Community Engagement Support on Sustainable Geothermal Operation: A Perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility Implementation in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia regulates that each company that is engaged in natural resources is required to accomplish Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. Geothermal enterprising activities are vastly known to be an environmentally friendly campaign, which directly have an inseparable significant relationship surrounding community activity. This is supported by the fact that natural resources enterprising has an exploitative characteristic that should be handled cordially in order to avoid social conflicts and achieve successful projects, both environmentally and economically. Each geothermal area in Indonesia has distinctive socio-economic nature from other geothermal areas; what make this topic interesting to study considering that each of the companies engaged in geothermal in Indonesia has different types of enterprising schemes. This paper aims to provide a review on CSR engagement in geothermal development fields in Indonesia, highlighting specifically several corporate strategies in planning and executing CSR programs in order to embrace social and environmental challenges. Several case studies, both in exploration and exploitation fields are presented to discover the length of the distribution of CSR programs and their relevance to the needs of community. Comparison of annual CSR cost and cost per generation capacity amongst fields is reviewed in order to provide statistical evidence on social handling cost trends. This paper also addresses the need of further regulatory framework as a legal basis to emphasize CSR practice in the Indonesian geothermal industry.