By Dora Jok and Cristina Eghenter
Products from the Borneo highlands will be marketed using ‘Green and Fair Products’ (GFP) branding for the first time in July 2010. This follows a GFP workshop organized by WWF in collaboration with Forum Masyarakat Adat (FORMADAT). The workshop, 25 to 26 March, in Ba Kelalan, in the Sarawak highlands in the HoB, attracted 26 participants from the area. Participants identified three main products to develop and market as Green and Fair.
One of the products, adan rice, is planted by communities in Krayan, Ba Kelalan, Bario and Long Pasia. This is an original, local variety from the Highlands in the Heart of Borneo. The adan rice comes in white, black, and red varieties. The community also seeks recognition of collective Intellectual Property Rights for the rice as a product of the Indigenous Peoples of the Highlands of Borneo.
Other products to use the GFP branding are mountain salt and wild cinnamon. The GFP initiative aims to promote and market products from conservation landscapes by adding value and targeting increasingly knowledgeable and socially responsible consumers. GFP emphasises sustainability and the three “E’s” of environment, economy and equity.
The initiative has the potential to be adopted in other areas and by offices to magnify its impact and effectiveness, as evidenced by the current collaboration with WWF-Malaysia under the HoB Initiative. The move will also help promote areas in the highlands for potential tourism purposes.
This Green and Fair Workshop was timely for the participants and also for WWF to guide them through the process. All participants agreed the workshop had futher enhanced the working relationship between WWF (both Malaysia and Indonesia) and FORMADAT.
Sustainable use and sale of forest products and other natural resources with market potential can become a conservation measure and help protect significant biodiversity while fulfilling essential economic needs and affording good livelihoods to the communities living in and around conservation areas.
As one of the participants mentioned in the evaluation questionnaire: “It is about time that our local products were produced and processed into ‘green’ products to enhance their value in the market.”
Participants of the workshop are to come to a common consensus on packaging, branding and documentation of products. These products will be first marketed under the GFP Green and Fair brand at the World Rainforest Music Festival in Kuching, July 2010.
For more information contact:
Dora Jok,e-mail: dorajok@gmail.com or
Cristina Eghenter, e-mail: awing@samarinda.org