We develop and operate high-integrity projects to address complex climate crisis contributing to the benefit of climate, community, and biodiversity. Our projects provide natural solutions to the climate crisis by:
Reducing emissions and sequestering carbon
Helping biodiversity grow and flourish, and
Empowering local and indigenous communities to thrive and be resilient.
We combine multiple approaches and strategies in our projects, learn from our successes and failures, adapt to any changes, radically listen for inputs and critics, and solve the rooted problems for sustainable impacts.
All for change at scale!
Our Vision: Paradigm-shift Toward Sustainable Development Pathways.
The key message is clear. We need to fight the climate crisis together. The global population is growing, and Indonesia is the 4th largest, with a 3% of annual population growth. Socioeconomic development is inevitable, resulting in a situation where the consumption of natural resources is faster than it can be replenished. A developing country like Indonesia remains largely dependent on exports of natural resources to generate economic dividends. Not to say that exploitation is unnecessary, but a paradigm shift balancing the use of natural resources and socioeconomic development is the key to sustainability.
Our Mission: Conserve tropical forests at local levels on which all life depends
Our philosophy is simple: Small changes for big impacts. It is what we can contribute. We believe every small change matters. So, we identify and implement concrete actions on local levels by working with the highest decision-makers to local users for changes.
We are dedicated to sharing our knowledge and lessons learned as inspiration to other projects around the globe for big impacts.
The Challenges
Forest ecosystems in the province are globally acknowledged as the Heart of Borneo (HoB), biodiversity-rich, home of astonishing and endangered wildlife species. For generations, they have been the culture and livelihood backbone of local and indigenous communities.
But these forest ecosystems are constantly declining, with a baseline rate of deforestation estimated at 69,000 hectares per year, which increases emissions exposure and directly contributes to climate change crisis and biodiversity loss. While forest degradation is estimated at 11,000 hectares per year. In other words, every year, the province loses a stretch of forest equivalent to the size of 98,000 football fields due to deforestation.
It should also be noted that the province is one of the largest CO2 emitters in Indonesia, with baseline of 22.1 mtCO2eq per year from deforestation and 1.2 mtCO2eq per year for degradation. Deforestation has increased the vulnerability of communities to climate disaster risks (fires, floods, prolonged droughts, landslides, rising sea levels, and extreme heat), threatening community water, health, food, as well as livelihood security.
While economic development still relies on exploitation-minded for developing provinces like West Kalimantan and multiple actors from the highest decision-maker level to local users. At local levels, capacity and resources are insufficient to add value, develop robust business models, access finance, access applied technology, and so on, faced directly by local and indigenous communities.
Our Solutions
We conserve tropical forests through sustainable business models balancing conservation and economic development at local levels.
We believe tropical forests will always be at-risk for years to come, driven by social and economic development at local levels. We believe sustainable business models will sustainably remove the risks.
Our business model stands on a balance principle, which means we are not only focusing on generating climate, community, and biodiversity benefits through the role of our projects, but we also address how the benefit is created, delivered, captured, maintained, and preserved.
Our Core Strategy
Governing Natural Resources for Inclusive Development
We collaborate with the highest decision-makers to local users to improve natural resources governance towards inclusive development. We ensure that norms, institutions, structures, and processes are well enforced that determine how power and responsibilities over natural resources are exercised, how decisions are taken, and how citizens – including Indigenous Peoples, local communities, people of all genders, and others – participate in and benefit from the enhanced of natural resources governance. Our strategy focuses on three main pillars of governance: policy, institutional, and regulatory framework; planning and decision-making process; implementation, enforcement, and compliance.
Participatory forest management
We design, we implement, we monitor, and we evaluate each project and activity with local users, ensuring knowledge is shared, lesson learned is well-captured, and growing together for advanced forest management experiences and impacts at scale. Our participatory forest management ensures that local users have the capacity and ability to manage technical aspects, socio-economic aspects, and environmental aspects of forest management.
Prototyping business models with high financial returns
Developing robust business models with good financial returns is challenging and demanding for local users, primarily local and indigenous communities, and us as developers and operators. Our primary approach is improving the way of doing business based on the existing local resources, business models, and supply chains, with applied technology, knowledge intervention, creative marketing, etc.
Working with multiple stakeholders to address complex sustainable forest management challenges
We just can not do it alone! Our goals are ambitious thus, we need support from everyone to help and work together with us to drive change at the local level. With strong collaboration and networking, we believe that change can be achieved.
Bentang Combines
A “never stop learning” team with a track record of developing and operating projects
Our team consists of diverse expertise addressing complex forest management challenges. We are a growing team dedicated to "never stop learning", learn from our successes and failures, adapt to any changes, and radically listening for inputs and critics.
Integrity in monitoring, transparency, and reporting on our portfolio with international standards
We are committed to integrity and transparency in all projects and activities that we are doing. We believe gaps, issues, and problems are part of our projects and activities implementation. We don't want to keep it low for the good of our reputation, avoiding our mind and work transformation.
An understanding of the real problems on the ground
Understanding the root cause of the problems on the ground is the key to our project design and implementation. Our projects seek to address the root cause of the problems and not their symptoms. We discover the root cause of a problem, learn how to fix, compensate, or learn from any underlying issues within the root cause, and then apply what we learn from this analysis to prevent future issues.