By Josephine Crouch | Development Operations Manager
Building Resilience is often a phrase associated with local communities and the work we do at Planet Indonesia. This concept was truly tested in 2021. With the world facing down two crises, the Covid-19 Pandemic and the worsening effects of Climate Change, our work has become more demanding yet even more crucial. More than ever before our team has had to listen and adapt to the needs of the village partners we serve. While 2021 was not easy, it amplified why effectively engaging locally-led conservation solutions, ensuring rights and services, and supporting democratic village-led governance towards natural resource management is so important. Here is a rundown of the impact you helped us achieve in 2021, and a teaser for how we are going to maximize impact in 2022 and beyond.
We are now supporting 26 Conservation Cooperatives active across 20 villages in West Kalimantan. When we started, in 2017, we were working with just 5 Conservation Cooperatives between two villages.
By providing business mentoring support and community grants, 25 new community-led enterprises were kick-started to strengthen the economic resilience of community livelihoods. Including the expansion of our stingless bee cultivation program. Cultivating stingless bee honey can be a lucrative alternative and sustainable livelihood. The best part? These hives are an environmentally friendly investment as these bees are important pollinators in the Bornean forests and promote the healthy growth of many of the crops used for food among villages.
1089 km on average were patrolled every month by our SMART Patrol monitors. In October, 28 conservation champions from the local community of Tauk, our forest patrol members, and from BKSDA Kalbar-Serimbu Resort, received a certificate of appreciation for their research on and protection of helmeted hornbills, the largest species of hornbill in Asia and is one of the most critically endangered birds in the world.
In a major restoration project, conservationists from the village of Sungai Nibung planted over 18’000 mangrove seedlings to return 4 hectares of the coastal area back to quality habitat that supports wildlife and villages. These efforts are instrumental in mitigating climate change as mangrove forests can sequester more carbon annually than any other ecosystem on Earth. In total, we supported communities to plant 32,440 mangroves trees and 3,709 agroforestry trees.
1 new project site was launched in Karimata. We are excited to announce that we have once again expanded our support to communities across Borneo. In 2021, we began offering our services to two communities in Kalimantan’s largest marine protected area, reaching the 2,500 people living within the Karimata Marine Reserve. We now partner with 20 villages in four sites.
In a year marked by loss, our team helped over 500 people get access to Covid-19 vaccinations and vital healthcare in 2021. In an extraordinary year for our Healthy Family Initiative, we provided training, equipment, and other means of support to 160 health ambassadors active across 14 Conservation Cooperatives.
In 2021, the communities we supported through our Sustainable Agriculture Program have applied various sustainable farming techniques that not only increased their yield but also helped protect the environment around them. We witnessed a 55% increase in income from our sustainable agricultural farmers using their climate-smart techniques.
Fishermen in Kubu Raya also saw benefits in developing sustainable fisheries mechanisms. A 29.7% improvement in yield from periodic fisheries closures was recorded. Each closure typically lasts three months, allowing the mudcrabs they catch to grow and reproduce having both ecological and economic advantages.
306 rifles were surrendered. That is 306 rifles not killing wild species, representing an increasing effort to reduce the amount of hunting in and around the protected areas we work in to protect biodiversity. These rifles were exchanged for farming equipment, clean water dams, internet towers, and more. By trading in rifles and receiving alternative pieces of equipment, community members are able to focus on building more sustainable forms of food procurement.
2022 and beyond:
For eight years we have been dedicated to serving communities and the ecosystems they safeguard through direct programs in Indonesian Borneo, the world’s 3rd largest island. However, Indonesia possesses over 17,000 islands and across the diverse archipelago, rural communities face many challenges. As we look to the future, we asked ourselves, how can we amplify the impact of rights-based approaches in Indonesia that are grounded in local context? How can we do this when the implementation of a single organization is limited by time and resources? And perhaps most importantly, how do we do this in a way that does not fall into the sectoral traps of non-governmental organizations replicating endlessly without respecting and valuing local place-based organizations who are best positioned to serve communities and deliver impact?
We began looking for like-minded NGOs and civil society organizations (CSOs) across Indonesia. We recognize that place-based organizations are best suited to work in the social-political contexts of the regions they serve. By partnering with these similar organizations with similar values, we believe it will enable us to scale out impact in Indonesia, while also engaging in cross-pollinate learning to strengthen the work that partners and ourselves are committed to doing.
We are now partnering with 6 organizations to deliver holistic solutions at scale. See how it works here.
Scaling out the Conservation Cooperative approach will be a dynamic process. Over the next five years, Planet Indonesia will trial partnerships with NGOs and CSOs across several islands in Indonesia. We will reflect, learn, adapt and apply the experiences to inform the next stages of expansion for the benefit of communities and the environment.
While we continue to measure our direct impact and, with your help, continue supporting communities in West Kalimantan, we are excited to disperse seeds, catalyze and amplify impact in this new way.
Thank you from the team at Planet Indonesia
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