About

The Sustainable Village Project aims to work with the inhabitants of the village of Pematang Kabau in the province of Jambi in Central Sumatra to find and implement more sustainable development paths for local land use. As in many parts of Jambi province, the landscape around Pematang Kabau is dominated by extensive and steadily growing oil palm plantations. The boom in oil palm cultivation has significantly improved the income and standard of living of smallholder households in the region. At the same time, however, it has also led to the irretrievable loss of much of the original biodiversity of the lowland rainforests. In addition, important ecological functions such as carbon storage, water holding capacity and soil fertility have been severely impaired.

In order to achieve a more sustainable development in the rural region, measures must be taken that are suitable to reconcile economic prosperity, socio-cultural concerns and regeneration of ecological functions and biodiversity.

The project is a collaboration of the Collaborative Research Centre EFForTS "Ecological and socio-economic functions of tropical lowland rainforest transformation systems" of the Georg-August-University Göttingen and documenta 15 (duration: 2022 to 2027).