa.eu/top_stories/2015/301115_cop21_en.htm >, accessed 12 December 2015
[4] Danuta Slusarska, ‘Indonesia divided between forest conservation and palm oil business’, Friends of Europe (online), 26 October 2015, <http://www.friendsofeurope.org/greener-europe/indonesia-divided-between-forest-conservation-and-palm-oil-business/>, accessed 12 Desember 2015