Rooted in Care: Women Behind Indonesia’s Climate Goals

June 5, 2025
Woman in traditional hat tending to plants in a garden setting.

Ibu Ersih, weeding seedlings as water gently sprinkles over the nursery.

Nabilla/UNDP
Author
Nabilla Rahmani

Communication Analyst, UNDP Indonesia 
At the Rumpin Nursery in West Java, Bu Ersih’s hands move with practiced care, weeding around saplings destined to become part of Indonesia’s reforestation efforts. Her daily routine for the past four years, tending to seedlings like Ketapang Kencana, is a quiet but vital act of climate resilience. Though often unseen, women like Bu Ersih are helping to lay the groundwork for Indonesia’s ambitious Forest and Other Land Use (FOLU) Net Sink 2030 target, an effort to ensure that by 2030, Indonesia’s forestry sector absorbs more carbon than it emits.
Bu Ersih’s journey began in hardship. Following the death of her husband, she became the sole provider for her family and turned to the nursery for work. Over time, what began as a necessity transformed into a calling. Raised in a rural environment, her affinity for nature runs deep, nurturing not just seedlings, but also hope for her children and future generations. Her hands, weathered yet steady, represent the backbone of Indonesia’s grassroots climate action.

Women at Work in the Climate Frontline

Across Indonesia, women play an indispensable role in forest and land stewardship. While they are underrepresented in formal forest governance structures, they are often the ones actively managing resources, restoring degraded land, and ensuring sustainability at the community level. In a series of UN-REDD stakeholder consultations in Indonesia, women’s participation in the workshops ranged from 30% to 53%, signaling strong women’s enthusiasm in climate-related initiatives. Nationally, female labor force participation in Indonesia nationally makes up about 39.36% of the total labor force as of 2024, but in the forestry sector—which remains male-dominated—they continue to face challenges such as limited access to land, credit, training, and restrictive cultural norms.
Despite their active participation, women’s contribution remains informal and underrecognized. Social and structural barriers—from education disparities to gender norms—often limit women's access to leadership roles or capacity-building opportunities. The government’s FOLU roadmap, released by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) in, acknowledges the need for inclusive, community-based partnerships, particularly those that elevate women, youth, and vulnerable groups in decision-making. 
Women working in a greenhouse, tending to piles of soil and seedlings.

Female workers at the Rumpin nursery load soil media into polybags.

Nabilla/UNDP

Keeping Knowledge Alive and Forests Standing

Many women like Bu Ersih are also carriers of traditional ecological knowledge, an asset too often overlooked in climate planning. In rural and customary communities, women have long led the management of land, water, and biodiversity through practices passed down over generations. These include sustainable farming, the use of native plant species, and forest product gathering techniques that maintain ecological balance.
UNDP’s Climate Promise, a project funded by multiple donors such as the Government of Japan and the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs of the United Kingdom, highlights the critical role of traditional knowledge systems in climate solutions, especially when aligned with local culture and experience. In Bali, for example, the Tri Hita Karana philosophy reflects a longstanding worldview that promotes balance between people, nature, and spirituality, an approach that supports sustainable land use and community resilience.
By recognizing and including these perspectives, often held and preserved by women, Indonesia can enrich and strengthen the implementation of its FOLU Net Sink 2030 agenda.

A Collective Path Forward

Indonesia’s FOLU Net Sink 2030 is a bold vision, but it will require more than policy commitments and satellite data. It will need an ecosystem of contributors, from policy experts and plantation managers to nursery workers and world leaders. Recognizing and empowering women like Bu Ersih is not a symbolic gesture; it is a strategic imperative.  
Studies show that companies with higher gender diversity in leadership reduce carbon emissions more effectively, a 1% increase in women managers correlates with a 0.5% decrease in CO₂ emissions. Yet in Indonesia’s critical energy and mining sectors, women’s workforce participation remains stagnant at 52% compared to men’s 83%, underscoring vast untapped potential.
If such outcomes hold true in corporate settings, they carry important implications for climate governance at every level, from corporate boards to community forestry and conservation. Without the daily labor and lived knowledge of women, whether in peatland nurseries or renewable energy projects, carbon neutrality risks becoming an abstract target rather than an achievable reality.
As the country charts a course toward climate leadership, stories like Bu Ersih’s must be elevated, not just as personal triumphs, but as central to the national climate strategy. The hands that weed, plant, and protect the forest today are cultivating the roots of Indonesia’s low-carbon future.