Indigenous Indonesian communities invite foreign tourists to their ancestral rainforest lands to slow the advance of deforestation
Indonesian indigenous communities launched a project last Friday to encourage foreign tourism in ancestral forests to slow the advance of logging operations and palm oil plantations, according to a Reuters report.
The project is mainly the brainchild of the GreenIndonesia non-governmental organisation, working with six Indonesian indigenous groups. It has been endorsed by the federal government in Jakarta.
The report quoted Chandra Kirana, head of GreenIndonesia as saying that the plan would ease poverty, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and diversify from traditional forest-based incomes such as weaving.
“We're trying to draw tourists to areas of Indonesia where communities are working to preserve their land and ... show how they are helping to prevent forests from being lost," Kirana told Reuters at a tourism exhibition in Oslo, Norway.
The report also quoted Raymundus Remang, head of the Sui Utuk community in West Kalimantan (Borneo), as saying that the 250 residents of his village, who have preserved 9,000 hectares (22,000 acres) of forest from illegal logging and palm oil expansion, would welcome more visitors.
"Everyone in the village has the same feeling of having to protect the forest because it comes from our ancestors," he told Reuters via an interpreter.
Kirana said she hoped the initiative would draw hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tourists in a first year. She added the communities would seek ways to limit the extra stresses on fragile ecosystems from more visitors.
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