The Missing Half of FOLU Net Sink 2030

Why measuring carbon without counting people understates the value of forest protection.

Executive Summary

Indonesia's Forestry and Other Land Use (FOLU) Net Sink 2030 programme is the country's most ambitious land-use initiative. It targets the forestry sector to absorb more carbon than it emits by 2030, contributes approximately 60 percent of Indonesia's total NDC emissions reduction, and has an estimated budget of Rp 204–239 trillion. Twelve operational plans cover deforestation reduction, peat restoration, mangrove conservation, social forestry, and forest rehabilitation across all forested provinces.

FOLU's monitoring framework tracks spatial and ecological indicators: forest cover, peat condition, mangrove extent, a Forest Quality Index, a Location Priority Index, and an Environmental Services Index. It does not include a single health indicator.

This policy brief argues that FOLU Net Sink 2030 is simultaneously Indonesia's most important environmental programme and a de facto public health intervention, but that its health dimensions are entirely unmeasured. This blind spot understates FOLU's economic value, weakens its political case, and fails to protect the communities most affected by its implementation.

The brief identifies five pathways through which FOLU actions produce measurable health outcomes:

1. Fire reduction → Respiratory health. Peat restoration directly reduces the fires that caused 500,000 respiratory illness cases and 12,000 avoidable deaths in 2015. BPJS Kesehatan spends Rp 10–13 trillion annually on respiratory claims linked to air quality.
2. Deforestation reduction → Nutrition and food security. Forest loss directly reduces dietary diversity in forest-dependent communities. Primary ethnographic research documents significantly worse food security among communities displaced from forests.
3. Peat restoration → Water quality. Degraded peatlands contaminate water sources. FOLU's 2.72 million hectare peat restoration target has calculable waterborne disease implications.
4. Social forestry expansion → Health access. Social forestry communities are among Indonesia's most health-underserved. Livelihood improvements from social forestry create indirect health access benefits.
5. Implementation failure → Health harm. Community displacement, water contamination, and food system disruption from implementation failures produce malnutrition, disease, and psychological harm.

The brief proposes a health co-benefits monitoring framework using data that already exists within Indonesian government systems: BPJS claims, Riskesdas, BMKG hotspot data, district health records, and FOLU spatial maps. No new bureaucracy or data collection infrastructure is required. The innovation is connection, not creation.

Integrating health metrics into FOLU monitoring would strengthen FOLU's economic case (by quantifying avoided health costs), its political case (by demonstrating benefits that citizens experience directly), and its equity case (by ensuring that communities inside FOLU landscapes are protected, not only counted as carbon).

Key recommendations: embed health co-benefit indicators in FOLU NC-2 monitoring design; commission a cross-ministerial assessment linking BPJS claims data to FOLU priority area land-use change; require health impact assessment for FOLU actions involving community displacement; integrate food security indicators into the TFFF benefit-sharing architecture; and establish a Planetary Health lens in the RPJMN 2025–2029 mid-term review.

Ringkasan Eksekutif

Program FOLU Net Sink 2030 adalah inisiatif penggunaan lahan paling ambisius di Indonesia. Program ini menargetkan sektor kehutanan untuk menyerap lebih banyak karbon daripada yang diemisikan pada tahun 2030, berkontribusi sekitar 60 persen dari total target pengurangan emisi NDC Indonesia, dengan anggaran diperkirakan sebesar Rp 204–239 triliun.

Kerangka monitoring FOLU melacak indikator spasial dan ekologis: tutupan hutan, kondisi gambut, luasan mangrove. Tidak satu pun indikator kesehatan tercakup di dalamnya.

Policy brief ini berargumen bahwa FOLU Net Sink 2030 secara simultan merupakan program lingkungan terpenting Indonesia sekaligus intervensi kesehatan masyarakat de facto, namun dimensi kesehatannya sama sekali tidak diukur. Kebutaan struktural ini melemahkan nilai ekonomi FOLU, mempersempit argumen politiknya, dan gagal melindungi komunitas yang paling terdampak oleh implementasinya.

Brief ini mengidentifikasi lima jalur di mana aksi FOLU menghasilkan dampak kesehatan yang terukur:

1. Pengurangan kebakaran → Kesehatan pernapasan
2. Pengurangan deforestasi → Gizi dan ketahanan pangan
3. Restorasi gambut → Kualitas air
4. Perluasan perhutanan sosial → Akses kesehatan
5. Kegagalan implementasi → Kerugian kesehatan

Brief ini mengusulkan kerangka monitoring ko-manfaat kesehatan menggunakan data yang sudah ada dalam sistem pemerintah Indonesia: klaim BPJS, Riskesdas, data hotspot BMKG, catatan kesehatan kabupaten, dan peta spasial FOLU. Tidak diperlukan birokrasi baru. Inovasinya adalah koneksi, bukan penciptaan.

1. Introduction: What FOLU Measures, and What It Does Not

Indonesia's FOLU Net Sink 2030 programme was launched at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021, when President Joko Widodo committed the country's forestry and land-use sector to become a net carbon absorber by 2030. The target, -140 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, represents the single largest component of Indonesia's climate mitigation strategy, contributing approximately 60 percent of the country's total emissions reduction under its enhanced Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).

The programme is operationalised through 12 Rencana Operasional (Operational Plans), established by Ministerial Decree SK MenLHK No. 168/2022, covering 15 mitigation actions across the following domains: reduction of planned and unplanned deforestation on mineral and peat soils, peat restoration (targeting 2.72 million hectares), mangrove conservation and rehabilitation, social forestry expansion, forest rehabilitation, and sustainable forest management. The estimated budget ranges from Rp 204 trillion to Rp 239 trillion, with financing from the state budget (APBN), the Norway results-based payment (US$56 million in the first tranche), the UK-FCDO KIBAR programme, carbon pricing mechanisms, biodiversity credits, and green bonds.

The monitoring architecture is comprehensive in spatial and ecological terms. It includes a Forest Quality Index, an Indeks Biaya Gas Buang Fauna (IBGF), a Location Priority Index (Indeks Prioritas Lokasi, IPL) that identifies priority areas primarily across Sumatra and Kalimantan, and an Environmental Services Index. Progress is tracked through deforestation rates, rehabilitation hectares, seedling counts, and spatial coverage.

What is entirely absent from this architecture is any measurement of human health outcomes. FOLU's monitoring framework does not track respiratory disease incidence in fire-prone areas. It does not measure dietary diversity or food security in forest-dependent communities. It does not assess waterborne disease in peat restoration zones. It does not monitor health facility access in social forestry areas. It does not evaluate health harm from community displacement caused by implementation failures.

This is not a peripheral oversight. It is a structural blind spot with three significant consequences.

First, it understates FOLU's economic value. If FOLU's fire reduction targets prevent even a fraction of the respiratory illness cases and premature deaths associated with past peatland fires, the avoided health costs, in BPJS claims, lost productivity, and disaster health response, represent a substantial economic benefit that does not appear in any FOLU cost-benefit analysis.

Second, it weakens FOLU's political case. Carbon tonnes are abstract to most citizens and policymakers. Health outcomes are not. If FOLU can demonstrate that its targets directly reduce hospital admissions, improve child nutrition, and prevent the haze events that close schools and airports, its political constituency broadens beyond the environmental sector.

Third, it fails to protect the communities most affected by FOLU's implementation. When protected areas expand without community consent, when conservation criminalises subsistence practices, or when government programmes clear forests that FOLU is supposed to protect, the health costs fall on the communities least visible in national reporting. Without health indicators, these costs remain invisible.

The remainder of this brief documents five specific pathways through which FOLU actions produce health outcomes, identifies the data that already exists to measure them, and proposes a set of indicators that could be integrated into FOLU's monitoring framework without requiring new data collection infrastructure.

2. Five Health Pathways: How FOLU Actions Produce Health Outcomes

Each of FOLU's major action domains has quantifiable health implications. This section documents five pathways, drawing on published peer-reviewed evidence, government data, and primary field research.

2.1 Fire Reduction → Respiratory Health

FOLU action: Peat restoration targeting 2.72 million hectares by 2030; fire prevention through peatland rewetting and water management (tata air gambut).

Health evidence: The 2015 peatland fires, the most severe in Indonesia's recent history, provide the clearest evidence of the health stakes involved in FOLU's peat restoration targets. Kiely et al. (2021), published in Nature Communications, estimated that the 2015 fires caused total economic losses of US$28 billion, generated approximately 500,000 cases of respiratory illness, and resulted in an estimated 12,000 premature deaths that would have been avoidable had peatland restoration been completed earlier. The study calculated that full peat restoration would have reduced PM2.5 emissions by approximately 24 percent.

At the national level, air pollution imposes a substantial and growing burden on Indonesia's health system. The Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) 2025 update estimated that the average Indonesian loses 1.3 years of life expectancy due to particulate pollution, rising to 2.6 years in Jakarta. Indonesia's population-weighted PM2.5 averaged approximately 35.5 μg/m³ in 2024, roughly seven times the WHO guideline of 5 μg/m³.

BPJS Kesehatan, Indonesia's national health insurer, spends an estimated Rp 10–13 trillion per year on respiratory illness claims (ISPA, pneumonia, and related conditions), a substantial and rising share of total claims. Many of these cases are linked to deteriorating air quality from fires, transportation, and industrial emissions. FOLU's peat restoration and fire prevention targets directly address the environmental driver of a significant portion of these claims.

Calculation logic: If FOLU's peat restoration targets are achieved, the reduction in fire-related PM2.5 exposure in priority provinces (Riau, South Sumatra, Central Kalimantan, West Kalimantan) can be estimated using Kiely's 24 percent PM2.5 reduction figure applied to the AQLI dose-response relationship. The resulting estimate of avoided premature deaths and reduced BPJS respiratory claims would represent a quantifiable health co-benefit of FOLU that currently appears nowhere in its monitoring framework.

2.2 Deforestation Reduction → Nutrition and Food Security

FOLU action: Reducing deforestation on mineral and peat soils; maintaining the deforestation baseline below 0.31 million hectares annually, with a target of 0.2–0.3 million hectares by 2030.

Health evidence: The relationship between forest cover and dietary diversity in Indonesia is established in peer-reviewed literature. Ickowitz et al. (2016, PLoS ONE) demonstrated a statistically significant positive correlation between forest cover and dietary diversity using Indonesian Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data. Rowland et al. (2016) quantified the contributions of forest foods to healthy diets in multiple countries including Indonesia.

Primary ethnographic research by the author provides direct evidence from inside a FOLU priority landscape. Doctoral research conducted with the Orang Rimba community in Jambi Province, Sumatra (Wardani, 2022, Leiden University), recorded 2,520 meals consumed by six households across three groups living in different relationships to the remaining forest. The study found that the group with the most intact forest access (Air Hitam) consumed 95 percent of regular meals and had the most diverse diet, while the group most displaced by oil palm conversion (Terab) skipped 15 percent of all meals and was the most food-insecure. In 2015, 15 members of the Terab group died of hunger and malnutrition-related illness.

The Orang Rimba case is situated within the Bukit Duabelas National Park landscape, part of the broader Jambi forest area where FOLU's deforestation reduction targets apply. Jambi's forest cover declined from 55.9 percent to 18.4 percent of provincial land area between 1990 and 2016. The food security implications of continued deforestation in FOLU priority areas are calculable using the Ickowitz coefficients applied to food security vulnerability data from Bappenas/WFP's Food Security and Vulnerability Atlas (FSVA).

Key point: FOLU's deforestation targets are implicitly nutrition targets. Every hectare of forest maintained is a hectare where forest-dependent communities may continue to access food. This relationship is documented but not measured in FOLU's monitoring framework.

2.3 Peat Restoration → Water Quality and Waterborne Disease

FOLU action: Peat restoration of 2.72 million hectares; peatland water management (tata air gambut) through canal blocking and rewetting.

Health evidence: Degraded peatlands contaminate water sources with dissolved organic matter, heavy metals, and acidic runoff. Communities living adjacent to degraded peat, particularly those who have lost access to forest-sourced clean water, drink from plantation drainage channels and contaminated streams. Field research with the Orang Rimba in Jambi documented contaminated water consumption in plantation areas where forests had been cleared (Wardani, 2022).

Climate change is projected to increase waterborne disease incidence in Indonesia. The Global Climate Risk Report (2024) documented a 19 percent increase in diarrhoea cases in Maluku attributed to climate-related water system disruption. WASH literature provides established dose-response relationships for health improvements from improved water quality.

Calculation logic: FOLU's peat restoration target areas can be overlaid with district-level health data on waterborne disease incidence (available from district health offices, Dinkes) and BRGM restoration progress maps. The number of communities benefiting from improved water quality through peat restoration is estimable, and the health outcomes can be projected using WASH literature baselines.

2.4 Social Forestry Expansion → Community Health Access

FOLU action: Social forestry (Perhutanan Sosial) as a core implementation instrument; the UK-FCDO KIBAR project engaging over 400 community groups in 30 provinces through agroforestry and social forestry.

Health evidence: Social forestry areas in Indonesia overlap significantly with remote, underserved, and disadvantaged communities (DTPK). These communities typically face worse health access, higher rates of malnutrition, and lower health service utilisation than the national average. Riskesdas data shows widening provincial disparities in health outcomes since 1990 (GBD Indonesia, Lancet Global Health, 2022).

The link between livelihood improvement and health access is not biomedical but economic and structural: when families earn more from sustainable forestry, they can afford transport to health facilities, purchase nutritious food, and invest in children's education. This pathway was the clearest finding in the author's recent evaluation of the Integrated Village Development Programme (PDT) across 24 villages in Nusa Tenggara Timur (2026), where communities with functioning savings groups, terraced agriculture, and climate-adapted farming showed measurably better food security and educational outcomes.

Key point: FOLU's social forestry expansion has the potential to produce significant indirect health benefits. However, the KIBAR monitoring framework counts hectares permitted and community groups engaged, not health outcomes achieved.

2.5 Implementation Failure → Health Harm

FOLU risk: Community displacement from protected area expansion without consent; criminalisation of subsistence practices; contradictions between FOLU forest protection targets and government programmes that clear forest.

Evidence of harm: The 2025 deforestation surge (433,751 hectares, a 66 percent increase from 2024, per Auriga Nusantara) demonstrates the implementation contradictions within FOLU's operating environment. Eighteen percent of the 2025 forest loss was linked to the government's own food security programme. The Forestry Ministry's proposed clearance of 20 million hectares for food and energy estates (documented by Greenpeace Southeast Asia) directly undermines FOLU's deforestation reduction targets.

The Orang Rimba case illustrates the health consequences of displacement at the body level: malnutrition, contaminated water consumption, disease, and death. In Batanghari Regency, Jambi, nine Orang Rimba groups living within a palm oil concession have experienced police summons for occupying their ancestral land, river pollution from coal mining, tuberculosis among children, and three deaths in November 2024 from consuming foraged honeycomb, a direct consequence of forest loss.

The contested KSDAHE Conservation Law (UU 32/2024), currently under Constitutional Court review following challenges from AMAN, WALHI, and KIARA, introduces a new "preservation area" category that risks further displacement of indigenous communities from territories they have managed for centuries.

Key point: Without health monitoring in FOLU implementation areas, the health costs of implementation failure remain invisible in national reporting. FOLU's monitoring framework needs a displacement-health indicator to ensure that achieving carbon targets does not come at the cost of community health.

3. A Health-Integrated FOLU Monitoring Framework

The central argument of this brief is that measuring FOLU's health co-benefits does not require new data collection infrastructure. The data already exists within different Indonesian government systems. What is needed is the decision to connect them.

BPJS Kesehatan already records respiratory illness claims by district. BMKG already maps fire hotspots spatially. Riskesdas already surveys dietary diversity, nutrition, and health status by province. District health offices (Dinkes) already track waterborne disease incidence. BRGM publishes peat restoration progress maps. The Ministry of Forestry publishes social forestry permit data. FOLU already has spatial priority maps for every province through the Location Priority Index.

Overlaying these datasets would allow Indonesia to track, for the first time, whether FOLU's land-use interventions are producing measurable health improvements in the communities they are designed to protect. No new bureaucracy. No new surveys. Just the decision to stop managing carbon and health in separate institutional silos.

The following table proposes five health indicators that could be added to FOLU's existing monitoring framework, each linked to a specific FOLU action domain, measurable through existing data sources, and verifiable through established methods.

These indicators are designed to be integrated into the existing FOLU monitoring architecture, specifically as an additional layer within the Location Priority Index and Environmental Services Index frameworks. They do not require changes to FOLU's operational plans or institutional arrangements. They require only the decision to track health alongside carbon.

4. Why This Matters: The Economic and Political Case

4.1 The Fiscal Argument

FOLU's estimated budget of Rp 204–239 trillion is frequently cited as a cost. But the costs of not achieving FOLU's targets (continued fires, continued deforestation, continued health expenditure, continued disaster response) are not included in any FOLU cost-benefit analysis.

Several data points illustrate the scale of avoided costs that FOLU's health co-benefits could represent:

• Estimates of the total economic cost of Indonesia's 2015 fires range from roughly US$16 billion (World Bank, 2016) to US$28 billion (Kiely et al., 2021, Nature Communications).
• UNDP and WHO estimated in 2024 that climate change impacts on Indonesia's health sector amount to approximately 1.86 percent of GDP, roughly US$21.6 billion.
• Air pollution health costs in Jakarta alone are estimated at nearly US$3 billion annually, representing approximately 2.2 percent of the city's gross regional domestic product (Syuhada et al., 2023).
• BPJS Kesehatan spends an estimated Rp 10–13 trillion per year on respiratory illness claims, a portion of which is attributable to fire-related and pollution-related air quality deterioration.
• Without adaptation measures, yields of staple crops could decline by nearly 50 percent by 2050, with cascading impacts on nutrition and health (Climate Impact Tracker).

If FOLU's interventions avoid even a fraction of these costs, its economic return is substantially higher than carbon-only calculations suggest. A health-integrated FOLU analysis would strengthen the case for continued and increased investment in FOLU implementation.

4.2 The Political Argument

Carbon is abstract. Health is personal. Most Indonesian citizens and subnational policymakers do not think in terms of tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. But they do think about whether their children can breathe, whether the water is clean, whether the food is affordable, and whether the hospital bills are manageable.

If FOLU can demonstrate that its targets directly reduce BPJS claims, improve child nutrition in forest-edge communities, and prevent the haze events that close schools and airports, it builds a political constituency that carbon numbers alone cannot generate. This is particularly important at the subnational level, where bupati and governors make land-use decisions based on local political incentives rather than national emissions targets.

Health co-benefits translate FOLU from a central government climate commitment into a proposition with direct relevance to local governance and local voters.

5. Recommendations

Based on the analysis presented in this brief, the following recommendations are directed at Indonesian government agencies, FOLU implementation partners, and international financing mechanisms.

For FOLU governance (Kementerian Kehutanan, Bappenas)

1. Embed health co-benefit indicators in the design of FOLU NC-2 and NC-3 monitoring frameworks. The five indicators proposed in Section 3 can be integrated into the existing Location Priority Index and Environmental Services Index without creating new institutional arrangements.
2. Commission a cross-ministerial assessment linking BPJS Kesehatan claims data (by district, by diagnosis category) to land-use change in FOLU priority areas. This analysis would quantify, for the first time, the health cost savings attributable to FOLU's fire reduction and deforestation targets.
3. Require health impact assessment for all FOLU actions involving community displacement, land-use change in indigenous territories, or restrictions on subsistence practices. This should be integrated into the FPIC protocols recommended by MADANI Berkelanjutan for FOLU implementation.

For health governance (Kementerian Kesehatan, BPJS Kesehatan)

1. Include environmental health indicators (fire-related respiratory claims, water quality-linked disease, nutrition in forest-dependent communities) in the next Riskesdas cycle and in BPJS annual reporting disaggregation.
2. Establish formal data-sharing arrangements between BPJS and the Ministry of Forestry to enable spatial correlation of health claims with FOLU implementation areas.

For international financing mechanisms

1. Integrate food security and dietary diversity indicators into the TFFF benefit-sharing architecture, alongside carbon and biodiversity metrics. The TFFF's mandate that 20 percent of funds flow to indigenous peoples and local communities should be operationalised through health and food security outcome measures, not only hectare-based accounting.
2. Include health co-benefit metrics in the Norway RBP monitoring framework for FOLU NC-2, and in the UK-FCDO KIBAR programme's monitoring and evaluation framework.
3. Support the development of a Planetary Health approach in Indonesia's climate and biodiversity governance, building on the 2025 Lancet commentary connecting planetary boundaries to planetary health and the COP30 Belém Health Action Plan.

For the RPJMN mid-term review

1. Establish a Planetary Health lens in the RPJMN 2025–2029 mid-term review process, ensuring that health outcomes are assessed alongside environmental and economic targets. FOLU's health co-benefits provide a concrete entry point for this integration.

6. Conclusion

FOLU Net Sink 2030 is the most ambitious land-use programme Indonesia has ever undertaken. Its targets, if achieved, would represent a transformational shift in how the country manages its forests, peatlands, mangroves, and agricultural landscapes. The programme deserves the resources, political support, and institutional commitment it requires.

But measuring FOLU's success only in carbon misses half its value. The forests FOLU protects are not empty. They are inhabited by communities whose health (respiratory, nutritional, hydrological, psychological) is directly affected by the land-use decisions FOLU governs. Counting the carbon without counting the people inside it is not only an analytical gap. It is a governance failure that weakens FOLU's economic case, limits its political support, and leaves the most vulnerable communities invisible.

The data to fill this gap already exists. BPJS claims, Riskesdas surveys, BMKG hotspot maps, district health records, and FOLU's own spatial priority indices are the building blocks of a health-integrated FOLU monitoring framework. What is needed is not new infrastructure. It is the institutional decision to connect what has been kept apart.

Indonesia's forests protect carbon. They also protect lungs, diets, water sources, and children. It is time to measure both.

References

• Auriga Nusantara (2026). Deforestation in Indonesia rises 66 per cent in 2025. March 2026.
• BPJS Kesehatan. Annual Reports 2022–2024. Jakarta: BPJS Kesehatan.
• Greenpeace Southeast Asia (2025). Plan to Sacrifice 20 Million Hectares of Forest Makes Mockery of Indonesia's Climate and Biodiversity Commitments. January 2025.
• Ickowitz, A. et al. (2016). "Dietary quality and tree cover in Africa." Global Environmental Change 39: 314–323.
• Kiely, L. et al. (2021). "Assessing costs of Indonesian fires and the benefits of restoring peatland." Nature Communications 12: 7044.
• Kementerian LHK (2022). SK MenLHK No. 168/2022: Rencana Operasional Indonesia's FOLU Net Sink 2030. Jakarta.
• Lancet Global Health (2022). Global Burden of Disease Indonesia: Provincial Health Burden 1990–2019.
• MADANI Berkelanjutan (2023). Lembar Fakta FOLU Net Sink 2030. Jakarta.
• MADANI Berkelanjutan (2024). Arah Kebijakan Pencapaian FOLU Net Sink 2030 dalam Kerangka Result Based Payment. Jakarta.
• Rowland, D. et al. (2016). "Forest foods and healthy diets: quantifying the contributions." Environmental Conservation 44(2): 102–114.
• Syuhada et al. (2023). "Impacts of Air Pollution on Health and Cost of Illness in Jakarta, Indonesia." IJERPH 20(4): 2916.
• UNDP/WHO (2024). Indonesia Takes Bold, Transformative Step to Build a Climate-Resilient Health System. Press Release, April 2024.
• University of Chicago EPIC (2025). Air Quality Life Index: Indonesia Fact Sheet 2025.
• Wardani, E.M. (2022). Food Security among the Orang Rimba: Transformation Processes among Contemporary Indonesian Hunter-Gatherers. PhD Dissertation. Leiden University.
• World Bank (Glauber, A.J. and Gunawan, I., 2016). The Cost of Fire: An Economic Analysis of Indonesia's 2015 Fire Crisis. Jakarta: World Bank.

About the Author

Dr. Ekoningtyas Margu Wardani is an independent development consultant and researcher (PhD, Leiden University). She is a contributor to Geni Lintang.

Contact: wardani.e.m@gmail.com

Suggested citation: Wardani, E.M. (2026). The Missing Half of FOLU Net Sink 2030: Health Co-Benefits of Indonesia's Most Ambitious Climate Programme. Policy Brief. Yogyakarta, Indonesia.