With Indonesia’s new government setting an ambitious high-growth agenda, the country stands at a pivotal moment in redefining how land, food systems, natural resources, and the wider economy interact. Long-standing extractive economic structures, combined with population growth and uneven regional development, continue to place pressure on forests, peatlands, and ecologically sensitive landscapes, despite recent progress in reducing deforestation.
Climate-related disasters are also increasing in frequency and intensity, placing acute stress on agriculture, coastal systems, and rural livelihoods. This is critical for the agricultural sector, which contributes 14 percent of GDP and employs 29 percent of the national workforce. At the same time, food production has multifaceted impacts on emissions and competes directly with energy, mining, and infrastructure for land.
These dynamics reveal the increasingly complex interactions across economy, food, climate, and livelihood systems. They highlight the need for a more integrated and systems-based understanding of how these sectors interact and reinforce one another, and how governance, market, and non-market approaches must shift to catalyze sustainable and inclusive development. This is particularly important in Indonesia, where deep socio-cultural diversity and contrasting ecological landscapes create significant variation in how policies unfold on the ground. Approaches that succeed in certain eastern jurisdictions may not work in western regions, which underscores the need for context-specific and systems-oriented solutions.
Under its new flagship initiative, Indonesia’s New Food Economy, WRI Indonesia is building a bottom-up evidence base for alternative food system models that, once adopted in their respective jurisdictions, can catalyze green and inclusive economic growth. These approaches are expected to generate wider benefits across community health, education outcomes, and broader social welfare, while protecting natural capital and sustaining local cultures.
The initiative focuses on two guiding questions: (1) How can the food sector serve as a lever for green and sustainable economic growth across diverse jurisdictions, considering their trade-offs and opportunities? (2) How can polycentric governance arrangements, through the interactions of government, communities, and private actors at multiple levels, work together to achieve these objectives and support coherent policy and institutional transformation? The work will help improve national and local policies and show how the food sector can be a powerful lever for building a more resilient and fair development path for communities across Indonesia.
Job Highlight
The Systems Transformation Policy Lead will advance WRI Indonesia’s systems thinking, science, and policy nexus agenda under the Forest, Land and Water portfolio, with a strong focus on Indonesia’s New Food Economy initiative. The role centres on connecting complex analytical work with practical policy design that reflects Indonesia’s diverse socio-cultural and ecological contexts. A key responsibility is to serve as the bridge between modelers, field teams, technical researchers, and policy stakeholders, ensuring that modelling assumptions, evidence from the ground, and analytical outputs are translated into clear, actionable insights for communities and government institutions. The Policy Lead will synthesize bottom-up field evidence, modelling results, and governance analysis into integrated recommendations that support national and local decision making. This includes identifying leverage points within food, land, and economic systems and shaping policy pathways that strengthen food security, protect natural capital, and contribute to more resilient and fair development outcomes.
The Policy Lead will report to the Senior Lead for Economics Policy and Governance and will work closely with government partners, civil society, academia, and private sector actors. Based in Jakarta with office-flex working arrangement, the role includes periodic travel to provinces across Indonesia to support field validation and multi-stakeholder engagement. In support of WRI’s DEI commitment, you will be responsible for integrating equity and inclusion into your work, your interactions, and your contributions to organizational culture.