Carbon on fire

On 24 December 2023, Sri Mulyani, the Indonesian minister of finance looked optimistic. In her address to the high-level round table on the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) initiated by the COP28 Presidency and the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), she conveyed that Indonesia had successfully contributed 15 per cent of the total Asian VCM. With a carbon offsetting transaction value amounting up to US$163 million for the period 2016 to 2020, and with 464,843 tonnes of CO2 sold at the Indonesian Carbon Exchange, she declared that the carbon market ‘shows a promising future potential.’