Connecting Global Carbon Data with Local Community Knowledges in Indonesia

Context

Mapping the carbon sequestration potential of global biodiversity hotspots like the Amazon, the Indonesian archipelago and the Congo Basin is of critical interest to climate science, climate policy, and climate finance. But the carbon conversation is alien to forest dwelling communities; their priorities are first and foremost livelihoods that are at risk from extraction, the climate crisis, and lack of legal territorial rights.

The Problem

For centuries, we have built vast systems of scientific knowledge about our forests: their canopy height, carbon stock, and biodiversity. But there is a blind spot at the centre of it all: the communities who have been living in and protecting forests for millennia, whose knowledges and traditions have shaped the very health of those ecosystems, are almost entirely absent from how we make decisions about protecting them. 

Beyond Carbon exists to close that gap. 

The Solution: A Community of Practice

Beyond Carbon is reimagining the forest data landscape by bridging geospatial carbon data with community knowledges, so that Indigenous forest stewards can secure their rights and recognition, and continue doing what they have done for the planet for generations. By putting geospatial carbon data and community-created maps within the same digital interface, making their overlap visible for the first time, we equip Indigenous peoples and local communities with the tools to demonstrate the ecological value of their stewardship, and to advocate for their territorial rights from a position of data-backed authority. No other digital platform in the global forest monitoring ecosystem currently does both. What differentiates Beyond Carbon is the way we are correcting an information hierarchy that has left communities knowing less about their own territories than the institutions that make decisions about them.

Seeding the Solution, in Indonesia and in equatorial rainforests worldwide

This is why we are convening a pilot data visualization & harmonization workshop with 8 Indigenous technologists in August 2026, in collaboration with in-country partner Working Group for ICCAs in Indonesia (WGII).

The in-person workshop in Bogor, Indonesia will:

• Introduce participants to the data processing workflow developed by the Beyond Carbon team which triangulates satellite carbon data with participatory mapping data.

• Test and refine this workflow with community technologists from across Indonesia, ensuring the tool reflects community priorities and FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).

• Build a community of practice by connecting data technologists with forest rights advocates who currently operate at incompatible scales, and grow capacity for data-powered advocacy from their own contexts.

• Produce pilot case studies demonstrating the sequestration benefits attributable to Indigenous and local conservation traditions for use in territorial recognition and land rights advocacy.

Next Steps

There is currently no tool in the global forest data ecosystem that can visualize the carbon stock of a community-protected area. Beyond Carbon’s custom interface lets communities cross-reference real time ecosystem variables like high carbon stock and canopy height with the boundaries of village-level protected areas. This expansion of use, interpretation and deployment of hitherto inaccessible global carbon data will become indispensable to communities, local governments, multilateral bodies, and funders for safeguarding the future of Indigenous rightholders and forest carbon.

Near term objectives: Tool adopted by 20+ civil society groups, with access to 500 Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities across Indonesia. Longer term objectives: Equipping advocates to create forest carbon visualizations aligned with community priorities, especially for data-led territorial rights advocacy.

We are aiming to raise $100,000 over the next one year for

• building a community of practice for data-powered advocacy that taps into global satellite data and community-created maps, ensuring access and inclusion for everyone differentially impacted by forest loss and climate change.

• produce collaterals demonstrating that carbon sequestration benefits are attributable to Indigenous and local conservation traditions (peer reviewed papers; workshop series in the region with local governments and civil society groups)