Abstract
Gunung Palung National Park in Indonesian Borneo, home to 2,500 Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus ssp. wurmbii), suffers from severe deforestation that is caused by illegal logging. This article aims to analyze the success of an innovative entrepreneurship program in reducing illegal logging in Gunung Palung National Park. This program combines voluntary chainsaw buybacks with capital investment for former loggers to launch a business of their choice. To analyze the success of this entrepreneurship program, we measured two parameters: (1) transitions of former loggers to sustainable alternative livelihoods and (2) reductions in the number of loggers who log actively inside the park. The average monthly income for participating business partners was 2,923,333 rupiah or $209 USD for new partners who had participated for less than one year and 3,357,778 rupiah or $240 for established partners who had participated for more than one year. This income is about the minimum wage for the local area. The failure rate of the program—defined as the partners that returned to logging—was only 6%, or 3 out of 50 partners. Successful forest conservation, however, requires addressing additional factors beyond reducing the access to logging equipment.
Highlights
The most significant cause of global deforestation—defined as the reduction in forest canopy cover to 10% or less—is the conversion of forests to non-forest lands devoted to the production of commodities such as palm oil, meat, gold, soy, crop and pastures (Curtis et al, 2018)
One protected area experiencing deforestation from illegal logging is Gunung Palung National Park (GPNP), which is located at 1o3’ – 1o22’ S, 109o54’ – 110o28’
By instead of listening to input from local communities, we suggest that finding alternative livelihoods is a more permanent solution to halting deforestation in GPNP
Summary
The most significant cause of global deforestation—defined as the reduction in forest canopy cover to 10% or less—is the conversion of forests to non-forest lands devoted to the production of commodities such as palm oil, meat, gold, soy, crop and pastures (Curtis et al, 2018). In contrast to legal deforestation, which is often conducted by companies with legal permissions to harvest a specific commodity product, illegal logging is usually carried out by low-income local community members (Dudley, 2004; Vasco et al, 2017). Both legal and illegal logging activities are harmful and disruptive to forest conservation in that both cause rapid deforestation and forest degradation.
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