Unveiling the ‘Green’: Media Coverage on the Aceh Green Vision, Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia has had many trials in recent years associated with legal and illegal threats to forests and their biodiversity, including in Aceh’s forests—Leuser ecosystem, which are home to one of the key forest reserves. The Aceh government has undertaken a policy and programme of actions to combat the deforestation. Nevertheless, no research has explored how information on the challenges to the forests, or the government’s solutions, have been communicated to the public in Aceh. The public will likely need to play a role in realising the protection of Aceh’s forests, and more broadly in addressing environmental and climate concerns in Indonesia. In this chapter, we examine the types of information members of the public received on environmental and climate challenges in Aceh from the key local mass media outlet in Aceh. We specifically explore the nature of ‘efficacy’ information—on what actions can be taken by various societal actors to combat the challenges. Newspaper remains an important platform to address about climate change. This content analysis systematically examines how local newspaper in Indonesia covers important and alarming environmental issues through the Aceh Green Vision (AVG) initiative.