Providing Solution Options, Belantara Foundation Participates in the Discussion Panel on "How Businesses Can Overcome Deforestation" at 2018's Innovation Forum Event

Belantara Foundation represented by Executive Director Dr. Sri Mariati participated in supporting the Innovation Forum event on April 18th -19th 2018 in Washington DC, USA. The two-day conference, in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy, discussed on how the business sector can tackle deforestation by building relationships, developing targets and promoting positive impacts.

The conference was attended by 100-120 delegates representing companies, NGOs, suppliers, traders, development agents, investors, government agencies, and other related organizations with the key theme of the discussion being "The likelihood that most companies will miss 2020 zero deforestation targets, so what happens next?". Also present as a speaker in the discussion panel was Belantara foundation's Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Prof. Jatna Supriatna who discussed the role of NGOs/Institutions in giving grants to support a company's zero deforestation target of 2020.

There was also a discussion forum on the topic of Approaching 2020 and the unlikelihood of zero deforestation target of a company to be realized. In this discussion forum, all participants were shown the reality with missed targets and discussed the most practical way by utilizing the experience and skills of active organizations working in the field, in forests and in communities and plantations to devise more conclusive ways to suppress deforestation rates post-2020.

In this discussion forum, Prof. Jatna Supriatna put forward the use of the multi-stakeholder approach implemented by  Belantara Foundation directly to the ground implementators to facilitate the local NGOs implementations. He believes that landscape management will work sustainably if the business, urban, agricultural and protected forest areas can be interdependent and coexist harmoniously since all actors are interconnected and an integral part of an area.

Also presented by Prof. Jatna Supriatna was the strategic partnership innovation undertaken by Belantara Foundation by opening cooperation in co-financing restorations, protections and community developments where project ideas or initiatives can start by itself and come from an internal foundation component (board/ management/staff) or funders/ donors/partners. With this kind of cooperation, communities/groups can become business partners and project owners for restoration, protection, and environmental conservation, and the sustainability of a project can be sustained even though a cooperation has ended.