Sometimes the effects of deforestation are slow and subtle, but sometimes, they are devastating and sudden. In 2004, a landslide in Indonesia tragically claimed several lives and served as a wake-up call to survivors: they needed trees on their neighboring mountains to protect their homes and their very lives.
In collaboration with a group of rescue workers who were concerned by the lingering economic devastation wrought by the landslide, local people came together to restore their lost forest.
See how cooperation, planting trees, and coffee farming helped this community fight deforestation. The rescue workers and community members founded the Klasik Beans coffee cooperative, and as they learned to produce some of the world’s most highly prized coffee cherries, they also learned what it takes to reforest a landscape.
They embraced regenerative agroforestry and income diversification to make a sustainable living while protecting and restoring their local ecosystem.
They’ve been so successful that they won the 2019 Rainforest Alliance Community Leadership Award. Learn how they did it — and how their hard work can inspire and teach other communities to protect their forests.