GC Collaborator Farwiza Farhan Honored in TIME 100

Farwiza Farhan, GC collaborator, was recently honored as one of this year’s TIME 100 Impact Award Honorees. Farwiza is the co-founder of Forest, Nature and Environment of Aceh (HAkA), an NGO that aims to create long-term sustainability around the Leuser Ecosystem on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The annual TIME 100 awards recognize global leaders who have gone above and beyond to move their industries—and the world—forward.

“A lot of the species that exist in Indonesia are irreplaceable, and when we lose them, we will lose them forever,” Farhan told TIME.

Farwiza and her colleagues established HAkA in 2013 with a vision and mission to conserve the Leuser Ecosystem for a better, sustainable future for Aceh, Indonesia and the world. HAkA works closely with FKL (Leuser Conservation Forum), other local organizations and communities to reverse deforestation, prevent poaching as well as minimizing human and animal conflicts. HAkA is the leading authority on deforestation monitoring in the Leuser Ecosystem in Aceh, using credible and cutting-edge remote sensing tools (e.g., LANDSAT 8 from NASA, SENTINEL 2 from ESA, Planet.com, and GFW Glad Alerts).

The Leuser Ecosystem spans 2.6 million hectares (6 million acres), almost three times the size of Yellowstone National Park, and is the last place left on earth where tigers, elephants, orangutans, and rhinos live together in the wild. Its diverse landscape includes lowland and montane rainforests, nine rivers, three lakes, and over 185,000 hectares of carbon-rich peatlands. One of the last remaining intact rainforests in all of Indonesia, it is a crucial source of clean drinking water and agricultural livelihoods for over four million people.

Leuser is highly endangered, with threats accelerating since the end of the Acehnese rebellion and civil war. Post-war stability is bringing rapid invasion of commercial interests in palm oil, rubber, and logging, with companies legally and illegally deforesting the Leuser Ecosystem at astounding rates.

We are immensely proud to be working with Farwiza to protect the Leuser Ecosystem!