Keeping Indonesia’s artisanal fishing sustainable and profitable, with clean energy and smart partnerships

On sweltering afternoons, fishers from the village of Kawa, in Indonesia’s Maluku Islands, cast their handlines from small boats into the warm waters of the Banda Sea to catch yellowfin tuna.

This mode of fishing, which uses a single line and hook, is traditional, sustainable and highly skilled: a mature yellowfin tuna commonly measures three feet long and weighs in at 50 pounds.

In remote island communities like Kawa – and many of the other 13,000 villages dotted along the world’s third longest national coastline – handline fishing is a mainstay of the economy, helping make Indonesia the world’s top producer of tuna. But with lack of reliable electricity, routes to market are limited and incomes are often uncertain.

Two years ago, Kawa became the first community to receive a solar-powered ice maker, capable of producing up to a tonne of ice a day. With enough ice to preserve their catch, fishers’ lives have transformed. They can now sell their fish for a good price, waste has fallen by 35 percent and diesel consumption has plummeted, along with the related air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions.

Inspired by the Kawa project’s success, Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and International Pole and Line Foundation (IPNLF) are now working to improve incomes and strengthen resilience in more coastal communities.

Unlocking these benefits at scale depends on innovative financing and coordinated action. Mechanisms – such as blended finance, guarantees and public private philanthropic partnerships – de-risk investments and pool resources to unlock private capital and accelerate the deployment of clean energy solutions to remote, underserved communities.

Alongside partners including Konservasi Indonesia (KI), the government, private sector such as fish buyer Aneka Sumber Tata Bahari (ASTB) and fishing communities themselves, our Sun to Sea initiative is developing projects with an initial 10 coastal communities across the Maluku Islands. The project also supports community-led marine ecosystem restoration and conservation efforts.

Improving access to cold storage and reducing post-harvest losses mean fishers preserve the quality of their catch and fetch higher prices. . Access to reliable, clean energy – particularly through decentralized solutions – helps communities adapt to the uncertain future created by ecosystem degradation. Unlike slow-to-install and expensive-to-run fossil fuel-based energy systems, solar mini grids, battery storage and distributed renewable systems can be rapidly deployed and tailored to community needs.

The villages of Pasir Putih and Parigi will be the next to receive solar-powered ice.

As the projects evolve, we are gathering insights to create a replicable blueprint for scaling cold storage and solar power across Indonesia’s coastal communities and the wider region.

With sustained government support – and alignment with Indonesia’s national Red and White Fishers’ Villages program – Sun to Sea has the potential to expand its reach to over 100 coastal communities by 2029, bringing reliable, clean energy to people who depend on the health of the surrounding ecosystem for their survival.