As COVID-19 disrupted rural economies, communities living near protected rainforests faced rising uncertainty about jobs, health and basic needs. A new study in The Lancet Planetary Health shows that when communities were supported by health and livelihood programs that they designed with local nongovernment organizations, both people and ecosystems were more resilient.

“Before the pandemic, forest loss was declining in protected areas where neighboring communities partnered with NGOs. Those communities were less dependent on illegal logging for cash income,” said Skylar Hopkins, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University and the lead author for the new study. “As the pandemic started, we expected economic hardships to cause illegal logging to increase again.”

The researchers surveyed more than 1,000 households in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, to understand communities’ experiences and logging activity in six villages with NGO-affiliated support programs and four unaffiliated villages. All communities shared that the pandemic had been a major economic shock, where half of households lost income or jobs, struggled with increased costs of basic goods, or both.

“Coastal communities were heavily impacted by the global fisheries crash. Fuel costs for boats increased at the same time that fish were suddenly worth less,” said Iwi Sartika, director of program implementation with NGO Yayasan Planet Indonesia.

Yet satellite data from 28 affiliated and 698 unaffiliated villages revealed that forest loss declined by an average of 39 percent across the region after the pandemic was declared in March 2020. This contrasts with researchers’ predictions and rising trends in rainforest loss seen in other countries, such as Brazil and Ecuador, during the pandemic.

Surprisingly, sickness and health spending did not increase forest loss during the pandemic.

“Only 2% of households reported illness or health spending as a major challenge during the pandemic,” said Sakib Burza, chief of health and innovation at NGO Health In Harmony.

Forest loss also declined because many households that had urgent needs for cash incomes simply could not use logging to support their needs. “Illegal logging was not feasible or cost-effective due to strict pandemic travel restrictions and heavy precipitation in 2020 and 2021, which made it difficult to log in steep rainforest terrain. In unaffiliated villages, deforestation rates also rose and fell with the global timber market, which crashed in early 2020,” reported Ashley Hazel from UC San Francisco, the lead social scientist on the project.

Although all communities experienced the economic shock, it was buffered for communities with NGO-affiliated health and livelihood support. Those communities had more sources of external support to help them during difficult times, such as community loan programs.

“Many community members reported struggling to keep up with rising costs of pesticides and fertilizers, but less so in villages where communities had designed organic farming training support programs,” said Nur Febriani, director of partnerships for the NGO ASRI.

Before the pandemic, rates of forest loss were 52% lower in communities with NGO support than unaffiliated communities. During the early pandemic, the difference grew to 68%.

“COVID-19 is just one example of local and global disruptions creating challenges for health and conservation,” said Giulio De Leo, a professor from Stanford University. “Our research shows that investing in health and livelihood solutions designed by communities can build resilience for both people and ecosystems.”

More than 20 researchers from the United States and Indonesia conducted the study. The interdisciplinary team included academic researchers (North Carolina State University; Stanford University; University of California, San Francisco; IPB University; University of California, Santa Barbara; London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) and practitioners at NGOs (Yayasan Planet Indonesia, Alam Sehat Lestari, Health In Harmony).

The research was funded by the Packard Foundation, under grant #2020-70906, and the National Geographic Society, under grant number NGS-91292R-21.