When Communities Lead, Forests Breathe Easier
By Adam Miller, Aurore Maxey, and Josephine Meija Johnson
Across Indonesia, fire has long been part of how people clear land. But today it also carries another meaning: loss. Loss of forests, loss of wildlife, loss of health, loss of history. Fires blacken skies, threaten livelihoods, and push fragile ecosystems closer to collapse. For years, the solutions came from outside: stricter rules, impractical technologies, or one-off projects decided far from the people most affected. What we’ve seen is different. The long-lasting solutions start in the communities that live and breathe with the forest.
Forest fires in West Kalimantan can spread rapidly across landscapes, turning skies dark and threatening both livelihoods and biodiversity.
Community patrol member in Gunung Nyiut removing a snare
Our team stands alongside communities in Gunung Nyiut, Gunung Naning, and Kubu Raya, on Borneo. These are not easy places to protect. In Gunung Naning, cliffs, deep ravines, and dense forest test the stamina of every patrol. In Kubu Raya, fire can race across dry peatlands in minutes, forcing farmers to adapt their methods or risk losing everything. And yet, these are the places where residents continue to show up month after month through community patrols and local governance meetings to safeguard the precious biodiversity and cultural heritage that remain, ensuring that conservation is rooted in daily life and grows from the ground up.
From Flames to Forests: Fire Analysis
When we compared villages supported by Planet Indonesia with similar villages nearby, the results were striking. Looking across 16 years, ten before the intervention began and six after, the pattern was clear:
In control villages, fires continued, and burned areas increased by about +0.28 percentage points of the total area.
In treatment villages, burned areas decreased by −0.19 percentage points of the total area. (See fig. 1)
Fig. 1. Burned area change in control vs. treatment villages.
This may sound small, but the difference is powerful. The difference-in-differences estimate shows the intervention reversed the expected trajectory of fire. Instead of fires continuing to rise as expected, villages in the program saw the opposite pattern; fire use went down.
Looking across different time windows, whether 7,10, or even 20 years, the relationship holds and grows stronger. On average, this represents about a 50% reversal in fire use, with long-term results showing reductions of over 100% compared to control villages (Fig. 2).
Instead of following the regional trend of rising fire risk, these villages broke the cycle. They didn’t just slow the increase; they turned it around.
Looking at 7, 10, and 20 years shows the same consistent trend: fires declined in program villages even as they rose in controls, and the effect became stronger over longer periods.
Figure 2. Difference-in-differences results across 7, 10 and 20 year time windows. The effect is consistent showing on average about 50% reversal in fire use, with longer time frames confirming the relationship only grows stronger.
These results echo broader evidence from across Indonesia. In Riau Province, on the island of Sumatra, researchers found that lasting change came when local ownership, political support, community leadership, and viable livelihoods came together (Purnomo et al., 2024). Our experience points to the same lesson: fire prevention is strongest when governance and livelihoods move side by side.
Methodology: How We Made the Comparison Fair
To make sure we were comparing apples to apples, we used an advanced matching design:
- Each treatment village was paired with three control villages.
- First, controls were matched by land-use type. For example, a community forest was only compared to other community forests.
- Second, controls were matched by pre-intervention vegetation health, ensuring ecological and environmental conditions were similar before the program began.
This two-step design means the differences we observe are not simply due to geography or ecosystem type, but instead capture the effect of the intervention itself.
What Fire Prevention Looks Like in Practice
The data tells part of the story, but the daily work of communities is what drives the difference. These are not isolated efforts, but part of Planet Indonesia’s community-led governance model, where patrols, livelihoods, and governance work hand in hand to reduce fire risk.
In Gunung Nyiut, patrol teams walked over 2,800 kilometers this year, about the distance from southern Sweden to northern Greece, recording fire hotspots before they spread.
Across all areas, communities link fire prevention to livelihoods by investing in sustainable farming methods and small businesses. In Kubu Raya, for example, women’s cooperatives have led the way, creating businesses that support families while reducing fire risk.
Durian seedlings nurtured in community nurseries, planting for future harvests and stronger forest systems.
With support from Planet Indonesia’s community governance program, families began to access small-scale capital and new livelihood opportunities. Many shifted from short-term plots to longer-term crops like durian, petai (stink bean), and jengkol (dogfruit), investments that reduced the need for burning and encouraged more settled, sustainable farming.
Freshly harvested jengkol (dogfruit) from community plots, a crop that brings income while reducing the need to burn land.
In Gunung Nyiut, communities have long practiced shifting cultivation, clearing and burning small plots each year to plant rice. Each household typically opened 0.5–2 hectares annually, moving to new land the following season. Now, governance bodies and alternative crops are helping families break free from this cycle.
Policy changes reinforced this shift. In 2022, the provincial government of West Kalimantan introduced Regional Regulation (Perda) No. 1/2022 on Land Clearing Based on Local Wisdom, which recognizes traditional practices while setting clearer rules to prevent uncontrolled fires. This gave communities space to maintain cultural traditions while also adapting to safer, more sustainable methods.
At the same time, local health workers and clinics shared information about the dangers of haze, building awareness that fires not only damage forests but also harm human health. For many families, this shift altered the perception of fire from a farming tool to a risk to both livelihoods and well-being. Today, communities are adapting. They organize gotong royong (collective work) to ensure land clearing does not spark uncontrolled fires, and they run their own patrols and awareness campaigns to protect surrounding forests and wildlife.
Similar stories can be found elsewhere. On the east coast of Sumatra, villagers reduced peat fires by organizing patrols, restoring peatlands, and building partnerships with government and private actors (Ramdani & Mustalahti, 2023). Like in Kubu Raya, success came not from top-down orders but from everyday adaptation and shared responsibility.
What Research Shows
Most recently, a 2025 study showed the limits of top-down fire governance. Policies alone weren’t enough. Real progress depended on giving village fire brigades, local forest managers, and grassroots institutions the authority and resources to act (Roengtam & Agustiyara, 2025).
Earlier studies have also highlighted the risks associated with powerful actors dominating decision-making, underscoring the importance of centering women and Indigenous groups in fire governance (Ramdani & Mustalahti, 2023).
This reinforces what we’ve seen in West Kalimantan: fire prevention works best when it is rooted in local governance, sustained by livelihoods, and supported through long-term partnerships.
Partner Village situated in Gunung Nyiut Forest
Lessons for the Sector
What does this mean beyond our own sites? Three lessons stand out for the wider conservation sector:
- Secure rights are fire prevention. Land tenure and recognition are not side issues. They are the foundation. Where communities have clear authority to govern forests, they also have the confidence to enforce rules and stop destructive practices like burning.
- Livelihoods are firebreaks. Households with strong livelihoods do not need to rely on fire to clear land. Micro-enterprises, farming, and women-led cooperatives are as critical to fire prevention as drones or patrols. Conservation that ignores livelihoods risks failure in the long run.
- Conservation must move from projects to partnerships. Too often, fire reduction is seen as a project with fixed timelines and donor targets. In practice, change comes through long-term partnerships built on trust. The sector must be ready to stay, listen, and adapt alongside communities instead of moving on when grant cycles end.
Long-term partnerships with organizations like Mandai Nature, Trafigura Foundation, and the Chuck and Ernestina Kreutkamp Foundation make it possible to stay, listen, and adapt alongside communities, moving beyond short project cycles toward real system change.
Conclusion
Community-based fire reduction is not a silver bullet. It is not quick, and it is not easy. But it works. The evidence from our sites in West Kalimantan, backed up by research across Indonesia and Southeast Asia, shows that when communities lead, forests truly breathe easier.
What is at stake is more than hectares saved. It is the future of how conservation is practiced: with communities, not for them. For policymakers, donors, and practitioners, the message is clear. If we want to reduce fire and restore ecosystems, we must invest in rights, livelihoods, and relationships. Everything else flows from there.
References
Purnomo, H., Puspitaloka, D., Okarda, B., Andrianto, A., Qomar, N., Sutikno, S., … Brady, M. A. (2024). Community-based fire prevention and peatland restoration in Indonesia: A participatory action research approach.Environmental Development, 50, 100971. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2024.100971
Ramdani, R., & Mustalahti, I. (2023). Collaborative everyday adaptation to deal with peatland fires: a case study on the east coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Ecology and Society, 28(3), 12. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-14263-280312
Roengtam, S., & Agustiyara, A. (2025). Assessing collaborative management practices for sustainable forest fire governance in Indonesia. Forests, 16(7), 1072. https://doi.org/10.3390/f16071072
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