- Smallholders are often treated as risks in deforestation-free supply chains, writes Aida Greenbury, yet many are also among the people with the strongest reason to keep forests standing.
- Greenbury argues that standards, traceability rules and buyer requirements can push costs onto farmers who lack the maps, documents, legal recognition and market access needed to comply.
- She says forest protection will work only if companies, donors, governments and NGOs make long-term commitments to smallholders, including support for land rights, incentives, better yields and trusted local institutions.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.
In general, plantation companies view local communities and smallholders as obstacles to expanding operations and to securing social licenses. In deforestation-free supply chains, smallholders are also often treated as a risk. In my experience, this is one reason forest protection efforts fail: we don’t want to understand why smallholders are perceived as a risk. Yet many of the people closest to the forest are also the ones with the strongest reason to keep it standing.
That was not how I saw things at the start of my career. Years inside corporate sustainability changed my view, as did many difficult conversations with communities.
People often asked me, “How did someone like you, a corporate slave, end up working for smallholders?”
It’s a long story. I worked for corporations for many years. Some people might remember me as Managing Director of Sustainability at one of the largest integrated forestry, pulp and paper companies headquartered in Indonesia. A forest-based company of that size in Indonesia is frequently criticized for deforestation. More than a decade ago, before I left the company, that work led me to help develop the High Carbon Stock Approach (HCSA), a multistakeholder initiative to develop a deforestation-free methodology for extractive companies operating in humid tropical regions. With many existing deforestation standards unclear and rife with loopholes, adopting a clear, science-based deforestation-free methodology, supported by companies, NGOs, and other global stakeholders, was what I needed to avoid confusion when managing sprawling forest concessions in the field and to bring credibility to the company I worked for.
But implementing the new methodology in the field was where it fell short. Forest and plantation concessions in Indonesia are intermingled, and sometimes overlapping, with other land uses, from national parks to smallholder land. The deforestation-free methodology I adopted was designed for companies with substantial resources. Companies had staff, consultants, maps and compliance budgets. Smallholders usually did not.
This matters because smallholders are central to land use in Indonesia. In the oil palm sector, smallholder and other non-corporate holdings account for a substantial share of the planted area. They also often grow other crops, such as rubber, cocoa and coffee. They are highly diverse: some are small, independent family farmers; others are better-capitalized producers with more land and better access to mills, finance and buyers. Treating them all as one category makes policy easier, but it does not make forest protection more effective. HCSA defines independent smallholders as farmers who own land or have long-term lease or sharecropping arrangements, with a farm holding size between 10 and 15 hectares, who live in villages, rely on the farm as their main source of income, are free to manage their land and its production, and whose farm is based primarily on their own family labor and capital.
Poorly designed deforestation-free commitments can produce a perverse result. Companies may be able to show progress while smallholders are left with the cost and complexity of compliance. A farmer may lose access to better buyers simply because he or she cannot produce the required map, document or traceability record. Companies may decide that tracing and supporting thousands of farmers is too expensive or too risky. Deforestation may move to the parts of the landscape that no buyer is watching closely.
Addressing this issue, the HCSA dedicated years to collaborating with smallholder farmer organizations to develop a straightforward Deforestation-Free Toolkit for Smallholders in Indonesia. Unlike many standards that use a top-down approach, the toolkit was developed using a global framework centered on smallholders’ local wisdom, knowledge and traditions. Through the simplified toolkit, communities map forests and land cover, identify areas with high carbon stock and high conservation value, and decide how village and community lands should be managed. The process is also built around free, prior and informed consent, because a conservation tool imposed on people is unlikely to endure.
I was excited when the deforestation-free landscape puzzle was finally completed, and the Deforestation-Free Toolkit for Smallholders in Indonesia was published in 2024. My excitement stemmed from my active involvement in creating the toolkit and from my advocacy for smallholder organizations after leaving corporate work. A key reason for my engagement with smallholders was that, despite holding a senior executive role in a large company for many years, I frequently made time to meet local community representatives in their homes. Sitting on a cold cement floor in their modest house, surrounded by community members, families and neighbors, while receiving accusations and hearing their frustration and disappointment, gave me a profound perspective.
For years, I often told the executives of natural resource-based companies that a new business model was needed. The new model must treat local communities as business partners in the landscapes where companies operate, because they are the local stewards of the land, they share the same natural resources, and some community members have greater rights over the land. Unfortunately, many executives and I did not see eye to eye. Many companies still see local communities primarily as liabilities rather than as beneficial business partners.
Corporate discussions often avoid this point, perhaps because it is uncomfortable. When communities are framed as liabilities, the company’s instinct is to reduce exposure: avoid them, control them, limit engagement, or treat them as recipients of short-term projects. That can be cheaper and protect a company’s reputation in the short term. It does little to build trust. And trust is essential in landscapes where people, farms, plantations, customary claims, and conservation areas overlap.
I understood this more clearly during a visit to West Kalimantan.
One afternoon, I sat in a wooden hut in Sanggau, West Kalimantan, surrounded by a dozen local smallholders, community leaders, and representatives of smallholder organizations. It was pouring with rain. Across the paddy field from our hut stood their customary forest, shrouded in the mystery of Dayak Hibun folklore. Four local women prepared the lunch and served it in the middle of the wooden floor.
The community leader poured tuak, a traditional fermented rice wine, into my tin cup and said, “We are pleased to support the deforestation-free initiative. It aligns with our centuries-old practice; we don’t want to harm our forests. However, as our land shrinks and is encroached upon by large oil palm and other companies, it’s increasingly difficult to preserve our customary forests while sustaining ourselves on small plots of oil palm, rubber, and other crops. We need long-term support to first legitimize our forests, then to maintain, restore, and protect them. We need a long-term commitment. NGOs and other projects have come and gone, but most have seen us only as a means to fund their activities. We are not just a project; we are people who have lived here for centuries, surviving and safeguarding our forests. If you are committed to supporting us until we reach our goals, we will stand with you.”
I felt warm inside, and it wasn’t because of the tuak. What he said was practical, not sentimental. The community was not asking for praise. They were asking for recognition, legal support, incentives, and patience. They were asking others to stop treating their forest as a project site and recognize it as a place with history, rules, pressure and people responsible for it.
That request should shape how deforestation-free supply chains are designed. Market requirements are becoming stricter. Buyers increasingly want proof that commodities are not linked to deforestation. Regulations, including in Europe, are pushing companies to demonstrate compliance. Proving compliance is not free. Mapping, documentation, land surveys, traceability systems, cooperative formation, restoration work, and legal recognition all require time and money. Smallholders cannot be expected to carry those costs alone.
Many programs stumble at this point. They ask smallholders not to clear forests, but often do not compensate them for the opportunity cost of keeping forests standing. They ask for documents, but do not always help secure land rights. They ask for traceability, but do not always invest in systems that work through intermediaries and local markets. They ask for participation, but leave after the project cycle ends.
A long-term commitment to work in and support a specific district or landscape by nonprofit is challenging. Donors often prefer to see multiple projects expanding into different regions, and success is often regarded as simply completing projects’ KPI checklists. Fulfilling the community leader’s request for a long-term commitment requires considerable effort in persuasion and support from donors who understand the full picture rather than just box-ticking exercises.
The more useful work often takes longer and attracts less attention. Communities need support to map and legitimize customary forests. They need local governments, smallholder groups, companies, buyers, scientists, and donors to keep working in the same landscape over many years. They need support to improve crop yields and farmer welfare so that forest protection is not experienced as a burden. They need market links for deforestation-free commodities, not only standards written far from their villages.
The Farmers for Forest Protection Foundation, or 4F, is one attempt to work in that gap. I serve on its board because I believe smallholders need an institution that can help connect their own conservation efforts with science, finance, buyers, and government support. But 4F is only one example. The lesson extends beyond 4F. Corporate commitments and government targets will not be enough. Indonesia’s deforestation-free future will depend on whether smallholders and local communities are given a fair place in the system.
Forest protection is one of the many obstacles faced by smallholder farmers, who are often at a disadvantage. To effectively support their conservation efforts, we need to address the other issues they face as well. A farmer with insecure land rights and no reliable buyer cannot be expected to absorb the cost of conservation alone. While we can’t be the sole solution to all their problems, it’s important to acknowledge these challenges and incorporate them into our solutions, working closely with local institutions and governments.
When smallholders in the area are provided with benefits and incentives, such as direct financial support or improvements in crop yields and welfare, keeping forest standing becomes a practical choice, not just a moral request. The trade-offs begin to change. Smallholders are more likely to protect forest when doing so does not put their livelihoods at risk.
In February 2026, the 4F team arrived in Sanggau, West Kalimantan, where they received a warm welcome from community leaders once again. During this visit, 4F was supported by a major US-based philanthropic organization and partnered with the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency. Research and innovation are central to 4F’s efforts this year. In West and Central Kalimantan, in collaboration with the national agency, local governments, and communities, the 4F team will showcase the connections between forest conservation and healthy crops, and develop a system that links deforestation-free commodities to a marketplace.
In Sanggau, this work has only begun. It will succeed only if it avoids the mistake that communities have seen too often: arriving with a project, gathering data, writing a report and leaving before communities see lasting support.
The journey remains long and challenging for the 4F team and local smallholders and communities, but one thing is clear. With trust in place, we’re finding solutions together with local smallholders and communities, for them. Some of the most important decisions begin in places like that wooden hut in Sanggau, not only in air-conditioned offices where communities appear as risks on a spreadsheet.
Years inside corporate sustainability have left me with one conclusion. Smallholders and local communities are not liabilities. They have knowledge, rights and responsibilities that outsiders often overlook. If companies, governments, donors, and NGOs want forests to remain standing, they will need to treat them that way.
Banner image: Rice paddies, forest, and agroforest in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler
Aida Greenbury is a sustainability leader and forestry expert specializing in responsible land use, no-deforestation policies, and sustainable supply chains across Asia. With more than two decades of experience, she has advised governments, NGOs, and global corporations. She previously served as Managing Director of Sustainability at a major forestry and paper company, where she developed zero-deforestation commitments, and continues to champion smallholder inclusion and climate-resilient land use through advisory roles.
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