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Southeast Asian communities spearhead forest restoration efforts
Communities in four Southeast Asian countries — Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines — have been leading efforts to protect and restore degraded forests and return their function of storing emissions amid the climate crisis.
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A forest near the tourist town of El Nido on Palawan island in the Philippines where the Palawan NGO Network Inc (PNNI) says illegal logging is rampant. (AFP/Karl Malakunas)
B
eing one of the three regions with the largest tropical rainforests in the world, Southeast Asia is actually losing large parts of its forests, mostly from human activities.
But people living around and in the woodland across the region have been leading efforts to protect and restore them to return their function amid the worsening climate crisis.
The Jakarta Post is taking a closer look at some of the efforts being made to restore forests in Southeast Asia. This is part of a collaborative journalism project under Climate Tracker, produced with support from the Rainforest Journalism Fund and in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.
In most cases, the economic factor has become the main driver of deforestation in Southeast Asia.
Villagers living around the forest of the Cardamom Mountains in Cambodia, for example, have blurred the lines between the protected forest and their land, causing deforestation in the mountain range.
Located in Southern Cambodia, the 800,000-hectare monsoon and mangrove forest in the mountain range is the second-largest virgin rainforest in Southeast Asia and home to at least 60 endangered species, such as Asian elephants and sun bears. But the forest has been threatened by deforestation as more than 148,000 ha — or 8.6 percent — of tree cover were lost between 2001 and 2019, according to Global Forest Watch.
With limited access to sources of livelihood, the local people depend on selling high-value timber and endangered animals to make ends meet. Around 16 percent of people living the remote areas in the mountain range are living below the poverty line.
