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Future global economic stability is under significant threat from environmental risks. Rural peat areas are particularly susceptible due to their elevated levels of hazard, vulnerability, and limited capacity. Acknowledging these risks is pivotal for fostering a low-carbon development trajectory. This study analyzes the environmental risk in rural peat areas within Riau Province. The PROMETHEE method, incorporating Shannon Entropy weighting for data analysis, was employed. The findings reveal that four regencies are exhibiting favorable environmental risk conditions and five regencies facing adverse conditions. The criteria influencing the environmental risk of rural peat in Riau Province showcase various positive and negative contributions across each regency. The sensitivity analysis underscores the resilience of forest fires and the social forest program in three regencies. Recognizing environmental risk can serve as a foundation for decision-makers to formulate sustainable development policies.

The ADB takes more than five years to disburse the agreed-upon loan funds after the borrower signs the loan agreements, because of the conditionalities attached to such loans, compared with it only taking one day for commercial banks to release any agreed loans. During this five-year period, the funds stay in the bank and gain compounded interest, disfavoring Indonesia. Development studies have mostly overlooked these gains and their impacts. Knowing that ADB loans cause about 3% of Indonesia’s unemployment, we reviewed the delay’s impacts during a project’s implementation on unemployment involving 325 ADB loan projects, valued at over $33 billion, from 1969 to 2017. We used a non-econometric methodology by adopting the management principles of the project and portfolio. The results show that the ADB’s loans at 1% GDP initially helped Indonesia reduce its unemployment by 30%. However, because of the ADB’s standard implementation of five years, along with an extra two-year delay (seven years in total) we observed shorter unemployment reductions by half, but then reversed, increased and tripled joblessness. This is also causing Indonesia to suffer capital losses of $0.6 to $12 per $1 of loan money, which is equivalent to 4.98% of its GDP because of the delays in the disbursement of the funds. ADB loans have severe negative effects, with over 200% volatility because of the delays. Fixing this is simple but requires a paradigm shift.