Background

Borneo, one of Earth’s oldest and most biodiverse rainforests, is central to WWF’s Tropical Forest Conservation Priorities. Yet only 63% of its forest cover remains, and just half is intact (Gaveau et al., 2023). Decades of deforestation, forest degradation, resource extraction, infrastructure expansion, and governance gaps have fragmented ecosystems, threatening wildlife, ecosystem services, and local livelihoods. The Reconnect Borneo Initiative aims to restore landscape-scale ecological connectivity and strengthen transboundary collaboration to secure biodiversity, climate resilience, and sustainable livelihoods across Indonesia and Malaysia.

Problem Statement – Why Reconnect Borneo

There have been diligent efforts by a range of public and private groups to conserve forests and support local communities in Borneo. Heart of Borneo, an initiative led by the Governments of Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia and Malaysia to conserve a 22 millionhectare transboundary rainforest region in the island’s interior, was one of the most prominent initiatives back in 2007. However, despite the above efforts, Borneo’s ecological networks—vital for wildlife movement, climate regulation, and livelihoods— are rapidly degrading. The island has lost over 18 million ha of forest since 1973 (Gaveau et al., 2023), and habitats for 245 bird and mammal species have shrunk by 28% with 35% loss in functional connectivity (Struebig et al., 2020). Planned projects like the PanBorneo Highway and major dams could remove up to 40% of accessible wildlife habitat (Alamgir et al., 2019). Fragmentation disrupts species migration, carbon storage, and water regulation. Without coordinated, cross-border action that integrates spatial planning, governance reform, and sustainable finance, Borneo risks losing its ecological and economic resilience.

Priority Corridors

Core high-value ecosystems1 cover 35.4 million hectares, requiring 13.1 million hectares of corridors to maintain connectivity.2 Out of Borneo’s 35.4 million hectares of core high-value ecosystems, approximately 6.75 million hectares are currently under some form of legal protection (national parks, reserves, or conservation areas). This means just under half of these critical ecosystems are safeguarded, while the remainder remains vulnerable to deforestation, degradation, and unsustainable land use. WWF technical feasibility work, including habitat suitability modelling, identified 97 core zones and 135 corridors across Borneo (88 in Kalimantan, 27 in Sabah, 20 in Sarawak), later refined to about 155 covering over 13 million hectares with potential to reconnect habitats for orangutans, elephants, and rhinos. In Kalimantan alone, 2 million ha of corridors—60% still under natural forest—store 192 million tonnes of carbon. Restoring 180,000 ha of priority corridors could increase carbon stocks by 2 million tonnes over five years. Only 8% of these corridors lie in protected areas; most overlap with forestry or plantation concessions, underscoring the need for cross-sectoral collaboration.

The Opportunity: Nature and Climate Finance

Today, unprecedented levels of public and private capital are available for carbon, nature, and forest finance. Mechanisms such as the Tropical Forest Finance Facility (TFFF) and other blended finance models can be secured, combined, and sequenced to unlock transformative investment. Multilateral development banks, global investors, and companies are increasingly motivated by regulatory drivers such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and corporate net-zero commitments. This convergence of finance and policy interest creates a unique window to bend the curve on deforestation, restoring, protecting, and improving the management of Borneo’s forests while advancing sustainable livelihoods for local communities and Indigenous Peoples.

Vision and Theory of Change

Vision: By 2030, Borneo’s forests and landscapes are ecologically connected across borders, sustaining biodiversity, ecosystem services, and resilient livelihoods for Indigenous and local communities.

Theory of Change: the urgency of Now If we prioritize decisive action today, securing ecological corridors, embedding inclusive governance, and mobilizing sustainable finance through approaches such as WWF’s Landscape Finance model, we can achieve outcomes by 2030 that have never before been realized in Borneo.

• Governments align policies and spatial plans to ensure connectivity across borders and landscapes.
• Communities gain secured tenure and equitable benefits, strengthening their role as forest stewards.
• Private and financial sectors adopt deforestation-free, mature positive agriculture models that channel capital into restoration, leveraging blended finance and landscapelevel investment strategies.

Scope of Work

• Develop an overarching Financial Strategy of Reconnect Borneo
• Identify critical funding gaps
• Assess landscape specific context
• Identify financial solutions at scale to fill the funding gap
• Prioritize and shortlist up to 5 key nature financing mechanisms
• Develop a clear action/implementation roadmap of the key shortlisted nature financing models tailored to the Reconnect Borneo Initiative

How to apply Please

prepare and submit a comprehensive technical proposal addressing the Scope of Work outlined above. The proposal should include:

• A detailed approach on methodology
• A detailed timeline for delivery
• A full budget breakdown
• Curriculum Vitae of the proposed team members
• Concrete evidence and a proven track record in designing and implementing nature-finance mechanisms.
• The completed proposal must be sent to mmarinellI@wwfint.org no later than 12 December.