EcoNusa Outlook 2020
Yayasan Ekosistim Nusantara Berkelanjutan or EcoNusa Foundation is championing community independence in sustainable and impartial natural resources management. It works in collaboration with stakeholders of government and non-government institutions to manage local community reinforcement-based forest management in transparent and accountable way. In addition, EcoNusa develops joint ocean initiatives to improve ocean governance and management practice in eco-friendly and sustainable approach.
EcoNusa Foundation was founded in 2017 by Bustar Maitar, a notable green activist born and grown up in Papua. Therefore, EcoNusa Foundation prioritizes the Eastern Indonesia, covering Papua, West Papua, Maluku and North Maluku, as the center of activity. Another overarching consideration is due to the fact that these regions still have intact forest cover. The total of forest cover in those four provinces is 38,660,805. 42 hectares or 44% of the total forest cover of 88,458,514.08 hectares across Indonesia.
“EcoNusa Foundation considers important forest potential in the Land of Papua and Maluku as the last forest frontier in Indonesia and even in the world. Besides, the Land of Papua and Maluku are the center of the largest indigenous communities in Indonesia in which all kinds of culture and best practices on forest protection are originated,” said Bustar Maitar, the founder and CEO of EcoNusa Foundation.
Within two years, EcoNusa Foundation promotes learning and best practices conducted by local NGOs and communities to the national and international levels on natural resources management. EcoNusa Foundation also organizes young people particularly of the urban areas to support the sovereignty of equitable and sustainable natural resources management through a so-called School of EcoDiplomacy (SED). Since its establishment in 2018, SED has more than 47 alumni who had got training on the importance of forests to mankind.
“Young people are the key for a sustainable development. They play major roles to make change while defending their forests,” said Bustar.
EcoNusa Foundation works hand in hand with some regencies in Papua and West Papua such as Kaimana Regency to help facilitate and develop the local community and NGO partners in the context of sustainable natural resources management practices.
“EcoNusa Foundation’s serious commitment to help Kaimana Regency in building the local community capacity on natural resources management is a good start to help empower Kaimana as conservation region,” said Matias Mairuma, the Head of Kaimana Regency, West Papua.
Aligning with conservation endeavor, EcoNusa Foundation by end of 2019 organized Mangrove Expedition along the southern coastlines of West Papua. The expedition aims to identify mangrove areas and social and economic potential to the local community and to survey vegetation and biodiversity on those areas. In this expedition, EcoNusa Foundation was in cooperation with a Papua University’s researcher, Jimmy Wanma.
“Mangrove Expedition is deemed a good start to see closely the role of mangrove forests for forest areas protection while observing the need interaction of coastal communities to mangrove ecosystem,” said Jimmy.
Mangrove Expedition 2019 went along more than 1,000 kilometers route observing a total of 419.8 hectares of mangrove areas on this study.
