Project Summary: Describe your contribution in one sentence

We would like to return financial autonomy in the tourism industry back into the hands of the locals.

What are the additional countries or territories of impact?

Philliphina

Challenge Focus: What topic does your project most directly relate to?

Website URL(s) or social media handles

WEBSITE : www.antarbumi.com, https://setiaonebilliton.wixsite.com/budisetiawan/ FACEBOOK FANPAGE @antarbumi, Tarsius Center Indonesia, Budi Setiawan (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1205380165) INSTAGRAM @antarbumi , budisetiawan1487, LINKEDIN : BUMI, youtube : @jelajahalamnusantara1949 (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwxOS-wvaWCkpBcc4lZf8dQ)

The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve?

Although the growth of ecotourism and community based tourism, a type of tourism that centers on ecological conservation and community, has become one of the growing trends within the tourism industry, the practice still alienates local people from the sector. Currently, ecotourism contributes 35% of Indonesia's entire income from the tourism sector. Indonesia has many potential world-class ecotourism sites; however, many conflicts of interest remain a problem between the ecotourism businesses with local communities, especially about the benefits sharing and its accessibilities, let alone ownership of the business. Furthermore, the presence of ecotourism still contributes to negative impacts, both on the environment resources and on socio-cultural local values.

Apart from the tourism "service" industry, we also see that there are actually a lot of "products" owned by the community, which have high economic value and are very capable of increasing their welfare. However, due to weaknesses such as packaging, business licenses, market networks, production equipment, business management, their products can not develop properly. Whereas in this era, products with the concept of eco, green, environmentally friendly, based on local wisdom, their products are on the rise. And also the era of digitalization can actually make it easier to reach the market.

Your connection and commitment: How close are you to the problem and/or the community impacted?

I was born in 1976 on Belitung Island. Since the colonial period around the 1850s, Belitung was well known as a wealthy source of tin that triggered the development of a massive tin mining corporation. More than 50% of tin supply in the world coming from this island. As the mining activities increased, the environmental conditions on the island deteriorated at a fast rate. As a result, 80% of the mangrove forest in Belitung Coast was damaged and having a negative impact in the livelihoods of local fishermen.

In 1990, the palm oil company also comes to Belitung and open the huge palm oil plantation. With the wide of Belitung 122.970,50 ha, the palm oil plantation on data 2013 the coverage already 28.220,60 ha and the coverage of Belitung protected forest only 25.268,07 ha, smaller than the palm oil.

These conditions has caused tremendous changes in local culture event for farmers, fishermen and the people who depends their lives on the forest and ocean. Land for gardening, farming becomes difficult and also affected the watershed. Most of the river becomes dirty, full of cedimens as the rest of the mining as well as contamination by pesticides of oil palm plantations.

In the 2000s, as the needs of traveling rise, natural beauty of Belitung has invited many tourists to come . This condition invite also businessman and investors . Unfortunately, some of the investor who come, did not have social and environmental concerns, so they buy the islands and develop some facilities that not concern with the local habitat.. The living space of flora and fauna changed and become lost. Many islands that before used as nesting  for turtle become unsafe and moreover they catch the turtle and sell the eggs, so the presence of turtle which is endangered becoming increasingly scarce .

Your approach: How are you enabling other people to identify as green changemakers? How are you influencing them to get involved in your initiative or care about the issue you are addressing?

We have developed several strategies, such as:
- Building a movement by combining conservation, education and creating a productive economy (real examples) of each issues
- Building solutive approach, real movement combines advocacy, education, conservation and preparation of alternative livelihoods. With this model, movement becomes more real, the benefits are more pronounced, grounded and sustainable.
- Building networking in local, national and international level. It is also intended to build a bargain position facing the extraordinary environmental issues.
- Seizing management space and improving human resources.

As a sample, in the Kepayang Island, we empowered fisher communities to develop and own a community-based resort where it has an eco-lodge and a coral conservation and sea turtle conservation center. We worked with fisherfolks who conduct illegal fishing by bombing and using potassium to pay debts to loan sharks. To solve and change the mindset and illegal activities, we creates a strategy combines conservation, education, and creates alternative livelihood instead of implementing the law inforcement. 

As the results, the fishing communities set up a diving center and formed a collaborative diving tour guide community. The fisherfolk also developed a turtle hatchery in the island to conserve the population of sea turtles and developed a group to manage turtle conservation.

The community-based resort has triggered other community members to make their houses as homestays. Others opened restaurants as a business to supply meals for the incoming tourists. Those who have boats rent out water taxis. This community-based ecotourism has further opened job opportunities for guides, tourism companies, handicraft makers, car rental companies, and a host of other services.

Community involvement: How is your approach involving community participation, especially the historically marginalized groups?

To involving the community, the strategy is to make the community aware that the conservation is indeed the need of community instead of project, NGO, donor, or even government. Therefore understanding the character of community, developing suitable action plan, and updating the approach methods before start to socialize the project to community are crucial. We always ensure that all action plans must prioritize community in receiving the largest portion of benefit.

The empowerment processes include community visioning, conducting resource mapping and community-based ecotourism business plan development, trial simulation and evaluation, community dialogue with key stakeholders to share roles and implement the social business, including securing the location, and mobilizing partnership through investments. The community handles setting up the organizing team, building a network, improving their skills, and building a sense of community ownership including profit sharing. To increase the "trust of the community" we also "live in" together with the community.

On the decision making process, we always involving and heard the voice from the community since from the beginning process such as mapping the potencies, revitalization the local wisdom, make the action plan, structuring the team work and executing process.

Your Innovation: What is different about your initiative compared to other solutions already out there? How is your approach original and innovative? We are particularly interested in solutions that use regenerative approaches.

Amidst the current trend of ecotourism which is carried out with high capital investment by private companies and carried out in individual units within the community, we created a pattern of community-based ecotourism models owned by local and informal cooperatives where tourists have minimal impact on the environment and contribute to conservation practices. .

Some of the innovations we have developed include 1) combining tourism patterns with carbon issues (carbon calculations) and crowd funding through a digital application, 2) building a collaboration business model that combines angel investors, communities and institutions/people who care and 3) increasing community based tourism into the next level of tourism industry namely Community Resort, Community Dive Center and Village Hub.

We seek to transform the conventional way of traveling, and the tourism industry itself, into something that benefits, empowers and fair to the community and the environment. We would like to return financial autonomy in the tourism industry back into the hands of the locals.We harness the power of people and the planet and balance the interests of the community and the environment.

The alternative income streams from these models have made the community economically resilient. With this, we establish the practice of "social conglomerate" in Indonesia to protect the environment from further damage and society from harm. In practice, we not only reverse the concept of conglomerate, from the private sector to the social sector, but also ownership from private to collective community.

Founding Story: Share a story about the "Aha!" moment that led the founder(s) to get started or the story of how you saw the potential for this to succeed.

In 1997, when a monetary crisis occurred in Indonesia, it impacted also the economy on Belitung Island. The biggest tin mining companies declare "bankrupt" and as a result thousands of employees were dismissed. Termination of employment and weakness of entrepreneurial spirit, causing extraordinary social and economic crisis. As a further impact, child prostitution increases, many children must quit school and college.

This situation triggered me to take concrete action on how to make the community not always depend on tin mining and be able to create other alternative livelihoods.

On 5th November 1997, I built an environmental NGO focused on environment named KPLB which was later upgraded in 2019 to the Tarsius Center Indonesia Foundation and Antar Bumi.

We have program called "From Ridge to Reef" and succeeded in building various conservation, education and productive economies, amidst the various limitations. This platform in 2015 received Equator Prize award from the United Nations in Paris France during the COP 21. In 2019, our ecotourism development model also won the global award "Tourism for Tomorrow Award" from the highest institution of the World Tourism World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) in Spain.

This success rising our confidents to upgrade, upscale, replicate out initiative more wider to help the community optimize their potencies and level of management business.

Impact: How has your project made a difference so far? How is it contributing to a zero-carbon world- where every person thrives, and nobody gets left behind?

Our integrated approach to landscape-level conservation and livelihood development offer a powerful mechanism to deliver benefits across the 2030 Agenda for SDG's.

Our activities has effectively created many programs that balance environmental protection with ecotourism, including Kepayang Island Conservation Center; Mendanau Mangrove Conservation Center; and Batu Mentas Nature Reserve and Tarsius Sanctuary. Scuba diving, jungle treks, river tubing, tarsius expeditions, mangrove tours, homestays, fishing tours, and boat rentals all are run by and directly benefit the local population.

We also success advocated  the designation of a 20,000-hectare marine conservation zone that includes no-take and sustainable fishing zones as well as five island turtle conservation areas, where more than 40,000 baby turtles have been released, more than 45,000 mangrove trees have been replanted, more than 10.000 coral transplantation planted in damage corals.

Established Belitung Forestry Park on 20 hectares of abandoned, mined land to serve as a model for forest restoration and conservation and founded a 16-hectare biodiversity garden to preserve Belitung’s endangered flora.

Established the four-hectare Batu Mentas Nature Reserve and Tarsius Sanctuary to educate the public about conservation of the endangered Belitung Island Tarsier, and more than 20.000 students involved in education program.

 

What’s Next: What are your ideas for taking your project to the next level?

In our community-based ecotourism development business plan, our vision is "to work to build Indonesia by cultivating Ecotourism throughout the nation and deliver proportional justice to communities and the environment for now and coming future". And our mission is "help travelers turn themselves into agents of change, return financial autonomy back into the hands of the locals, realize fair social equality for women in rural areas, and cultivate a realistic and replicable Community Based Ecotourism solution model".

And our timeline target listed in our business plan, we divide 4 development phases, namely problem mapping, blueprint & prototyping, scaling up and sustainability phase. The first two phases have been completed and since 2022 we have entered the scaling up phase. In this phase we are targeting to build 8 community-based ecotourism destinations in Indonesia, completing digital applications that combine tourism, carbon calculation and crowdfunding, and develop sustainability standards that refer to the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) standards.

However, this achievement was hampered by Covid-19 so that in 2023 this will be resumed.

To optimize the products owned by the community, we have also built a company called Antar Bumi (www.antarbumi.com) which focuses on collaborative strategic plans, impact measurement, program development and knowledge management.

Your team: What is the current composition of your team (types of roles, qualifications, full-time vs. part-time, board members, etc.), and how do you plan to evolve the team’s composition as the project grows?

We have a solid team with a great experience and background, which are : Budi Setiawan (Senior Advisor, Pioneer and expert in Natural resources management and inclusive business. The winner of Equator Prize Award 2015 from UNDP and Tourism for Tomorrow Award 2019 from WTTC), Ade Afrilian S (Master of sustainability management, an expert for social entrepreneurship, natural resources management and sustainable livelihood), Sendi Kenia (Expert in anthropological study and passionate in community development, rural area and ethnicity observation), Suluh Gembyeng (lecturer and researcher of communication studies. Specialized in media studies, media analyst, journalism, and cultural studies) and Ni Nyoman Sri Natih (is an anthropologist who is involved in many social and cultural research related to gender, tourism and development).

 

Operational Sustainability Plan: What is this solution’s plan to ensure operational sustainability.

Sustainability is a must and part of our commitment when we create an activity. And one of the keys is that the project must be successful and profitable. Therefore, in making an activity, we always make sure about the business plan and project with various alternative strategies and plans.

In the timeline of our community-based ecotourism development business plan, we clearly place sustainability and innovation as the final phase. This is intended to ensure that the project being executed does not stop when the project is finished, but must continue and even larger and replicable.

And we are grateful that in our track record of ecotourism development as well as the conservation, education and community empowerment programs that we carry out, this aspect of sustainability can always be implemented.

VIDEO: Please share the link to a 1-minute YouTube video that answers the following “I identify as a Green Changemaker because...”. Ensure that your video does not exceed 60 seconds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgln5-N9H9M

Impact Model: While reviewing applications, we identified a need to better understand the impact models for the innovations that applied. How would you describe the activities you engage in and what outcomes and long-term impact do they lead to?

For almost 22 years, we have worked and seen many challenges that have not been properly solved, especially ones often found in the tourism industry.

As tourism grew, it was inevitable that local wisdom, society's simplicity, gender equality, daily life, uniqueness of flora fauna, and beauty of nature, often got exploited as tourist attractions, and travel providers’ contribution to help develop the local community and the environment was somewhat unfair and indifferent. Nature and local community were mere spectable and were, sadly, perceived as worthless in the tourism industry, thus, Angel Traveler as our branding was born.

We have vision to work to build Indonesia by cultivating Ecotourism throughout the nation and deliver proportional justice to communities and environment. We would like to return financial autonomy in tourism industry back into the hands of the locals. Community become owner and could compete head to head with industry.

Our innovation strategy are

1. Develop “Collaboration” BUSINESS MODEL connecting Angel Investor, Community and good people.
2. Improve Commmunty Based Tourism into next level in Tourism Industry. We develop Community Resort, Community Dive Center and Village Hub. We seeks to build CBT into the next level which ownership, management and profit will be handled by the communities.
3. APP DEVELOPMENT. In this app there are info about destination and tour (inc. Zero Carbon Trip), Carbon calculation, and crowdfunding to develop new destination.

We already success creates pilot project, business model, development strategy which are combining technology, zero carbon issues, fair trade, inclusive business, circular economy, based on global sustainable tourism standard, guarding the local wisdom and conserve the nature. And we want to replicate it more.

Audience: Who are you most directly impacting through your work? Who is the target beneficiary? Please specify if the population you are reaching is underserved due to any of the following characteristics?

If you chose the "Other" option, please specify

Local community, local tribe,

How are you activating green changemakers?

If you chose the "Other" option, please specify

 

Organization Type: Which organization type best describes how your work or initiative has been organized or registered?

Hybrid

Tell us briefly about how you have and/ or would like to engage partners or other changemakers to enhance your approach:

We also call our movement "Social Conglomerate", meaning how we develop ecotourism destinations that are owned by local communities in many places under the umbrella of the mentoring concept and business model that we have developed.

Referring to business plan that we built, the development target for next 2 years is 20 new destinations. This means to achieve that, more team support is needed to increase capacity, mentoring, strengthen governance and business, build market networks. And building collaborations with  green changemakers fellow and others who of course already have good capacity and experience, will be very helpful, and we will definitely build and maximize it.

Beside voluntary involvement, in our business model we also build investment schemes for good people who want to be involved in development community based ecotourism. Investments can be in the form of money, management assistance, technology or skills which will later be converted into shares or a profit sharing system.

We are trying to build a mindset to community that community-based business development is actually the same as how the private sector builds a business, that is, if you want it to be sucsess, profitable, and sustainable, you must have a good, strong, measurable business plan accompanied by a strong and solid commitment. And thats the key.

Annual budget: Hint: What is the cost for your current operations every year (or most recent year)? This is expenditure for your project or organization. The reference currency is the U.S. dollar.

$10k - $50k

Winning Impact Potential: How would winning the Green Changemakers Challenge impact and leverage your work?

Back to our mission “To work to build Indonesia by cultivating Ecotourism throughout the nation and deliver proportional justice to communities and the environment for now and the coming future”, winning the prize means a huge speed up to replicate and upscale our success story in other place. And offcourse a Jackpot to solve our weakness sofar. Lack of funding.

In our timeline, it is our phase to replicate, create sustainability & Innovation.

Taking account on our target calculation to create 20 new destination within 2 years, if 1 new destination empower 26 individual directly, we are at least empowering 520 individuals .

Based on our experience developing 2 community based ecotourism destination in Belitung, our entire activities have generated various beneficiaries:

• 10 villages which are 5 villages in the mainland of Belitung and 5 villages in the separate small island in Belitung
• 57 homestays
• 47 traditional fisherman diving guides
• 165 students doing research from various universities from Bandung, Jogjakarta, Jakarta, and Bogor.
• Research institutions, from local, national and international
• Belitung Tourism Service Institution (L2PB) with members of 32 institution and business units such as travel agent, restaurant entrepreneurs, tourism guide, hotel entrepreneur, rental service provider for car and boat, diving operator, homestay entrepreneurs, souvenir entrepreneurs, …

Skills Matching: If you win, you may have the opportunity to be matched with HSBC employees for skill-based mentorship. If matched, which of the following skills would you be most interested in receiving?

Web/Mobile Development