The story of us.

Recently, we celebrated our six-year anniversary of conserving at-risk ecosystems through our village-led partnerships. This is an incredible milestone for our work and our staff who are dedicated to addressing some of the world's greatest social and environmental challenges. 

     Our holistic approach unlocks landscape-level potential for humans and nature through a social-ecological interface. This model truly is a community-led process aimed at restoring balance, and function, creating opportunities for people and nature. Our model was born through listening to the needs of the community and realizing that many environmental initiatives were missing the mark of addressing the underlying drivers of natural resource exploitation and were not adequately facilitating a community-led process. 

     Six years ago, our co-founders came together to listen and compile stories about the challenges Indigenous communities faced in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Our original core team included Novi, an anthropologist, Adam, a conservationist, Deccy, a teacher and educator and Rozzay, a writer and novelist. This initial team was diverse and served as the beginning of the diversity that is reflected today in our holistic approach to conservation. In our offices, there are public health experts, economists, teachers, foresters, and biologists among others.  

     We started with 17 households and a small protected forest of just 7,500 hectares. Today, we are working with over 700,000 hectares of marine and terrestrial habits with thousands of families participating in our many community-led partnerships. Our full-time team is now composed of over 50 individuals. 

However, building a community-centric organization such as this doesn’t go without its challenges. Executive Director Adam Miller says

“Community response from day one has been extremely positive. This can be seen by our exponential program growth and the demand for our programs far exceeding the funding available. However, it has not been without challenges.

I often like to use the analogy of the human immune system. Planet Indonesia’s Conservation Cooperative approach seeks to support community eco-resilience. Just as an immune system protects us from outside threats, and helps our bodies create healthy internal systems, the Planet Indonesia approach supports communities to overcome internal hardships, builds systems for community organizing, and allows communities to have platforms to protect against external threats such as private sector companies, government corruption, or illegal poachers.

As you can imagine, with so many players, an ever growing industrialized world, systemic capitalism, and a global lack of respect for nature… well this isn’t easy. However, we find solutions in collaboration, we are in this for the long-term, and although sometimes it is 2 steps forward and 1 step back, progress is happening.”

Thanks to the interest, collaboration, and dedication of community partners, we are able to serve more people and habitats than ever before. We are excited to continue expanding our programs to new areas and work with new and diverse communities from montane habitats to coral reefs. Indonesia is an absolutely beautiful and stunning place, and the work we are doing to protect it wouldn’t be possible without our system of support through donations, particularly from the Franciscan Sisters of Mary who have been with us from the beginning and have been our most impactful supporters. Other important partners from other NGOs, Academics and Government partners have been instrumental in moving our work forward as collaboration is key to conservation. We wouldn’t be where we are today without our network of partners.