EII researchers participated in a recent workshop on data collection for assessing district progress towards jurisdictional sustainability in Indonesia.

The two-day workshop was held on the campus of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in the city of Bogor, south of the capital Jakarta with Indonesia’s Sustainable Districts Platform (Lingkar Temu Kabupaten Lestari in Indonesian, or LTKL) and their local and national partner organizations.

EII participated as part of an on-going collaboration with LTKL and CIFOR to support LTKL member jurisdictions as they develop strategies to achieve sustainability, and to identify opportunities for investment in member districts.

During the workshop, EII and CIFOR jointly presented the main findings globally and for Indonesia of the State of Jurisdictional Sustainability report, as well as the methodology for collecting data for jurisdictional profiles.

EII also discussed the Tropical Forest Champions concept, as well as monitoring platforms including PCIMonitor, GCFImpact.org and Produce-Protect as examples of ways in which districts can communicate information about themselves to a broader audience.

The information will be used as part of a Regional Competitiveness Framework developed by LTKL that lays out criteria by which participating districts can demonstrate steps toward sustainability.

The framework, announced in 2018, will gauge progress in five areas: planning and goal setting, economic resilience, social resilience, natural resource management and community incentives. These five categories will be further broken down into 18 indicators that draw from existing verification tools, including RSPO P&C and the Sustainable Landscape Rating Tool. 

Leveraging existing mechanisms like these can help increase confidence in sustainability claims, LTKL say.

Working groups in each district will be trained to collect information from participating districts, with support from EII and CIFOR. Training workshops will begin in November 2019 in Gorontalo (Sulawesi) and Sintang (West Kalimantan) districts, to be followed by other pilot districts in January 2020. Summary reports of data collected will be prepared by May 2020.