As international politicians, economists, and conservationists discuss and debate using forest-based carbon trading to address the world’s climate change crisis, Rare is working with its local partners to develop a model for what this might actually look like on the ground in forest-rich countries like Indonesia.  It is local communities, after all, whose behaviors not only contribute to both the threat and potential solution to deforestation, but which also have the most to lose in the absence of sustainable alternatives to the loss of the very forests they rely on for food, heat, medicine, and products that sustain their livelihoods.

Developing a campaign to protect the forests and the people of Lamandau
Rare has selected the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve, located in the Central Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo, to be one of only a handful of carbon forest pilot projects in the world attempting to involve and benefit local communities.  The initiative seeks to protect roughly 80,000 hectares of mostly lowland peat swamp tropical forest in and around the Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve. 

Nine of Borneo’s thirteen species of primates are found in the reserve and surrounding buffer zone – an area made particularly famous within conservation circles for the 100 ex-captive orangutans that were introduced in and around the reserve and now roam free. Slash and burn agriculture, oil palm development and illegal logging threaten to irreversibly destroy these forests and their abundance of biodiversity, including the threatened orangutan. 

As part of this pilot in Lamandau, Rare has launched one of its signature Pride conservation campaigns to establish and build local support for a community-based compensation model that offers financial incentives to rural and impoverished communities in return for their demonstrated commitment to protecting specific tracts of forest.  While there are a myriad of complex details to be worked through concerning valuation of the forests, land ownership, monitoring and enforcement, and potential corruption at key stages during the flow of funds from the carbon market to local communities. Rare is partnering with the Clinton Foundation Forestry Initiative, the Indonesian government, World Wildlife Fund, local and national experts, and many local partners, such as Yaysan Orangutan in Lamandau, to address these core issues.

However, by successfully demonstrating a model for protecting both the forests and the economic livelihoods of communities in and around the Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve, Rare hopes to create one potentially replicable solution for use worldwide.

To learn more about Rare’s Lamandau Pride campaign and carbon-offset pilot please contact Nigel Sizer, Rare Vice President of Asia Pacific Programs at nsizer@rareconservation.org

Visit Lamandau with the help of renowned photographer Jason Houston and Pulitzer Prize nominated writer William deBuys, who recently travelled to Lamandau to document the beginnings of a Pride campaign to protect both its forests, species, and people.

To learn more about two of over 20 Pride campaigns around the world focused on protecting forests, please visit:

>>Mount Sumbing, Central Java, Indonesia

>>Grand Forest Park, Java

For a media-friendly fact sheet about global deforestation and climate change, and what can be done about it, please visit:

>>Rare: Global Warming Facts

To learn more about Rare’s success around preventing deforestation through local solutions and its proposed strategy for linking local communities to the global carbon market, please contact Fern Marcya Edison at fern@erichopr.com.