Welcome Monument Protest Delivers Important Climate Message to Women

Six Greenpeace activists, two of them women, climbed the Welcome Monument to highlight the climate crisis. Their action carried an important message: women need to become more aware that climate change is no longer a distant issue.

There are many places to deliver a message. They chose the top of the Welcome Monument at the HI Roundabout in Jakarta on Tuesday (20 October 2026).

From the top of one of Jakarta’s iconic landmarks, they unfurled banners bearing messages about the climate crisis: “Address the Climate Crisis, Lower the Cost of Living.” Another message questioned the government’s efforts to tackle the crisis and called for criticism not to be silenced.

The action is open to debate. Climbing a monument is not without risk. Safety, public order and the site’s status as part of the cultural heritage all need to be considered.

But regardless of how the message was delivered, one point deserves attention: awareness of climate change needs to grow stronger, including among women.

Climate change is no longer merely an impact that we feel. It has become one of the factors determining how food is supplied, energy is produced and water is accessed. In the food-energy-water nexus, climate change sits at the centre of all three—and is therefore closely connected to our lives.

Consider the situation in parts of Kalimantan. Forest and land fires have once again brought smoke and worsened air quality. The Ministry of Health has recorded hundreds of thousands of acute respiratory infection cases in affected areas, with South Kalimantan among the provinces reporting high numbers.

Forest and land fires cannot be attributed solely to climate change. There are many contributing factors, including human activity and land conditions. However, rising temperatures and longer dry periods can create conditions in which land catches fire more easily and fires are harder to control.

This is how climate change becomes tangible: it is no longer just a figure for global temperature rises, but a factor that helps determine food, energy and water availability, health and livelihoods.

In the food-energy-water nexus, climate change lies at the intersection of food, energy and water issues. As the climate changes, the resilience of all three is affected, and the consequences feed back into everyday life.

What is needed, therefore, is not simply familiarity with the term climate change, but an understanding of it as a real risk—and of how to respond.

That is why climate awareness matters, including for women.

University of Indonesia expert in communications, gender and media Professor Donna Asteria, in her work on gender-responsive environmental communication, emphasises the importance of seeing women not only as a group vulnerable to environmental impacts, but also as communicators and agents of social change for environmental sustainability.

This perspective offers a more complete picture. Women may experience environmental impacts differently, while also bringing experience, knowledge and capacity to efforts to address environmental challenges.

Knowledge about climate change can therefore equip women to make decisions, both in their daily lives and in the wider community.

This involves two approaches: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation concerns efforts to reduce the causes of climate change, while adaptation is about the ability to cope with impacts that have occurred or are expected to occur.

Both require an understanding of risk.

In research published in 2024, Chatterjee, Thongprasert and Some explain that climate change communication can help build knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and other factors that shape how communities respond to climate change. Understanding risk is essential so that people can respond through mitigation and adaptation.

Awareness, then, is not an end in itself. It is the starting point for recognising change and deciding how to respond.

This is also reflected in research by Puji Lestari and colleagues in 2026 on women’s leadership in responding to the impacts of climate change in Central Java. The study found women involved in mangrove conservation, strengthening household economies, the Climate Village Programme (ProKlim), microenterprises and community organising.

These examples show how knowledge and awareness can develop into meaningful involvement in addressing environmental change.

Returning to the Welcome Monument: the six Greenpeace activists’ action may prompt debate about how to express an opinion. But the message about the climate crisis remains relevant and worth considering—particularly while people elsewhere are dealing with smoke from forest and land fires and their effects.

We may not always be able to see climate change directly. No single event can stand alone as conclusive proof of climate change. But shifts in temperature and rainfall patterns, drought, and rising risks of various extreme events are part of changing climatic conditions that need to be understood.

That understanding matters so people do not respond only after impacts have occurred—including women.

This is not because women should bear the greatest responsibility for tackling climate change, but because they have the right and need to understand environmental changes that affect their lives.

Climate change needs to be recognised before its impacts draw closer. Once smoke fills the air, floods enter homes or drought disrupts livelihoods, the time and scope for preparation become far more limited.

The message from atop the Welcome Monument should not end with the act of climbing it. The more important message is that climate change has become part of everyday life.

And the better women understand these changes, the better equipped they will be to identify risks, make decisions and adapt to changes in their surroundings.