The project Inclusive Customary Forest Financing establishes a model where the Village Fund can become a ‘low hanging fruit’ to support social forestry. It’s specific goals are:

• To develop and test a model of strengthening institutions that provide a suitable incentive for market financial schemes while at the same time endorse the earmarking of the Village Fund to support this initiative; and
• To produce and advocate policy recommendations on the Village Fund for Customary Forests to be adopted and replicated by relevant national and local governments, as well as support from non-state key actors.

To achieve the above objectives, the project’s main activities are:

Research on social/customary forest financial schemes to provide strong and robust evidence on how an institution can attract market financial schemes while at the same time attract the support for earmarking the Village Fund for Customary Forest model;

• To utilise the result of the initial baseline survey and desk study to (i) strengthening the customary forest community in building a suitable institution (for example in the form of BUMDES) to attract market financial schemes (like banking system), (ii) facilitate the agreement between community and establish a model of Village Fund for Customary Forest, using participatory approach.
• To communicate and advocate policy recommendations to wrap the findings and lessons learned, and develop a strong policy recommendation directed at policymakers and relevant key actors at the national and local level.
• To publish and to disseminate the findings and policy recommendations – this activity aims to reach a wider audience, which then ensures its impact on the discourse making in public arena.

Achieving the objectives provides a strong evidence and basis to endorse a bigger discussion on financing the social forestry programme.

The vision of Article 33 Indonesia is meant to enforce the people’s sovereignty as stated in article 33 of the Indonesian constitution. Its mission is to ensure equality and public participation in order to democratize the economy. Its goals include producing knowledge in the form of policy research and publications, communicating the research result to policy makers, and developing cooperation with knowledge sector institutions to improve quality of research and research communication.  Article 33 Indonesia focuses on two main issues- the extractive industry and social development. It has a huge experience in working with central government, local government, and communities to support them in policy development, empowering community to access basic services, and establishing networks among strategic stakeholders. 

Its project Inclusive Customary Forest Financing aimed at establishing a model where Village Fund can become a ‘low hanging fruit’ to attract wider financial schemes to support social forestry in the future. It sought to demonstrate that sound institutional development can provide a strong incentive to attract wider market schemes to finance customary forest. Consequently, indigenous people and women among them would be catalysed to preserve the customary forest while getting maximum benefit from it. The project’s goals included developing and testing a model of institution strengthening (for example BUMDES) that incentivises market financial schemes while endorsing the (earmarked) Village Fund to support this initiative, and producing and advocating for policy recommendations on Village Fund for Customary Forest to be adopted and replicated by relevant national and local government with support from non-state key actors. Its activities centred on research on social/customary forest financial schemes, strengthening the institutional model, communicating and advocating policy recommendations, and producing a publication to disseminate the findings and policy recommendations.  

A result of this project was the initiation of several policies (although not yet at the legislative stage) by indigenous communities in Enrekang and in Ende as well as village communities in Bantaeng that have been agreed upon by the district government. These were:  

• The Enrekang District Government Programme on the Implementation of Legal Recognition of Indigenous People in Enrekang District and Customary Forest Management 
• The Draft of Ende Regent’s Regulation (Perbup) on the Recognition of Indigenous Community and the Draft of Ende Regent’s Decision (SK Bupati) on the Territory of Indigenous Area and Customary Forest 

• Budget Allocation for Social Forestry (Village Forest) within the next year Regional Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBD) 

Article 33 also has also established and launched Waroen33 in December 2020 as a marketplace for marginalized group to promote and sell their products. Besides Waroeng33, the project was inspired by the skills in documenting programmes in various ways. The project adopted the production of video documentary and video podcasts as part of the project’s outputs and is convinced that this method will make it easier for the public to understand its project. For the video documentation, it worked in collaboration with Lentera Talenta, a Denpasar-based organization while for the video podcast series, it worked together with the Engage Media team, which enabled skill transfer to the Article 33’s Communication Officer. 

The most significant change in the rights-holder group is that women have a space and access to express their opinion, advice, and voice. The community also trusts the process of this project and is involved with the government to develop social forestry.  

Developing policies is a key achievement of the project and if these can be translated into legislation, it will allow for the establishment of Village Fund. This will be a significant impact for the project areas.