Indonesian indigenous communities launched a project this week to encourage foreign tourism in ancestral forests to slow the advance of logging operations and palm oil plantations.

The Green Indonesia non-governmental organization, working with six indigenous groups, said the plan would ease poverty, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and diversify from traditional forest-based incomes such as weaving.

“We’re trying to draw tourists to areas of Indonesia where communities are working to preserve their land and show how they are helping to prevent forests from being lost,” GreenIndonesia head Chandra Kirana said.

The project was inspired by similar initiatives in the Amazon region of South America, she said at a tourism exhibition in Oslo.

Raymundus Remang, head of the Sui Utuk community in West Kalimantan, said the villagers, who have preserved 9,000 hectares of forest from illegal logging and palm oil expansion, would welcome more visitors. Tourists could stay in the community’s vast longhouse, where about 250 people live.

“Everyone in the village has the same feeling of having to protect the forest because it comes from our ancestors,” he said.

Indonesia has lost vast tracts of forests in recent years, threatening the livelihoods of forest peoples as well as endangered creatures such as orangutans and Sumatran tigers.

Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar endorsed the ecotourism project and said the government of President Joko Widodo was working on a decree recognizing the rights of indigenous groups.

Kirana said she hoped the initiative would draw hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tourists to Indonesia.

Indonesia is the fourth-largest nation in the world with more than 267 million people. The country is comprised of more than 17,500 islands, including Bali, Borneo, Java, Lombok, Sumatra and Sulawesi. Learn more about Indonesia.

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