We help uNLOCK THE POTENTIAL OF ECOSYSTEMS TO SUPPORT EQUITABLE
SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL TRAJECTORIES FOR RURAL COMMUNITIES
Our holistic rights-based approach employs local solutions and values, enhancing the potential of Indigenous and rural communities to restore and maintain the balance between humans and nature.
The approach is collaborative and led by the community, creating the enabling conditions for the community to head sound natural resource management.
MISSION:
Conserve at-risk ecosystems through integrated community-led governance to address socio-economic challenges and drive conservation.
VISION:
A just socio-ecological system for humans and nature.
The Challenge
Rich in culture and wildlife, Indonesia is one of the world’s biodiverse hotspots and hosts 40 million people living in rural areas who rely on biodiversity for their subsistence and livelihood needs. But these land and seascapes, and the people who live within them, are now at threat from the high levels of cultural and environmental degradation, driven by socio-economic inequalities.
A lack of access to basic services in times of need driven by external factors causes communities to turn to the exploitation of natural resources. Engagement in conservation becomes almost impossible when communities are facing the struggles of rural poverty and marginalization. Trapping them in a cycle that reduces their resilience and adaptive capacity to the impacts of climate change, ecosystem breakdown and economic shocks.
Our Solution
We believe conservation is the most effective when local resource-users are defining the rules of engagement and stewardship. We support communities to build a vision for a better future and provide the tools, services, and technical support that allow communities make this vision a reality.
We work to address underlying drivers of biodiversity and cultural loss while simultaneously removing barriers to catalyze cross-sector environmental, social, and economic outcomes.
How we work
It is imperative that we shift conservation from a symptomatic reactive model towards an inclusive proactive, systems-based approach that positions communities behind the wheel in determining their social-ecological tomorrow. This is why Planet Indonesia’s four-pillar Core Model was built and is driven by listening, responding, and adapting to the opportunities and challenges faced by Indigenous and local communities in Indonesia, living in tandem with the world's most biologically diverse but at-risk ecosystems.
We work with communities, through the creation of community-led governance institutions as a mechanism for inclusive problem-solving and decision-making across economic, social, and ecological issues, supporting them to build a vision for a better future. Our team then provides the tools, services, and technical support needed to break down the barriers - ranging from a lack of access to healthcare and limited livelihood opportunities to inequitable governance and capacity issues around resource management - to community engagement in conservation, ecosystem stewardship, and democratic village-led governance towards natural resource management.
Scaling Up Impact
Our Scaling and Partnership Support Strategy focuses on supporting local civil society organizations that are deeply embedded in their communities. These organizations not only understand the unique challenges and opportunities of their local places and people but also possess the critical relationships needed to drive change.
We do not limit our work to one ecosystem type, land-use issue, or social group. Rather, we focus on adapting our approach to create opportunities and address the needs within the landscapes of the communities that partner with us. We remain agile and adaptive, addressing the underlying drivers and barriers that create an imbalance between people and nature, ensuring the communities that live within these land and seascapes are the ones that determine their own social-ecological tomorrow.
We catalyze impact across the Indonesian archipelago by:
Our Story
2014
We start by listening.
Our co-founders come together to listen and compile stories about the challenges Indigenous communities faced in West Kalimantan. We first begin working with 17 households and a small protected forest of 7,500 hectares.
2016
Supporting gender equality.
Recognizing the differences in challenges and engagement of women in conservation initiatives, we build services tailored to women and girls, providing start-up capital, financial literacy training, and targeted livelihood support to empower women to lead their own businesses and reduce rural inequality.
2017
From forests to the coast.
We begin work with communities in Kubu Raya, focusing on developing sustainable fisheries practices and reforesting degraded mangrove forests in coastal areas, vital resources for local fishermen, and crucial areas for mitigating climate change.
2018
Collecting the hard evidence.
We release our first impact report, compiling data from our community change survey, providing the preliminary findings that our model acts as a mechanism to improve human well-being and protect forests.
2019
We build the first ever research field center in the Gunung Nuit Nature Reserve.
Recording a 77% reduction in forest loss, and significant drops in hunting and land violations.
Now we are working with 3000 households and 15,000 individuals.
2020
Building resilience during a crisis. We distribute over $100,000 USD to families in need of economic relief in response to COVID-19. Our 2020 data reveals a 39% drop in exploitative activity across village partner sites. Despite the prediction that COVID-19 would illicit higher rates of natural resource exploitation across the world, our conservation model continues to deliver results.
2021
Taking to the water.
We begin offering our services to two communities in Kalimantan’s largest marine protected area, reaching the 2,500 people living within the Karimata Marine Reserve.
2022
Driving change at scale.
We start working with national, like-minded NGO and CSO partners to apply our approach, develop resources, and through an exchange of learning build solutions to challenges faced.
Planet Indonesia is an international non-profit organization that conserves at-risk ecosystems through community-level partnerships. We are governed by two legal entities working in partnership.
Yayasan Planet Indonesia (YPI) was legally established in 2015 (AHU-0000127.AH.01.04.THN 2015) as the implementing arm of the Planet Indonesia approach and is domiciled in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Planet Indonesia International (PI-USA) was founded in 2014 (501c3 registered non-profit) and is a support agency focused on fundraising, outreach, and technical assistance and is based in the United States.
Our mission, vision, values and principles are shared between the two entities.
Looking for our wildlife work?
Yayasan Planet Indonesia is the parent organization for Wak Gatak, which is the ex-situ branch of our organization. The goal of our ex-situ branch is to ‘reduce the impacts of wildlife trafficking on biodiversity and the biocultural dimensions of society’. Together both Planet Indonesia’s community-led in-situ programs and Wak Gatak’s ex-situ programs are aimed at holistically addressing and reversing the negative impacts of biodiversity loss on West Kalimantan’s forests.
