The trees have been felled mostly for timber and paper production, and to make space for monoculture plantations. This destruction has disastrous effects for the people and the wildlife living both within and near to the rainforest, which they depend on for their existence.
An example how we work in the area around Sintang district:
We made contracts with over 1000 collectors from 31 villages in West Kalimantan in Indonesia to buy their illipe nuts.
The total area in these 31 villages is over 200.000 hectares, similar to the size of Luxemburg. By buying the illipe nuts, the forest where the illipe trees are located becomes more valuable, providing the local communities with another reason to keep protecting the forest.
We currently have forest protection agreements in place with 6 villages, who are our main suppliers of illipe nuts, covering a total forest area of over 36.000 hectares.
Our mission is to #StopDeforestation by developing a market for valuable rainforest products that are wild-harvested from the rainforest without damaging it.
We create alternative sources of income from crops such as illipe nuts, kukui nuts, coconuts, arenga sugar, and wild forest beeswax. We increase the economic value of the remaining forest, and give forest communities a sound incentive for continuing to protect it.
Forestwise brings these rainforest products to Forestwise hubs. Here they are processed into high-quality, valuable products for the cosmetics and food industries, thereby creating #RainforestValue.
Monoculture plantations generate an average revenue of around EUR 1500 per hectare per year. We believe this figure can be doubled. In Borneo, money is literally growing on trees for the forest communities.
