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The government is drawing up plans aimed at creating a green economy based on renewable energy, sustainable management of agricultural land and forests, low-carbon transportation and green infrastructure development.

“The green economic program is part of Indonesia’s sustainable development plan, which is pro-growth, pro-jobs and pro-poor,” Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said last week.

Sri Mulyani’s statement followed a national coordinating meeting in Bali that was chaired by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. It was attended by all of the cabinet, all of Indonesia’s provincial governors, the chairmen of provincial legislative councils, the leaders of state-owned enterprises as well as a number of senior government officials.

To support the efforts to achieve a green economy, the cabinet has drawn up a range of programs aimed at encouraging sustainable agriculture, sustainable forestry management, more efficient use of energy, growth in clean technologies and improved waste management.

A lot of research and development and technological innovations would be needed in the creation of a green economy, Sri Mulyani said. To this end, the government aims to strengthen cooperation with research and development institutions and set up a development forum focused on innovation.

The world is slowly moving towards a green economy, said Pahvan Sukdhev, an economist who is a special adviser to the United Nations Environment Program’s Green Economy Initiative.

“What you see is a new economy breaking through what’s breaking down — that heavy, industrialized, over-ambitious, over-productive, over-consumptive model, which is actually going to completely destroy our chances of survival in the future,” he said. “And the green economy doesn’t do all that,” Sukdhev said at the UNEP’s Global Ministerial Environment Forum held in Bali last February.

The International Labor Organization estimates that renewable energy could generate up to 20 million new jobs, if it were to represent 30 percent of the worldwide energy output.

The benefits for Indonesia could be substantial. A study analyzing the impacts of switching to a low-carbon economy has shown that it could improve per capita incomes and help ease the level of unemployment.

The joint study was carried out by Padjadjaran University, the Center for Economic and Development Studies, consultancy Strategic Asia and the Minister of the Environment’s office.

The study found that widespread benefits would be gained by increasing energy efficiency by 25 percent, reducing the use of coal-based fuels by 50%, implementing a $50 per ton tax on carbon production, and reducing the rate of deforestation by 10 percent.

“It would cut 177 million tons of CO2 emissions and increase GDP by 2.7 percent [Rp 133 trillion] per year,” said Arief Anshory Yusuf, a researcher at Padjadjaran University.

The measures would also create 3 million new jobs and reduce the number of people living in poverty by more than 4 million per year, he said.

Sukdhev said switching to a green economies was an event as profound as the industrial revolution but there was a heightened sense of urgency, because of the threat of climate change.