Wehea-Kelay Selected as an MUK Pilot Site, Bentala Kalimantan Strengthens Forest Management Collaboration

For Wehea-Kelay, this designation marks an important milestone. For more than a decade, Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara (YKAN), together with government agencies, forest concession holders, Indigenous People, local communities, and other partners, has worked to safeguard this landscape, which spans hundreds of thousands of hectares. The introduction of MUK provides new momentum to these efforts by promoting a more diversified, productive, and sustainable forest-based economy.

To support this vision, YKAN initiated Bentala Kalimantan, a collaborative platform launched in 2024 to advance integrated landscape management. The initiative covers an expanded Wehea-Kelay landscape, connecting 15 forest concessions and 38 Indigenous and local community villages under a shared vision: conserving forests while creating sustainable economic opportunities for local communities.

Through Bentala Kalimantan, YKAN and its partners are developing innovative forest business models that combine timber production with greener revenue streams, such as carbon finance, regenerative agroforestry, and environmental services. The approach is guided by a conservation-first principle, ensuring that high conservation value areas remain protected while economic activities are carried out under rigorous sustainability standards.

Beyond its environmental objectives, Bentala Kalimantan places communities at the center of the solution. Local people are actively involved in forest surveys, nursery management, rubber and cocoa agroforestry development, and community-based forest protection. In this way, the benefits of conservation can be directly experienced by those who live alongside and depend on the forest.

At a time when the timber industry has faced declining performance over the past decade, the Multi-Enterprise Forestry approach offers new opportunities for Indonesia’s forestry sector. Wehea-Kelay now serves as a testing ground for how diverse income streams can coexist with biodiversity conservation and community well-being.

If successful, Bentala Kalimantan will not only serve as a model for MUK implementation in East Kalimantan but also demonstrate that healthy, well-managed forests can simultaneously support economic growth, social welfare, and environmental sustainability. It offers renewed hope from Wehea-Kelay that Indonesia’s forest future does not require choosing between conservation and development but can achieve both in balance.