Tropical forest people often suffer from the same processes that threaten biodiversity. An improved knowledge of what is important to local people could improve decision making. This article examines the usefulness of explicitly asking what is important to local people. Our examples draw on biodiversity surveys in East Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). With local communities we characterized locally valued habitats, species, and sites, and their significance. This process clarified various priorities and threats, suggested refinements and limits to management options, and indicated issues requiring specific actions, further investigation, or both. It also shows how biological evaluations are more efficient with local guidance, and reveals potential for collaborations between local communities and those concerned with conservation. Such evaluations are a first step in facilitating the incorporation of local concerns into higher-level decision making. Conservationists who engage with local views can benefit from an expanded constituency, and from new opportunities for pursuing effective conservation.

Indonesia offers a dramatic opportunity to contribute to tackling climate change by deploying natural climate solutions (NCS), increasing carbon sequestration and storage through the protection, improved management, and restoration of drylands, peatlands, and mangrove ecosystems. Here, we estimate Indonesia’s NCS mitigation opportunity for the first time using national datasets. We calculated the maximum NCS mitigation potential extent using datasets of annual national land cover, peat soil, and critical lands. We collated a national emissions factor database for each pathway, calculated from a meta-analysis, recent publications from our team, and available literature. The maximum NCS mitigation potential in 2030 is 1.3 ± 0.04 GtCO₂e yr⁻¹, based on the historical baseline period from 2009–2019. This maximum NCS potential is double Indonesia’s nationally determined contribution (NDC) target from the forestry and other land use sector. Of this potential opportunity, 77% comes from wetland ecosystems. Peatlands have the largest NCS mitigation potential (960 ± 15.4 MtCO₂e yr⁻¹ or 71.5 MgCO₂e ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹) among all other ecosystems. Mangroves provide a smaller total potential (41.1 ± 1.4 MtCO₂e yr⁻¹) but have a much higher mitigation density (12.2 MgCO₂e ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹) compared to dryland ecosystems (2.9 MgCO₂e ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹). Therefore, protecting, managing, and restoring Indonesia’s wetlands is key to achieving the country’s emissions reduction target by 2030. The results of this study can be used to inform conservation programs and national climate policy to prioritize wetlands and other land sector initiatives to fulfill Indonesia’s NDC by 2030, while simultaneously providing additional co-benefits and contributing to COVID-19 recovery and economic sustainability.

Reforestation in the tropics is highlighted as an important intervention to mitigate climate change globally because of its potential for high CO₂ removal rates, ranging from 4.5 to 40.7 t CO₂e ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ during the first 20 years of tree growth. Reforestation is critical to meeting emissions’ targets of the Paris Climate Agreement, as well as achieving Indonesia’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) targets. Increasing carbon stocks through forest and land rehabilitation activities (RHL) is one of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) five main strategies for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the land sector. This study focuses on reforestation opportunities to support Indonesia’s NDC in reducing GHG emissions by 2030. We identified unproductive areas of land (shrub, open land) with highly degraded conditions as potential areas for reforestation. Based on Indonesian data of land cover change, we found that reforestation activities during 2019–2030 (11 years) under a realistic, ambitious and very ambitious scenario may remove carbon up to −0.25 GtCO₂e (equal to −23 MtCO₂e yr⁻¹), −1.3 GtCO₂e (equal to −124 MtCO₂e yr⁻¹) and −2.7 GtCO₂e (equal to −247 MtCO₂e yr⁻¹), respectively. Based on international data of land cover change (Hansen et al. 2013), reforestation activities during 2019–2030, under a realistic, ambitious, and very ambitious scenario, have the opportunities to remove −17 MtCO₂e yr⁻¹, −118 MtCO₂e yr⁻¹, and −241 MtCO₂e yr⁻¹, respectively. This study demonstrates that ambitious and very ambitious scenarios of reforestation activities can significantly contribute to Indonesia’s forestry-related NDC in 2030 by reducing the Indonesia Business As Usual (BAU) emissions up to 17% and 35%.