Country Comments

Indonesia is a vast equatorial nation spanning 17,500 islands. It has more than 1 1/2 times as many citizens than can be sustained indefinitely with available renewable resources and has been adding an average of three million more citizens a year from 2015.

Using measures from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list, a study published in the Journal of Nature calculated that Indonesia has the worst record, accounting for 21% of global biodiversity loss.

Johns Hopkins reported that Indonesia was known as a success in family planning circles until the use of modern contraception stagnated in the country in the late 1990s. Currently, modern contraception use is significantly lower in Indonesia than in many other Asian countries. Family planning decisions, once made at the national government level, have been decentralized and the power over policies and resources now rests in 535 district governments across the country.

According to UNICEF, 92.8 percent of girls and 92.7 percent of boys are enrolled in primary school. Also, 62.4 percent of girls and 60.9 percent of boys are enrolled in secondary school. In Indonesia, girls are more likely than boys to drop out of school. According to UNICEF, for every 10 children that drop out of school at the secondary level, seven are girls.