Ferry Irwandi-style forest crowdfunding: A solution or a misunderstanding of the root cause of forest and land fires?

• Ferry Irwandi’s forest crowdfunding movement risks shifting the state’s responsibility to preserve forests. • This movement also risks treating nature as a commodity: as if forests are only protected if the public can pay more than extractive industry capital. • Ecosystem restoration permits do not guarantee justice for communities.

The crowdfunding movement for Kalimantan’s forests spearheaded by content creator Ferry Irwandi (together with Andrew Kalaweit) successfully raised billions of rupiah in a relatively short time.

The basic idea seems noble: facilitating the public to set aside money, strengthening the financial capacity of local NGOs/foundations, buying or paying land “tali asih” compensation to residents. The hope is that some forests will be protected from conversion into oil palm plantations, acacia plantations, or coal mining.

However, we see Ferry’s initiative as having at least three problems that actually perpetuate the root causes of injustice in forest conservation.

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1. Shifting the state’s responsibility

Ferry Irwandi’s campaign starts from the assumption that Kalimantan’s forests are destroyed because people lack the money to protect them. Thus, public fundraising can become an instrument to prevent forests from changing functions to extractive industrial uses.

The problem is that when this solution is placed as the main mechanism for forest protection, the burden of financing ecosystem conservation risks shifting to the public.

This is problematic causal framing or a mistake in identifying the root cause: deforestation and forest and land fires (karhutla) in Kalimantan seem to occur because of a lack of public funds to protect the forest.

In fact, karhutla occurs because the state grants large concessions to mining companies, oil palm companies, and industrial plantation companies. Karhutla is also the result of weak law enforcement against permit-holding corporations intertwined with systemic corruption.

Moreover, as many as 25,524 hotspots (74%) in Kalimantan as of July 2026 are within corporate concession areas.

Injustice arises from a layered process involving state institutions, corporations, and public policy. Therefore, responsibility for the damage cannot simply be shifted (burden shifting) to individuals who have the smallest capacity to change that structure.

Having money from a pooled contribution does not then make us, as citizens, able to cancel the permits of problematic palm oil or mining companies, or to manage fire prevention.

The proof is that the taxes we pay are in fact used by the state to smooth the conversion of forests— for example through the Central Kalimantan food estate project.

Meanwhile, corporations and the state are in fact freed from accountability for preventing and extinguishing forest and land fires.

Read more: Repeating the pattern in Sumatra and Kalimantan, South Papua shows signs of becoming a new fire epicenter

2. Treating forests as a commodity

According to Ferry Irwandi, to prevent residents from handing land over to palm oil companies, they must be given a “third option” in the form of financial compensation or a goodwill scheme equivalent to the company’s offer.

This is where the next problem appears.

Ferry’s movement actually locks forest preservation within a market logic. In order for forests to remain preserved, the public seemingly must offer sufficient economic value to beat the value offered by palm oil or extractive capital.

With that framework, the main goal of saving forests is not to fulfill people’s right to a proper living space—including for the species within it, but because the public is able to pay more. It is as if nature can only be saved by turning it into a commodity.

In fact, large-scale nature conservation does not always have to depend on buying or taking control of natural assets. Fundo Amazônia in Brazil, for example, is a grant fund (non-reimbursable grants totaling approximately R$ 5.3 billion or the equivalent of approximately Rp18.23 trillion through 2026) for conservation.

This grant has succeeded in financing various projects to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, reaching more than 650 organizations, and protecting 167 indigenous territories and 191 conservation areas without buying and selling natural assets.

The Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) also avoids conservation actions that turn nature into a commodity. Conservation funding can be carried out through various channels, for example blended financing from governments and corporations, so that the target of US$200 billion per year by 2030 can be achieved.

Tying the fate of forests to the ability of public donations to “match” the price of palm oil capital merely validates the neoliberal narrative: nature is only worth as much as someone can afford to pay for it.

If donations fade and extractive industrial capital bids higher, forests become vulnerable again. This shows that, besides being inappropriate, this compensation logic is also unsustainable.

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3. Forest protection programs are not necessarily fair to communities

Securing a forest area from the threat of palm oil and mining does not by itself answer the question of who holds the rights, controls management, and benefits from that area.

A Rainforest Foundation Norway report on environmental programs around the world notes that aid reaching the pockets of local residents or indigenous peoples to preserve forests is very minimal. The figure does not reach 1% of the total US$2.7 billion (around Rp33.15 trillion) in funds over 2011-2020. Most of the funds actually flow to intermediary institutions. Even more so for forests managed by indigenous peoples.

Ferry's call to protect forests through an ecosystem restoration permit (PBPH-RE) stands on state forests. Meanwhile, on the other hand, there are 27.3 million state forests that actually overlap with customary territories.

Thus, if public funds are raised but community rights and control on the ground remain weak, what may change is only the actor managing the area: from extractive corporations to conservation institutions or intermediaries—without addressing the root of the injustice, especially for indigenous peoples.

Our concern is not without reason. There are many indigenous communities that reject forest protection programs because these initiatives actually restrict them from finding food, medicine, and carrying out activities in the forest.

Civil society coalitions also noted that there are 16 ecosystem restoration permits covering 614,000 ha that could displace indigenous peoples and local residents who depend on the forest.

Forest crowdfunding is not the solution

Is this crowdfunding movement morally wrong?

To respond to emergency situations (such as forest and land fire crises and wildlife extinction), this movement may have an important humanitarian function.

However, fundraising should not go too far and turn into the privatization of ecosystems. The main key to ecological financing is not merely mobilizing funds, but ensuring who controls, benefits from, and bears responsibility for it.

Rather than making nature even more bankable (easy to buy and sell), realizing ecological justice can be pursued by:

• Demanding state responsibility to revoke the permits of rogue corporate concessions, ensure corporations bear the wrongdoing, and stop the criminalization of residents.
• Pushing the state to immediately pass the Indigenous Peoples Bill and accelerate recognition of tens of millions of ha of unfinished customary forests. The goal is for control and land rights to directly belong to indigenous communities/peoples who have long been at the forefront of protecting ecosystems.
• Holding companies accountable: Corporations must prevent and restore the social-ecological impacts of their business activities, respect people's rights to land and the environment, and bear the cost of damage when they cause or contribute to it—not merely replace it with donations or CSR.

Without critical awareness, this crowdfunding effort for the forest is only a bandage for a deep wound. It relieves surface symptoms without ever treating the acute infection inside: the nature-extracting industry keeps running smoothly, supported by a state that neglects its obligation to protect people's living space.

Read more: Three ways politicians plunder Indonesia's forests: pro-investment policies, corruption, and clientelism practices