Anthon Jason
Imagine being told that your village is destined to become a hero in saving the planet from a looming climate apocalypse. Yet the price you must pay is the roar of excavators and giant drilling machines operating just one meter from your bedroom wall, along with the constant threat of lethal toxic gas spewing from the cornfields where you earn your daily living. For policymakers in the capital, this is merely a “tolerable form of mitigation” in pursuit of renewable energy ambitions. For villagers, however, it is nothing less than the violation of their basic right to live.
It is precisely this dystopian reality on the ground that Martha Hesty Susilowati, a researcher and social and gender inclusion consultant, dissects with unsparing clarity in her presentation at the Wednesday Forum on April 22, 2026. Drawing on a collaborative research project funded by the Ford Foundation, Martha unpacks a major narrative that has long been buried beneath the triumphant rhetoric of energy transition: geothermal development in Indonesia all too often reproduces patterns of dispossession and occupation of Indigenous peoples’ living spaces, a phenomenon that scholars have termed “Green Colonialism.”
This article will guide you through how this illusion of green energy has been imposed, why grassroots communities are resisting it with remarkable courage, and how a revolution in research methodology has finally brought to the fore the voices that have long been silenced.
Collision of Two Worlds: Carbon Reduction vs. the Integrity of “Living Space”
Indonesia currently stands at a critical crossroads in its energy transition. In its effort to meet the targets set by the Paris Agreement and move away from coal and petroleum, geothermal energy has emerged as a leading candidate. At present, 64 sites are prepared for auction, while 14 others remain open for exploration. From the perspective of its proponents, which include government actors, private investors, and international donors, geothermal energy appears to offer an ideal solution. It is framed as low in emissions, capable of strengthening energy security, and beneficial to economic growth, particularly in terms of gross domestic product.
However, Martha identifies a stark polarization in how “green energy” is defined across different groups. On one hand, elite stakeholders adopt an anthropocentric and reductionist lens. Within this framework, any energy source that produces fewer carbon emissions than coal is readily classified as “green.” Consequently, this perspective reinforces a separation between humans and nature, echoing a Cartesian dualism in which the natural world is reduced to an object of extraction and utilization.
In contrast, grassroots communities articulate a fundamentally different understanding rooted in a holistic and decolonial paradigm. For them, genuinely green energy must adhere to a principle of zero tolerance toward the degradation of ecological, cultural, and spiritual life. Nature, land, water, ancestral spirits, and human beings are not separate entities but are intimately interconnected within a unified whole referred to as “Living Space.” Therefore, any damage inflicted upon the land is understood not merely as environmental harm, but as a direct assault on their bodies, identities, and very existence.
The Myth of “Mitigation” and Green-Tinged Colonialism
This divergence in paradigms has, in turn, produced repressive outcomes at the policy level. In practice, geothermal projects are frequently implemented through a top-down, instruction-driven approach. As a result, rural communities often find their land demarcated without prior notice or meaningful access to information. When resistance emerges, state authorities and corporate actors have, at times, responded by deploying military or police forces to suppress dissent. In this way, contemporary practices risk reproducing patterns of dispossession that recall the extractive logics of the colonial era.
Moreover, project proponents consistently invoke the language of “mitigation,” asserting that any adverse impacts can ultimately be managed or offset. However, village communities reject this narrative and instead emphasize the principle of prevention. Their stance is shaped by lived experience and collective memory, particularly by past failures of mitigation efforts. Martha presents troubling evidence to support this position, including incidents of fatal gas leaks that have claimed lives, as well as drilling sites located alarmingly close to residential areas, in some cases just one meter from the walls of homes and adjacent cornfields.
For local communities, therefore, corporate assurances of mitigation do not translate into credible guarantees of safety. Rather than offering protection, such claims are perceived as mechanisms that obscure risk and legitimize ongoing harm.
Beyond Pragmatic Protest: Decolonial Praxis at the Grassroots
Perhaps the most intellectually disruptive finding of this research lies in its interpretation of community-based social movements. Grassroots resistance in geothermal project areas cannot be adequately explained through conventional Western theories of social movements, which often frame protest as the outcome of strategic calculation or pragmatic maneuvering. Such frameworks, while analytically useful in certain contexts, fall short of capturing the deeper motivations that animate these local struggles.
Instead, the resistance led by villagers, involving religious leaders, farmers, and Indigenous communities, is better understood as an expression of decolonial praxis. Their actions do not emerge primarily from instrumental reasoning, but rather from an ontological spirituality and an Indigenous cosmology that situates human life within a broader, interconnected universe. Accordingly, their resistance takes multiple forms, ranging from the performance of ritual practices to the defence of ancestral lands. These are not symbolic gestures alone, but embodied acts of protection in response to what they perceive as the uprooting of their living space.
Furthermore, the effectiveness of this decolonial movement is not merely theoretical. In Flores, for instance, community representatives successfully engaged in advocacy efforts that persuaded the World Bank to withdraw funding from a geothermal project in their region. This outcome underscores the capacity of grassroots actors not only to resist, but also to reshape global development agendas in defense of their living space.
A Methodological Revolution: Challenging Academic Elitism
This article would be incomplete without addressing the methodological innovation advanced by Martha and the research team at CRCS UGM. They adopt a Community-Based Participatory Research approach, commonly referred to as CBPR, in which local communities are not treated as mere objects of academic data extraction. Instead, they are positioned as active producers of knowledge, fundamentally reshaping the research process.
In practice, this approach involved empowering 14 community representatives from 14 affected sites to serve as “community researchers.” By dismantling hierarchical academic power relations, trust was cultivated not within formal institutional settings, but through everyday social interactions such as informal conversations, shared singing, and even smoking together. As a result, these community researchers independently gathered an impressive total of 145 data sources from the field, demonstrating both the depth and credibility of locally grounded inquiry.
Moreover, the research team implemented a stringent data protection protocol. To prevent exploitation and ensure participant safety, academic researchers were strictly prohibited from directly accessing raw data. Instead, they relied solely on secondary data that had already been analyzed and coded by the community researchers themselves. When the findings were later published in international academic journals, the community researchers deliberately chose to remain anonymous to avoid potential reprisals from corporate or state actors.
Nevertheless, this anonymity did not diminish their intellectual agency. As an assertion of epistemic sovereignty, they collectively authored and published a collaborative book in which they documented their own histories and narratives of resistance. In doing so, they not only contributed to academic discourse but also reclaimed authority over the representation of their lived experiences.
Green Energy for Whom?
In the final analysis, Martha’s presentation delivers a profound critique of Indonesia’s national energy transition discourse. The pursuit of global emission reduction targets, when achieved at the expense of the living spaces of local communities, cannot be regarded as a pathway to sustainability. Rather, it risks becoming little more than a rebranding of capitalist exploitation in green terms.
Accordingly, this study calls for a fundamental shift in perspective. It urges a move away from evaluative frameworks rooted in colonial logics and toward energy policies that are both inclusive and grounded in decolonial principles. As long as local epistemologies, Indigenous cosmologies, and the rights of communities to their living spaces continue to be treated as obstacles to investment, the vision of a just energy transition in Indonesia will remain elusive.