Rudi Putra’s sustained outreach and strategic negotiations

Putra organized an online petition to apply international pressure on the Indonesian government to enforce its own conservation laws

With support from local communities, Putra approached local police directly to enforce land protection laws and shut down illegal palm oil plantations. He spoke of the hundreds of thousands of families who lost their homes and loved ones during the 2006 Aceh floods and their struggles to access clean drinking water.

He also approached palm oil plantation owners and reminded them that their actions were against the law. After Putra showed them the boundaries marking conservation areas, some owners voluntarily shut down the plantations and gave the land back to the government so that Putra and his colleagues could conduct restoration work.

Putra’s sustained outreach and strategic negotiations, deploying carrots and sticks when necessary, resulted in the dismantling of more than 1,200 acres of illegal plantations in the Leuser Ecosystem. The rehabilitation of these forests after the clearance of the oil palm has recreated a critical wildlife corridor now used by elephants, tigers and orangutans for the first time in 12 years. The Sumatran rhino population in the Leuser Ecosystem has also inched up in the past decade.

Putra is now part of a fight against a new threat to the rainforest: a proposal from the Aceh provincial government that would legally open up large tracts of forestland in the Leuser Ecosystem to palm oil development.

In 2013, Putra organized an online petition to apply international pressure on the Indonesian government to enforce its own conservation laws and reject the Aceh government’s proposal. The petition garnered 1.4 million signatures, and has been widely credited with catalyzing international conversations between government officials from Norway, the European Union, Indonesia and the Aceh province.