JAKARTA — NGOs working with Indonesian smallholder farmers have developed a set of guidelines aimed at helping oil palm farmers prove that their products are deforestation-free, allowing them a foothold in markets increasingly demanding sustainably produced goods. Launched on June 24, the deforestation-free smallholder toolkit, the first of its kind, is a participatory step-by-step guide for smallholder groups to protect their forests and cultivate their lands in a sustainable manner. To implement the toolkit, smallholders will have to go through six steps, beginning with preparation and information dissemination, in which community members will receive explanations about the toolkit and how it benefits smallholder groups and villages. After that, the communities will map all the forests and land cover on their village lands. They’ll then identify which forest areas have high carbon stock (HCS) and high conservation value (HCV), such as ancestral lands and those rich in biodiversity. This step is crucial to distinguish forest areas that should be protected, from degraded areas that can be developed. At the end of the process, the communities will come up with integrated conservation and land-use plans, or ICLUP. These plans include details on how village and community lands will be used and managed. For instance, a village might decide that all HCS and HCV areas should be protected, while prescribing punishments for anyone who violates customary forest practices. It might also decide to practice ecological farming and agroforestry to sustain local livelihoods while protecting HCS and HCV forests at the same time. At…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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