Combating the Climate Crisis Through Improved Governance

Climate change, unsustainable use of natural resources, and environmental degradation threaten human wellbeing and economic prosperity. To slow climate change and help ensure a habitable planet, the United States supports Indonesia’s goal of striking a better balance between the conservation and use of its incredible natural resources.

Nowhere in Asia houses as much terrestrial biodiversity as Indonesia, the world’s third most biodiverse country. Its environment provides invaluable benefits, like breathable air, fresh water, as well as income and sustenance. While Indonesia has made steady progress on biodiversity conservation and forest management, over-exploitation of these resources continues to worsen the impacts of climate change, putting human and wildlife at risk.

USAID Sustainable Environmental Governance Across Regions (SEGAR)

Through SEGAR, meaning “fresh” in Indonesian, USAID works to help Indonesia balance steady economic growth with thriving forests and peatlands.

USAID SEGAR brings the government, businesses, and local communities together to make business-as-usual commodities production less harmful to the environment, more beneficial to local farmers, and more profitable for businesses. This transformation helps producers meet the growing global demand for sustainable products while improving prosperity in traditionally impoverished communities. The project supports local governments to incentivize forest managers, farmers, and businesses to apply sustainable production at each point along the commodity supply chain — from sourcing raw materials to bringing products to market. At the same time, the project also works with local governments to improve the policies, implementation, and monitoring of biodiversity conservation and sustainable land use management. These partnerships will reduce threats to biodiversity in high conservation value and high carbon stock areas, including forests and peatlands that maintain significant orangutan populations.

Bringing farmers, businesses, and local authorities together to improve land use management will open the door to improved environmental governance benefiting everyone — and Indonesia’s forests — in the long term. By highlighting the benefits of sustainable production, USAID SEGAR will attract “green investment” into policies, budgeting decisions, and actions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the worst effects of climate change

Anticipated Results

USAID SEGAR seeks to bring 7 million hectares of tropical forest and peatland under improved management and help mobilize up to $45 million in public and private “green investment” by 2026. These results will subsequently reduce 55 million metric tons of CO2e — the equivalent of nearly 12 million cars off the road for a year — further mitigating climate change beyond the life of the project.