ASRI Forest Guardian Programme

The programme focuses on local accountability for forest guardianship. Since guardians themselves are locals living in an area of as much language diversity as biodiversity, each can speak whatever dialect or language is spoken in the community and has known fellow villagers since birth.

ASRI's health clinic offers education about conservation and human health, training in organic farming and animal husbandry, health and dentistry services, and malaria prevention bednets.

An integral part of forest protection is its healthcare exchange system, which is communicated through community events, mobile clinic staff, and forest guardians. Because illegal logging as a livelihood can be directly linked to healthcare needs of families, the ASRI clinic has developed incentives that allow families to more easily afford healthcare through forest protection. The clinic provides healthcare at rates that include barter of its health services for products and services aligned with the environmental education it promotes, including: reforestation supplies; organic manure for organic farming; native handicrafts; and labour. It guarantees a discounted 'green credit' system for villages not involved in illegal logging of the local Gunung Palung National Park. The guardian programme is designed to spread the message of this system of incentivised healthcare, village by village.

Natural Resource Management, Health, Environment, Malaria

Since the ASRI clinic opened in July 2007, the programme staff has grown from eight to 50 (all figures as of 2011); they have treated more than 25,000 medical cases. Mobile clinics have treated 1,500 patients in isolated villages. In 14 of the 32 park-border communities with which ASRI works, loggers stepped forward to train for the role of guardian. They all asked for help in establishing some form of sustainable livelihood - in some cases organic farming, in others sustainable agroforestry.

ASRI staff also works with villagers around a devastated area where a logging company illegally cleared over 100 hectares (250 acres) of rainforest, twenty years ago. A part of ASRI's education work on forest health and human health covers the link between logging and mosquito population/malaria condition increases due to the increase in standing water for breeding. Combining environmental education and health incentives, ASRI clinic patients and families have replanted twenty hectares of this area with plans to continue replanting through contributions including carbon offsets.

A regional teaching hospital is planned to model sustainability in its architecture and medical practices. Plans are documented on the Health in Harmony website. Health in Harmony is the partnering non-governmental organisation which "fosters innovative solutions to the crisis of human disease and environmental destruction facing our planet." A part of its relationship to ASRI is to educate United States-based medical schools, hospitals, and organisations about ASRI's programmes, carbon offset opportunities, and equipment needs for its school and clinic.