Alternative Livelihoods Creating Environmentally-Sustainable Economic Opportunities While GPOCP's conservation awareness and environmental education work is helping communities understand and appreciate the forest and orangutans, major obstacles to effective, long-term conservation still exist. These include illegal logging and the ever-growing influence of big palm oil companies with their ever-expanding plans to convert major areas of biologically rich forest habitat to monoculture plantations. In response to these growing threats, GPOCP is working hand-in-hand with local communities and villagers to promote local, sustainable management of their forests through its Customary Forest Initiative, and to create environmentally-sustainable economic alternatives through its Alternative Livelihoods Project. Customary Forest Initiative GPOCP works with communities to educate villagers about the potential harmful effects of oil palm agriculture on their environment, and facilitates organized responses to pressure from palm oil companies. GPOCP has led study tours to oil palm concessions so villagers can witness first-hand the devastating, long-term impacts of allowing the conversion of their forests to oil palm plantations. Moreover, GPOCP is currently working with many villages to assist them in certifying their forests as "customary forests", a legal designation that gives them more control over how their forests are used. Alternative Livelihoods Project Protecting forests from logging and oil palm agriculture takes away a potential source of income for villagers, so creating income-generating alternatives has become an essential conservation strategy in GPOCP's multi-pronged approach to protecting the endangered orangutan. To date, GPOCP has established a fishermen's and farmers' cooperative, is helping create a non-wood forest product artisan community, and maintains a series of displays and workshops at its new Environmental Education Center in Kayong Utara that promote environmentally-friendly livelihoods as viable alternatives to the traditional economic activities that cause massive deforestation. Current working models include: polybags to grow organic vegetables; a fuel-efficient earthen oven, biogas stove and long-burning kerosene and woodchip stove, and; bamboo as an alternative material to wood in making a chicken and duck coop, as well as a submersible cage for fish farming. Student volunteers are now helping GPOCP demonstrate these environmentally-friendly methods in neighboring villages, and local villagers are beginning to utilize them. |  GPOCP staff work with villagers on a home garden project. (Photo: Desi Kurniawanti)  GPOCP staff meet with villagers to discuss setting up a craft business. (Photo: Desi Kurniawanti) |