Bujang Raba Village Forest Carbon Project (Jambi, Indonesia)

KKI Warsi, an Indonesian conservation NGO based in Jambi, has worked since 2013 with five Indigenous and local communities in Bungo Regency to establish and protect the Bujang Raba hutan desa (village forest), covering more than 5,000 hectares of primary rainforest in the Bukit Barisan landscape bordering Kerinci Seblat National Park - habitat for the Sumatran tiger, Malayan tapir and Sun bear. Legal recognition of the village forest gave the communities formal rights to manage and protect the land themselves.

The project was certified under the Plan Vivo Standard and, after several years without a buyer, completed its first carbon credit sale in 2018: 6,000 tonnes of CO2 sold to a Swedish institution through the intermediary Zeromission. Proceeds were earmarked directly for health and education services (including scholarships), strengthening of the five villages' Village Forest institutions, forest patrols, fire prevention and community economic activities, with carbon stock changes verified through forest monitoring and third-party field verification.

In 2024-2025, Bujang Raba became one of the first community forest carbon projects to receive Indonesian government ministerial approval and registration on SRUK, Indonesia's newly launched national carbon unit registry - a step intended to integrate Plan Vivo-certified community projects into the national jurisdictional carbon accounting system.

The project illustrates both the promise and the limits of small community carbon deals: despite genuine, verified forest protection and legally secured community tenure, it took roughly five years to find a single buyer for its first credits, and revenue has remained modest and irregular relative to the scale of forest protected, underscoring the market-access barriers facing smallholder and Indigenous-led carbon projects.

Read the full analysis: https://www.thejakartapost.com/opinion/2024/01/02/insight-blended-financing-for-carbon-projects-with-greater-social-impact.html