A visit to the HIRAI project landscape in Central Kalimantan

Himba Raya Indonesia (HIRAI) is a non-profit organization that aims to raise awareness about environmental degradation, and the need for solutions that support local communities in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. HIRAI’s vision is to build community resilience toward climate change through nature-based solutions through local employment and nature restoration.

HIRAI is currently running a project in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan, and focuses on preserving peat forest and restoring degraded peatlands that have been impacted by peat fires.

HIRAI focuses on peatlands because we believe that tropical peat swamp forests are a unique ecosystem under enormous threat from human activities from logging, including drainage and subsequent fires, conversion for agriculture, and wildlife hunting.

Peat degradation has many implications on the balance of the peat swamp forest ecology. The disturbance of hydrological conditions in peat swamp forests makes it more susceptible to fires. Burned forests have lower canopy cover, lower species richness, and reduced tree and sapling density compared with unburned forest.

In Indonesia, there is a saying: Tak kenal maka tak sayang, which can be roughly translated as: if we don’t know or understand someone or something, then we won’t love or care about it. I’d like to invite all of you to fall in love with peatlands and to better understand our project. Join me on a journey through the landscapes in this video:

The video shows a small glimpse of our project area, what we want to protect and what we want to restore. To understand more about why and how we are planning to restore and protect the landscape, stay tuned and follow us on Instagram at @ikaa_cahya and @hirai_foundation.