Signals of a Restorative Economy

When Noverian Aditya and Nabila Azraini, high-school friends and long-time coffee enthusiasts, decided to venture into the upstream side of the coffee business, they began by learning directly from farmers on the slopes of Mount Gede Pangrango. Noverian, a University of Indonesia business-management graduate, held a hoe for the first time and confronted the reality that farmers underestimated him because he was in his mid-twenties.

'It's really hard for us, as young people, to get farmers to take us seriously,' Noverian said. But he and Nabila refused to give up. From 2016 onward, they built Java Kirana around fair compensation, technical support, transparent trust-based programmes, social impact and environmental care.

Similar ventures — small, sometimes micro, and increasingly co-ordinated — are appearing across Indonesia. In the run-up to the G20 Summit in Bali in 2022, many voluntarily joined the Koalisi Ekonomi Membumi (Earth-Centered Economy Coalition, or KEM). KEM aims to mobilise up to US$200 million to 100 sustainable enterprises across 100 sustainability-committed jurisdictions, backed by the LTKL association of nine districts.

At the policy level, attention has grown through the National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN) 2020–2024, which integrates the SDGs Roadmap for Indonesia. Bappenas's 2022 report The Future is Circular documented operational savings of over IDR 431.9 billion, 14,270 new jobs, 1.4 million tonnes of CO₂e avoided, 4.8 million MWh of energy saved, 252,000 m³ of water saved and 827,000 tonnes of waste avoided.

In parallel, research supported by PT Rimba Makmur Utama in Serambut and Cemeti villages (Central Kalimantan) mapped the Serambut-Setiroek Restorative Economy Industrial Zone — evaluating natural-resource enterprises across coconut, snakehead fish, rattan, sengon and ecotourism. It drew on John Fullerton's regenerative economics, Per Espen Stoknes's productive/natural/social-capital metrics (CAPRO and SOPRO) and Kate Raworth's doughnut.