Community Carbon Enters a New Chapter: When the Forests People Protect Begin to Find Their Value

Morning has not yet fully broken when Bujang Raba Forest begins to stir. Birds call to one another from the treetops, while dew still clings to the leaves. Beneath the dense canopy, life moves to its own rhythm. For the people of the five villages surrounding and managing this area, Lubuk Beringin, Senamat Ulu, Buat, Laman Panjang, and Sungai Telang, this is nothing out of the ordinary. They have long lived alongside the forest, known its rivers and changing seasons, gathered non-timber forest products, and cared for an area that is an essential part of their lives.

For many years, no one imagined that these trees would one day be measured in tonnes of carbon. The community’s understanding was simple: the forest had to remain because it was a source of water, a place to live, a source of forest products, and a legacy to pass on to their children. Then the world changed. Forests came to be seen not only as landscapes that sustain life and harbour biodiversity, but also as carbon stores essential to climate balance.

This is where Bujang Raba’s journey into the world of carbon began. The forest that the community had long protected gradually acquired a new language for expressing its value: carbon credits, measurement, monitoring, verification, registration, certification, and carbon trading. What had previously been part of the community’s everyday forest stewardship began to be translated into a broader system connecting villages with carbon markets.

Bujang Raba is located in Bungo Regency, Jambi, and covers approximately 7,291 hectares. Situated within the Bukit Panjang Rantau Bayur Protection Forest, the area is managed by the community through the Village Forest scheme across five villages. For management purposes, the community has divided the area into a protected zone of approximately 5,336 hectares and a utilisation zone of approximately 1,955 hectares. This division was established through village deliberations, with the aim of protecting the forest while ensuring that the community can continue to use it sustainably.

When Bujang Raba began entering the carbon arena, the community had already been doing the essential work for years. Since 2013, Warsi and the community have been developing the Community Carbon approach alongside efforts to strengthen Village Forest management institutions, protect forest cover, conduct community-based monitoring and carbon measurement, and promote participatory governance. Between 2013 and 2018, the deforestation rate in the area was recorded at zero per cent, while the community maintained its commitment to preserving at least 80 per cent forest cover after obtaining Social Forestry management rights.

Thus, by the time carbon figures began to be calculated, the community had already done the most important work: protecting its forest. Carbon was not the starting point of Bujang Raba’s journey, but the result of a long process of collective forest management. The standing forest could then be expressed in the language of the carbon economy, allowing forest protection efforts to acquire value recognised through a financing mechanism.

Average carbon stocks in Bujang Raba are estimated at around 287 tonnes of carbon per hectare, equivalent to approximately 1,087 tonnes of CO₂e per hectare. Yet these figures are more than technical measurements. Behind them are forests that have been preserved, community decisions not to clear the area, patrols carried out, and village institutions that continue working to keep the forest protected.

Since 2018, when carbon from Bujang Raba’s forests first entered the voluntary market, the community has begun to experience the economic benefits that forest protection can bring. The use of carbon revenues is discussed through village deliberations and directed towards community-identified needs, including social activities, education, institutional strengthening, forest protection, and livelihood development. In July 2018, for example, 60 children took part in a mass circumcision event, and 160 packages of educational supplies were distributed to children from low-income families.

These benefits grew as the value of the carbon revenues increased. In 2020, the community received approximately IDR 1 billion, and by 2021 the total carbon funds raised by Bujang Raba had reached around IDR 3.5 billion. The funds were not distributed to a particular group; instead, they were managed through an agreed collective mechanism. Each village received an allocation, which was then discussed in community forums to identify the most pressing needs.

This experience shows that carbon can provide an incentive for communities to continue protecting forests, provided that the benefits genuinely flow back to the people and to forest management. However, the journey has not always been smooth. Just as the community began to experience the economic benefits of carbon, Indonesia’s carbon-trading governance was undergoing a period of restructuring.

In 2021, the government temporarily suspended various carbon-trading schemes to reorganise governance and ensure that the mechanisms were aligned with national climate policy. For the people of Bujang Raba, the suspension brought a pause. But a pause in trading did not mean a pause in forest protection. The forest continued to be cared for, community institutions continued to function, and the community upheld its management commitments while waiting for greater clarity on the direction of Indonesia’s carbon policy.

The wait eventually gave way to a new chapter as the government strengthened the governance of Carbon Economic Value. Presidential Regulation No. 110 of 2025 provides a new framework for implementing Carbon Economic Value instruments and controlling national greenhouse gas emissions, while Minister of Forestry Regulation No. 6 of 2026 sets out a more specific framework for carbon trading through greenhouse gas emission offsets in the forestry sector. For community-based carbon initiatives, these changes open up new opportunities to reconnect with the national carbon-trading system.

An important milestone came on 6 July 2026, when the Minister of Forestry handed over Approvals for the Issuance of Carbon Units under the Non-Certified Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction scheme, or Non-SPE GRK, to four forestry carbon initiatives. Bujang Raba was one of them, with a potential issuance volume of 238,281 tonnes of CO₂e. The carbon units will subsequently be processed through the national mechanism under the National Registry System for Climate Change Control (SRN PPI).

To outsiders, 238,281 tonnes of CO₂e may look like a large, standalone figure. For the people of Bujang Raba, however, it represents the culmination of a long journey involving thousands of hectares of forest, five villages, community institutions, patrols, monitoring, village rules, and countless decisions to maintain forest cover. The approval therefore means more than an administrative document. It signals that community-based forest management is beginning to gain clearer recognition within Indonesia’s carbon-economy framework.

Yet as carbon trading enters a new chapter, the questions are becoming more complex. The issue is no longer simply how much carbon can be measured and traded, but how to ensure that the carbon genuinely represents verifiable emission reductions, how to prevent double counting, and how to ensure that the economic benefits reach the communities protecting the forest.

This is where various new terms are becoming part of community discussions about carbon: SRN PPI, registration systems, measurement and reporting, verification, carbon-unit issuance, trading, and one term that is becoming increasingly important as jurisdictional carbon approaches develop: nesting.

The term nesting has emerged in the context of expanding government-managed carbon finance through the BioCarbon Fund scheme in Jambi Province, which uses a jurisdictional approach to measure and value carbon performance. Under this approach, emission-reduction achievements are calculated across an entire jurisdiction. Consequently, when the scheme is implemented, Bujang Raba’s carbon performance will form part of the carbon accounting at the jurisdictional level.

The challenge is that forests within a single jurisdiction vary in condition, level of threat, and capacity to absorb and store carbon. Some areas have greater carbon potential and are managed through specific mechanisms, as is the case with Bujang Raba. This is where nesting becomes relevant: it allows particular activities or areas to be integrated into a jurisdictional carbon system so that their carbon performance can still be recognised without causing double counting with other carbon programmes.

For the community, this is not merely a technical issue. At stake is whether the economic value of the carbon generated by the forests they protect will continue to be recognised as the system moves to the jurisdictional level. Ideally, this integration will ensure that the contributions of community-managed areas remain recorded and that the economic benefits can flow back to the people working on the ground.

Nesting therefore requires governance that is robust, yet also straightforward and transparent. Carbon-activity registration and administration must meet integrity standards, but should not become so complicated that community initiatives struggle to enter the system. The mechanism must ensure traceability and prevent double counting, while guaranteeing that community-based initiatives retain space and recognition within the jurisdictional approach.

This new chapter also coincides with rising expectations for carbon quality and integrity. Carbon markets no longer look only at certificates or the number of tonnes of CO₂e on offer. Buyers increasingly want to know where credits originate, which methodologies are used, how carbon is measured and verified, how leakage risks are managed, how community rights are respected, and how social and ecological benefits are safeguarded.

In other words, the market is increasingly buying trust. A carbon credit represents more than a number; it also carries a story about how that carbon was generated and who stands behind it.

In this context, Bujang Raba’s experience matters. Carbon generated from community forests does not stand alone. Behind every tonne of carbon are forests being protected, community institutions at work, local knowledge being preserved, and the social and ecological benefits that emerge from forest management. Carbon is only one of the forest’s values that can be measured and translated into an economic mechanism.

That is why discussions about community carbon cannot stop at the question, “How many tonnes?” It must be followed by other questions: Who is this value created for? How are the benefits shared? And how will the forest remain protected after the carbon has been traded?

Bujang Raba’s experience shows that benefit-sharing is not an optional extra; it is part of carbon integrity. Communities need to understand the value of the carbon generated, how transactions are conducted, who is involved, what costs arise, and how the benefits will be used. More than that, communities must have the opportunity to decide how those benefits can improve their lives while strengthening forest protection.

This is especially important because not every community has the resources that Bujang Raba has to develop carbon initiatives. Measurement, monitoring, verification, administration, registration, and expert support all entail substantial costs. For smaller initiatives, these expenses can be a heavy burden. Aggregating several community initiatives may therefore be one option for the future, helping achieve economies of scale, reduce costs, and improve bargaining power in the market while safeguarding the rights and identities of each community.

Ultimately, markets need scale, while communities need fairness. This new chapter in community carbon must bring the two together.

Perhaps this is the most important change taking place in Bujang Raba. In the past, discussions about community forests focused largely on management access, welfare, and forest protection. Now a new question has emerged: how can forests protected by communities generate economic value without losing their social and ecological value?

Carbon offers one answer, but it is not the forest’s only value. Forests must continue to provide wildlife habitat, regulate water systems, supply non-timber forest products, preserve local knowledge, and serve as living spaces for communities. The carbon economy should therefore not reduce forests to mere carbon stocks. Forests are far richer than that.

Carbon should instead become an additional reason to protect forests. If carbon generates income, that income should help strengthen communities; if communities become stronger, their capacity to protect forests will grow; and when forests remain protected, the carbon stays stored.

This is how a virtuous cycle takes shape: forests are protected, carbon is stored, economic value is created, benefits return to the community, and the community becomes better equipped to protect the forest.

Bujang Raba may be just one landscape, but the lessons it offers extend far beyond its geographical boundaries. It shows that communities can take part in the carbon economy not because they have suddenly learnt how to sell carbon, but because they had already been doing the hardest work long before: protecting the forest.

Regulations now provide an entry point, systems provide a pathway, and markets provide value. Yet the community remains the guardian. This new chapter in community carbon is therefore not about turning communities into carbon traders, but about ensuring that the people who have long protected forests receive due recognition for their role in safeguarding the climate.

From villages, carbon finds its form. From forests, carbon finds its meaning. And from communities, carbon finds its integrity.

The best carbon is not the carbon with the biggest numbers, but the carbon that can be trusted: carbon that comes from forests genuinely protected, communities genuinely involved, benefits genuinely felt, and a future people genuinely want to preserve.

That new chapter has begun. And Bujang Raba shows that the journey towards a high-integrity carbon economy can start in a very simple place: with communities choosing to continue protecting their forests.