Regenerating Rainforests

With your support, ASRI is demonstrating how investments in community-designed solutions stop deforestation and improve community thriving. 

As ASRI approaches its 20th anniversary, communities around Gunung Palung National Park continue to lead vital planetary health initiatives, which improve their lives and protect the rainforest. 

The clinic established by ASRI in 2007 is evolving. Happily, medical needs have declined due to improved and sustained health outcomes and the emergence of stronger national health services in the last decade. At the same time, demand for conservation programs is expanding. And, the clinic is now a hub for training experts, students, and organizations on planetary health!

A strategic partnership with Indonesia’s Ministry of Health, as well as other key stakeholders like the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, the Gunung Palung National Park Office, and local education offices have strengthened ASRI’s impact, integrating expertise, funding, and innovation to improve health, drive reforestation, and create sustainable livelihoods. Together, these efforts buffer communities and ecosystems against shocks and stressors, including climate shocks, and boost resilience.

Thank you for your continued support of the community-led initiatives in Indonesia, which are made possible because of you. Your belief in our shared mission enables ASRI to equip rainforest communities to implement solutions designed directly by them, for them, as their needs evolve over time. For this, we remain grateful.

Under Health In Harmony’s planetary health model, when you support regenerating rainforests in Indonesia, you invest not only in nature and biodiversity but in community thriving as defined by communities themselves.

One of such community-designed climate solutions is the Chainsaw Buyback program under which former or active loggers are invited to sell their chainsaws in exchange of alternative livelihoods training: a micro-enterprise program that encompasses sustainable startup business loans. It was launched by Health In Harmony and its affiliate ASRI, and has grown into a program with over 300 participants, 93 of whom joined in 2024.

This Chainsaw Buyback program has been driving meaningful change by helping communities transition to sustainable income sources while reducing reliance on forest resources. It both curbs illegal logging and provides people with an alternative that is good for the people and the planet. Now, the program is evolving in exciting new ways. With support from ASRI, community members in Sudakana, Indonesia are turning their disused chainsaw engines, guide bars and chains into tools for organic farming. Collaborating with local workshops, community members are turning the engines from chainsaws into cultivators and chaff-cutting machines by adding in parts such as wheels and blades. 

In the photos below, you can see how chainsaw parts are upcycled into machetes and other harvesting equipment, proving that with the right mindset, even the most unexpected materials can support a positive impact for the planet. 

Thank you for believing in our mission of advancing planetary health by listening to rainforest communities. Together, we can protect the Earth’s precious rainforests: by investing in what their stewards need the most.   

Links:

• Read more about HIH's work in Indonesia