Envisioning a Low-Carbon Future with Jejakin and Microsoft

The year 2022 marked the sixth warmest year in history. Extreme weather has led to droughts, wildfires, famines, floods, and heatwaves with alarming frequency. The tangible effects of climate change will also continue to negatively impact the ecosystem and communities worldwide. To address this situation, collaborations between government and businesses in creating a greener future is of the essence, with the private sector playing an increasingly important role in transitioning the pledge into progress. Likewise in Indonesia, where collaboration to meet the Net Zero Emissions 2060 target is so critical.

According to the United Nations Climate Change, institutions need a coordinated approach to ensure the success of the sustainability goals that have been set, one of which is an effective carbon management strategy. This is what inspired Jejakin, the winner of ‘Microsoft’s Partner of The Year for Social Impact in 2020’ and the ‘2021 Indonesian Presidential Award for Innovation in Social Impact’, to present a carbon offset solution for various institutions. Jejakin offers three main solutions on its platform:

• CarbonIQ – a carbon accounting tool that helps organizations understand their carbon emissions and product impacts.
• CarbonAtlas – a monitoring, reporting, and verification platform that helps organizations increase efficiency and monitor the growth of their sustainability programs.
• CarbonSpace – a carbon offset marketplace that allows organizations to finance climate action projects, such as reforestation, to offset unavoidable emissions.

“Powered by Microsoft Azure’s cloud platform technology, we are able to create a robust data collection, analysis, and carbon offseting platform for our partners and customers; allowing them to utilize Jejakin’s platform according to their own carbon offsetting needs and goals. We understand that every organization and institution have different sustainability goals and targets. For that reason, we provide various solutions that can be personalized according to their needs,” remarked Arfan Arlanda, CEO & Founder Jejakin.

For businesses, sustainability is not just about being responsible to the environment, but also about creating long-term value. In Southeast Asia alone, the green economy could provide up to US$1 Billion in annual economic opportunities by 2030. Jejakin sees this as a potential for more organizations to enhance their sustainability efforts.

Cross-industry Collaboration

After being founded in 2018, Jejakin has teamed up with at least 20 leading institutions, 30 non-profit organizations, landowners, and government partners, with more than 10 thousand caretakers in the fields. Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy, the Islands of Aru, Gojek, Bank Aladin Syariah, MRT Jakarta, and One Tree Planted are some of the institutions that have partnered with Jejakin in elevating their sustainability efforts.

One recent collaboration is Jejakin’s partnership with Telkomsel, which through its CSR action ‘Telkomsel Jaga Bumi’ (Telkomsel Protects the Earth), has launched carbon offset program. Through this program, Telkomsel customers can exchange their Telkomsel Poin, which is equivalent to one tree, in a contribution that offsets their carbon footprint arising from their daily activities. Not only that, Telkomsel customers can also calculate their average carbon footprint per day using Jejakin’s calculator, which has been integrated into the telkomsel.com website and the Carbon Offset banner on the main menu of the MyTelkomsel application. This makes it easier for customers to determine the amount of contribution they want to make.

“While helping organizations and consumers offset their carbon footprint, we are also working to maintain the economic viability of our local partners, farmers, and communities. We hope this balance can create an ecosystem that benefits both nature and humans, as well as realizing our vision of creating a circular economy,” continued Arfan.

Technological Support for a Low-Carbon Future

Apart from the collaborations, tackling climate change also requires technical innovation. It is Microsoft Azure, a cloud technology from Microsoft that supports the stability of Jejakin’s platform. Azure enables Jejakin to receive data from multiple collection points, such as mobile phones, drones, IoT sensors, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), and satellites. Not only that, Azure also helps Jejakin to precisely analyze the ecological information of an organization’s partners or customers; enabling organizations to monitor their carbon emissions and other environmental factors accurately and in real time.

“What’s also important is, Azure also allows us to share information about carbon absorption with forest managers and government regulators, enabling everyone to work as a team in supporting a circular economy in Indonesia. With an ever-increasing number of stakeholders such as businesses, consumers, farmers and NGOs, this circular economy ecosystem will get stronger and enhance the positive impact that we produce together,” added Arfan.

To date, Jejakin has monitored around 60,000 hectares of land, planted more than 1.7 million trees with an extra 10 million trees being queued for planting, and has absorbed almost 14.300 tonnes of carbon emission. In the future, alongside more partners from across industries, Jejakin will continue to support every individual and organization to actively participate in creating a more balanced carbon footprint future. One effort to empower Indonesia.

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*The original publication of this content occurred on Microsoft's blog page.

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