Coalitions in Indonesia REDD+: Transformational Change or Strengthening Self-Interests?

Coalitions of actors often drive policy change (Österblom and Bodin 2012). In the policy arena of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), coalitions are thought to enable transformational change (Kanninen et al. 2007, Angelsen and McNeill 2012). Different actors, each with their own interests and ability, coordinate and interact in promoting public interests becoming a public policy that can tackle the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation. However, actors might often build coalitions to support self-interest to shape a good political image or raising funds for their organization. During 2015, REDD+ in Indonesia was put on hold due to political change. At the same time, a survey during that time, showed that many actors still believed that REDD+ is important for Indonesia. Other studies have looked at coalitions among NGOs (Di Gregorio 2012) or among governments (Rantala and Di Gregorio 2014). The REDD+ policy arena in Indonesia, appear to have given rise to coalitions between non-government organisations, government, private sector and donors. Do these coalitions of non-government organisations, governments and donors serve the public good or is it an avenue to pursuing self-interests? Blurry category of non-government organisations (Laraswati et al 2020) and hybrid of government/private sector create an ambiguous boundary between public and private activity. Thus, do these coalition demonstrate cooperation among actors or is it in fact a coalition among the same actors. Using a policy network analysis with data obtained from social organization survey and semi-structure interviews held in 2019 with representatives from 57 organizations involved in REDD+ policy arena, we explore collaboration and the dependency between actors in REDD+ policy domain. We found that (1) dominant coalitions appear to be formed by different actor types characterized by a complicated relationship based on interests not necessarily related directly to REDD+ and (2) actors allocate only a small percentage of their overall activities to REDD+ related efforts. This evidence suggests actors only engage with REDD+ according to organization interest and/or often because donor agreement requirements. The findings may also suggest the reason why there are large number of actor’s exit the REDD+ issues in Indonesia.