Yogyakarta, October 27, 2025—The Academic Innovation unit of Fisipol UGM has initiated a new course titled “Forest Carbon Literacy 2025” on the FOCUS platform. The launching ceremony for the new course invited three speakers, as well as a module writer from the Forest Carbon Literacy 2025 course, that is Wahyu Yun Santoso (Lecturer at Fakultas of Law UGM), Budi Mulyana (Lecturer at Faculty of Forestry UGM), and Sarah Wibisono (Sustainability Consultant).
This year, the course is created with the intent to focus on the management of forest on the international level, emphasizing through cross-border comparison in understanding the best practices, as well as failures management of forests in other areas. In the making of this course, Fisipol UGM, through the Academic Innovation Unit, collaborated with UGM’s Faculty of Forestry, Faculty of Law, Chakra Giri Energi Indonesia, and Oxfam.
Looking through the perspective of governance, the course talks about forest carbon management. This course introduces us to the concept of multi-level governance, that is a system of coordination that involves all sectors, starting from global, national governments, local governments, NGO’s, private companies, communities, as well as the indigenous people. The relations of multi-level governance can appear vertical, horizontal, as well as participative. “Indigenous communities’ roles as executioners of the forest carbon project need to also get the benefits economically from this project,” Sarah mentioned.
Using a legal perspective, this course looks at the aspect of legal frameworks regarding climate change and strategic issues in global politics. The legal context offers at least two phases, that is the signing and the ratification phase. For something to be brought and diffused into national law, there needs to be the process of ratification in order to avoid the dualism between national and international law.
“I feel like it is needed to also highlight the legal aspect because the project itself cannot be separated from relevant legal bodies of governance, especially when we are talking about the climate regime,” Wahyu explained.
Moreover, this course also talks about the contextualization of practices, challenges, as well as opportunities of carbon trading. In a certain part, the course discusses the framework of MRV (Measuring, Reporting and Verification) as a means to report the result of carbon emissions successfully suppressed. This method of carbon calculation still needs to consider characteristics of each tree so that there is no universal method used for every type. What needs to be highlighted in the MRV framework is the biomass index, remembering that trees also have dry and wet mass. “What we need to find is the C, not the H, so the H₂O needs to be released first from the tree,” Budi pointed out.
In full, the course can be accessed by the public through the FOCUS UGM platform, which is equipped with the materials related and also provides certificates for users who have signed in the course. The class can be accessed through this link.