Indonesia has introduced a Social Forestry policy to address the land use permit imbalance between large plantations and local communities. The policy encourages sustainable forest use and development of alternative business models for the benefit of local communities, and discourages commercial logging and planting of smallholder oil palm.

Our Social Forestry Support Program supports this ambition by providing tools to monitor and assess ownership permits and mapping priority landscapes suitable for community management. It has supported the legalization of community owned land to account for 1 million hectares in West Kalimantan and Aceh. In total, communities in 25 villages have received forestry permits. Out of the target of 12.7 million hectares, around 5.17 million hectares have so far been placed under community management, involving about 1,139,354 households and 7,814 permits.

Since 2017, we have supported the legalization of the land owned by the local communities in the 4 priority landscapes that account for 1 million ha in West Kalimantan and Aceh through Social Forestry program. In total, communities in 25 villages have been supported in this way and received the appropriate permits. In the managing the forest surrounding the villages, we have promoted the concept of Co-Management Agreement (CMA) to facilitate support from the corporate sector.

Our Social Forest Support Program includes:

• Number of hectares of areas with Social Forestry Permit (village-administered forest and forest partnership)

• Indicative area of Social Forestry.

• Four (4) priority landscapes intervention and fifteen (15) new intervention locations (determined based on their dependence on oil palm agriculture, ecological values and social components).

• Remediation and compensation monitoring.

• Assessment of high carbon stock and biodiversity value.

Please check one of our activity in Sebubus Village Forest, West Kalimantan, Indonesia here https://rb.gy/uxhwqc