Basten Gokkon – When Indonesia designated Flores a "geothermal island" in 2017, identifying up to 21 geothermal sites, the policy was framed as a cornerstone of the country's renewable energy transition. Backed by international lenders and enshrined as a "national strategic project," Flores was positioned as a global showcase for clean energy.
Eight years later, key geothermal projects on the island remain suspended, derailed by sustained resistance from Manggarai communities who argue that the transition has come at the expense of justice, safety and cultural survival, found a study published Nov. 13 in the journal Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.
Flores of East Nusa Tenggara province is a rugged and mountainous island where electricity access remains uneven. As of 2025, parts of the island were still not connected to the grid, which relies heavily on imported diesel and coal, both costly and polluting. Citing energy insecurity and the nearly 1 trillion rupiah ($59 million) spent annually on electricity subsidies, the government has argued that geothermal power could meet all of the island's electricity needs.
"Flores has become a uniquely distinctive case in Indonesia's geothermal energy transition. It may even be unprecedented globally, as an entire island has been designated a "geothermal island," with exploration occurring simultaneously across multiple sites," Cypri Jehan Paju Dale, a social anthropologist with Kyoto University and University of Wisconsin-Madison who is a corresponding author of the study, told Mongabay in an interview.
"And it is precisely in Flores that the strongest resistance has emerged," he added.
The conflict has crystallized in Wae Sano and Poco Leok, two culturally distinct but politically connected Manggarai communities. Wae Sano, a village of 285 households located 36 kilometers (22 miles) from Labuan Bajo, lies on the edge of the Sano Nggoang volcanic lake. Three of its six hamlets sit directly atop planned geothermal drilling sites. Despite small-scale ecotourism and cash-crop farming, the village was only connected to the electricity grid in 2020.
Poco Leok, located south of Ruteng, consists of 14 farming hamlets scattered across steep, landslide-prone hills. Residents rely on subsistence crops alongside coffee, candlenut and tuak production. As of mid-2025, the area still lacked mobile phone coverage.
Both communities sit within a broader political economy reshaping Flores. Earlier waves of gold and manganese mining concessions in the 2000s were stalled by church-backed and civil society opposition. More recently, development has shifted toward tourism centered on Labuan Bajo, designated one of Indonesia's "super priority" destinations. Tourism has driven rising land prices, private beach enclosures and a surge in electricity demand growing by about 15% annually, fueling local perceptions that new energy infrastructure primarily serves tourism interests rather than rural communities.
Yet both Wae Sano and Poco Leok have become unlikely focal points of Indonesia's energy transition debate, according to the latest paper.
Researchers emphasize that villagers are not rejecting renewable energy. Instead, they are resisting what they describe as unjust implementation, including health risks from geothermal emissions, threats to farmland, loss of livelihoods and opaque decision-making processes.
"In the Flores case, as in many other places, people are not rejecting the energy transition," Cypri said. "What they reject is when justice is absent and their living space is disrupted."
The projects were heavily backed, with financing from the World Bank via the Indonesian Ministry of Finance and PT Sarana Multi Infrastruktur and from the German Development Bank (KfW) through the state utility company PLN. But on the ground, resistance was met with police and military deployments.
Cypri said the state entered the geothermal push from a position of overwhelming strength, backed by firm regulations, ample financing and even the use of force, yet still failed to implement the projects.
He explained that a central finding of the research was how communities organized their resistance around the idea of ruang hidup, or "living space," a concept that goes far beyond land ownership to include livelihoods, ritual sites, ancestral graves and cosmological relationships. In this framing, ruang hidup is understood as the space that sustains life itself economically, culturally and spiritually rather than as a commodity that can be separated from the people who depend on it.
By translating Manggarai concepts such as golo lonto (a place of living and a concept of home) into Indonesian and then into English, villagers were able to confront national authorities and international banks using language they could not ignore.
This strategy proved decisive, the paper noted. The World Bank withdrew from funding exploratory drilling in Wae Sano in December 2023, citing free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) failures. In November 2024, KfW similarly acknowledged that FPIC standards had "not been respected sufficiently," recommending a project suspension.
"By demonstrating that living space is rooted in adat [customary law] concepts, they were able to show the World Bank and the German Development Bank that they are indeed an Indigenous community, because they continue to hold an adat-based cosmological understanding of space," Cypri said. "As a result, the World Bank was left with little room to maneuver."
Still, their resistance came at a cost, the authors wrote. Villagers reported at least 27 confrontations with geothermal teams and security forces. On Oct. 2, 2024, residents attempting to block road construction at a drilling site were attacked; four villagers and a journalist were beaten and detained, triggering a national press freedom campaign.
Although KfW recommended rebuilding trust and drafting an Indigenous Peoples Plan, opponents argue that FPIC itself is insufficient, given deep power imbalances. As of mid-2025, neither project has been canceled, and authorities have provided few updates.
The researchers noted that geothermal in Flores reflected a broader pattern of green extractivism, where profits were privatized and risks externalized.
Across Indonesia and beyond, geothermal development has repeatedly clashed with local claims to FPIC and community rights. In Central Java, villagers near the PLTP Baturraden and Gunung Slamet plants reported that exploratory clearing and soil contamination harmed rivers and livelihoods, as environmental advocates highlighted concerns over inadequate consent processes and ecological impacts in those regions. Communities near a North Sumatra geothermal plant financed by the Asian Development Bank have also struggled with excessive noise from infrastructure, while planned exploration in West Sumatra's Mt. Talang forest area prompted protests over threats to forest ecosystems and flood risk, often met with intimidation and violence by security forces.
These disputes reflect a broader pattern in Asia where renewable energy projects, including wind farms and geothermal plants, have been documented alongside land-grabbing, militarization and denial of meaningful FPIC for Indigenous and local communities, prompting rights groups to warn that "green" development too often proceeds at the expense of people's land and autonomy.
"I see a recurring pattern in our development model, one that is not new, but continually repeated. Whether projects are extractive or branded as "green" or "sustainable," they tend to rely on what are effectively sacrifice zones," Cypri said.
"In the name of economic growth, clean energy or ecotourism, certain places and certain people are expected to bear the costs so that development can move forward."
For now, geothermal operations in Wae Sano and Poco Leok remain paused, not resolved. Whether Indonesia's energy transition can move forward without repeating old injustices, researchers say, remains an open question.
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Citation
Yeh, E. T., Dale, C. J. P., Afioma, G., & Frydenlund, S. (2025). Living space and the struggle against geothermal energy projects in Flores, Indonesia. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. doi:10.1177/25148486251394605