Featured Project – Spatial planning to reduce deforestation and carbon emissions in Indonesia

We’ve developed a short clip detailing why continued efforts on spatial planning are needed, so please take a look. And read on below for some of the achievements and successes of this project.

In February of this year, we celebrated the PSP team’s successful delivery of this project with concluding presentations held in Jakarta and Kaimana. More recently, we celebrated the programme’s successful achievement of an A+ rating in the Programme Completion Review.

This PCR rating recognised the breadth of support provided by the team, encompassing preparation activities for spatial planning processes including:

• facilitating coordination between national and sub-national governments;
• facilitating public consultations;
• drafting local regulations informed by associated technical material and maps;
• supporting intersectoral meetings;
• obtaining approvals;
• supporting the process of spatial plan enactment into regional regulations (Perda).
• active support to provincial governments to conduct spatial utilization controls, as mandated by spatial planning law.
• strengthening sub-national government’s capacity in developing, revising and controlling spatial plans by providing technical training for spatial planning processes.

It also recognises the considerable achievements made, including:

• Over 3 million hectares of forest and land safeguarded as protected areas and the programme-innovation ‘sustainable development zones’ in approved spatial plans
• Over 8 million hectares of adat territory integrated into approved spatial plans, facilitated by extensive adat community engagement and trust-building.

This bears reflection. We believe that the PSP programme resulted in the first ever inclusion and recognition of adat territory and maps in a district-level spatial plan in Indonesia. We trust that this is the first of many more to come.

Overwhelmingly, we can attribute the success of PSP to the unprecedented levels of cooperation attained within the programme – between government agencies and levels, CSOs and NGOs, companies, academia and indigenous peoples. We determined that over 2,500 participants attended training sessions held under the programme, and over 18,000 forest-dependent people had access to spatial planning consultations. Likewise, 2 publicly accessible spatial planning portals were developed, underpinning a mobile app that was developed to enable the monitoring of land compliance by both government and communities. Uptake at end of project had already led to 50 possible infractions reported.

PSP has a strong legacy, with multiple policy documents, briefs and papers developed and disseminated – touching on issues across spatial planning and sustainable land management, REDD+ and green business development.

We’re enormously proud of our team and all those who collaborated with the project. And we truly believe this is just the beginning. We look forward to continued collaboration in Indonesia, and the legacy of this spatial planning work being built on in years to come.