December 22, 2015 edition
More Outreach articles in other editions
December 15, 2015 edition
THE government will soon issue a moratorium on peatland farming to put a stop on all uses of peatlands and restore degraded peatlands damaged by forest fires. President Joko Widodo said he will engage indigenous people to care for the forests. In his statement during the opening of COP21 (United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties21), the President stated that Indonesia was committed to unconditionally reduce 29 percent of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 41 percent with international assistance.
The government said peatlands are currently in critical condition and will stop issuing new licenses on peatlands. According to Minister for the Environment and Forestry Siti Nurbaya Bakar, as of late 2014, licenses had been issued to operate on 6.3 million hectares out of a total 31 million hectares of peatlands. The largest licenses, covering 4.5 million hectares, were issued to process timber products and natural forests, while other licenses were issued to cover 1.8 million hectares of industrial forests. She added that the area of peatlands needing to be restored cover no less than 2 million hectares, most of it damaged by the 2015 forest and land fires across the country.
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December 8, 2015 edition
If Muharram, a farmer from Pao Pao village in South Sulawesi, had doubts about the benefits of organic farming, they were gone by his first harvest. The 32-year-old was able to harvest six tons of paddy from his one-hectare farm. Before, he was only to harvest four.
"I started using organic fertilizer in 2014. At first I applied it three times on the crops during a single season," he said.
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December 1, 2015 edition
November 24, 2015 edition
The life rhythm of the Dayak Benuaq people were disrupted when a company barged onto their 12,000 hectares landholding back in 1971, claiming forest rights. They soon began to log in the forests of Putaq Malinau, which belongs to the Benuaq in Muara Tae, West Kutai, East Kalimantan.
There was little the community could do. "For us, the forest is our mother. It feeds us, not like a company which offers money that will soon run out," said Petrus Asuy, a Muara Tae leader, last month.
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November 17, 2015 edition
Standing apart from other pesantrens (Islamic boarding schools), is the Abdurrahman bin Auf Pesantren, which not only teaches religion, it also tries to instill in their students self-reliance and confidence by training them in business and farming skills. "Our objective is to teach them to go beyond merely reading the Qur'an, but actually living life as according to the Holy Book," said Akbar Mahalli. He is the business manager of the Abdurrahman bin Auf Entrepreneurship and Agrobusiness Pesantren, popularly known with its acronym, Perwira AbA, located at Bulan village, in the subdistrict of Wonosari, Klaten regency, Central Java.
Today, about 40 percent of students who attended the school from 2000 to 2015, or about 350 of them, are successful entrepreneurs. "Sigit, one of our graduates, owns a thriving toy-making business, with an outlay of Rp5 million a day," boasted Akbar. The success of Perwira AbA can also be seen in the awards it has won in various competitions. The school won first place at the Central Java Provincial Competition for Food Sustainability, a few years ago.
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November 10, 2015 edition