Philip Jacobson, Jakarta – Environmental experts and activists have slammed plans for carbon and tourism projects in an Indonesian park that's home to critically endangered tigers, rhinos and elephants.
The government has framed the proposed rezoning of half of the core area of Way Kambas National Park for carbon trading and luxury tourism as a way to raise money for ecosystem restoration. But critics contend it could actually harm wildlife in one of Sumatra's most important remaining habitats.
"If the reason for reducing the core zone is to increase the utilization zone for business, that's not appropriate," Indonesian ecologist Wishnu Sukmantoro, a member of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, told Mongabay.
He added that such a move could undermine Indonesia's credibility in international conservation forums.
Announced last year, the proposed rezoning would more than halve the park's strictly protected core area from 59,935 to 27,661 hectares (148,103 to 68,352 acres), while expanding its utilization zone nearly tenfold from 3,934 to 32,091 hectares (9,721 to 79,299 acres), according to a Ministry of Forestry document seen by Mongabay. The core zone, now a largely continuous block, would be split into three separate sections.
The changes would affect areas including Wako, Way Kanan and Sekapuk, which conservationists say still support key wildlife and functional habitat, even as some parts of the park have been degraded by decades of illegal logging.
The Wako-Way Kanan landscape also forms part of the historical range of the critically endangered Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis), though the exact number persisting there today is uncertain.
U.S. lobbying for carbon trading
President Prabowo Subianto's administration has said it envisions Way Kambas serving as a "pilot" for carbon trading and ecotourism in national parks, part of a broader initiative to generate revenue from national parks to fund their conservation.
The president laid the legal groundwork last October, when he issued a regulation that opened up protected areas to carbon trading. He also announced the creation of a new task force to innovate financing and management of national parks.
"Our national parks have become cost centers. They are an expense, not a profit center," Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni, who serves as a deputy on the new task force, told journalists on March 12.
"We will seek innovative and sustainable funding, including involving the private sector, so that our national parks will become world-class," the minister added.
Way Kambas will be one of three trial sites for the new self-financing scheme, Raja said. In a speech in Jakarta last October, he said Way Kambas had the potential to become a "conservation tourism icon."
Investigative magazine Tempo reported in February that the Way Kambas carbon and tourism projects to will be run by former U.S. diplomat Karen Brooks, who served in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Brooks met directly with President Prabowo and lobbied him to legalize carbon trading in national parks and rezone parts of Way Kambas, Tempo wrote.
Researchers surveyed three forests in Sumatra for signs of Sumatran rhinos: Leuser Landscape, Way Kambas National Park and Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park. Map courtesy of Wulan Pusparini.
National parks as revenue generators
The plans come to light as Indonesia seeks to become one of the world's biggest suppliers of carbon credits.
So far, though, it has struggled to get its ambitions off the ground. While the government touted $1 billion worth of carbon credits last November at the U.N. climate summit in Brazil, fewer than 2.8 million carbon credits out of 90 million on offer ended up being sold. Observers have questioned whether the Prabowo administration is truly committed to protecting the nation's forests amid a recent increase in deforestation.
In Way Kambas, the government has argued that carbon credits will bring in badly needed funds to support conservation in the park, which park authorities say is home to some 160-200 wild Sumatran elephants (Elephas maximus sumatranus), a critically endangered species.
Indonesia's national parks and conservation areas are notoriously underfunded, and Way Kambas is no exception. In 2021, the park's management authority had a budget allocation of just 34 billion rupiah ($2 million) and a total spend of roughly 21.8 billion rupiah ($1.3 million), according to forestry ministry documents.
Across the 125,000-hectare (309,000-acre) park, that amounts to roughly $10-$11 per hectare, or about $4 per acre. The forestry ministry published a document in 2016 that placed national park funding needs at $18.60 per hectare ($7.50 per acre) per year. Way Kambas struggles to pay for field patrols, habitat restoration, conflict mitigation, infrastructure, and long-term operational capacity, according to Riri Fitriandi, a spokesperson for the park agency.
This has led to encroachment around the park, a common issue in Indonesia.
"In general, the management needs of an area as large and complex as the Way Kambas National Park are always greater than the availability of routine budget allocations," Riri told Mongabay.
Officials say about 43,780 hectares of the park – nearly a third of its total area – have been harmed by wildfires, invasive plants such as Malabar melastome (Melastoma malabathricum) and cajuput (Melaleuca cajuputi), and wildlife poaching.
Some of these degraded lands fall within the current core zone. Now, the forestry ministry says it wants to use carbon credits to raise funds to restore these areas through invasive species removal and tree planting.
Depending on carbon prices and project size, forest carbon projects can generate millions of dollars annually, though precise revenue projections for Way Kambas have not been publicly disclosed. A forestry ministry document obtained by Tempo says there's 31 million tons of CO2 equivalent in Way Kambas. At 99,000 rupiah ($5.80) per metric ton, the price that Indonesia has sold carbon credits to Norway, the the carbon value of Way Kambas would be 3.1 trillion rupiah ($183 million).
Carbon vs. elephants
Ahmad Munawir, the ministry's director of conservation area planning, has said the rezoning is not meant to open up new areas for logging. The plan, he said, incentivizes keeping the forest standing so that carbon credits can be sold.
Conservationists, however, warn that the design of carbon projects can conflict with the ecological needs of large herbivores.
In Way Kambas, many of the areas targeted for reforestation are grasslands dominated by cogon grass (Imperata cylindrica), which a 2025 study identified as a major component of the Sumatran elephant diet. But carbon credit methodologies often reward high-density tree planting to maximize measurable carbon gains, said Wishnu, the elephant ecologist. Converting these open habitats into dense, closed-canopy forest could reduce forage availability and push elephants to seek food outside the park, increasing human-wildlife conflict, he said.
"Elephants tend to use young secondary forest and more open areas," Wishnu told Mongabay. "If the forest becomes too dense, it actually eliminates their food."
Ecologists also caution that tree planting isn't automatically beneficial for every landscape. Grasslands and savannas can store substantial amounts of carbon belowground, while supporting species adapted to open habitats. In such ecosystems, adding trees may boost aboveground biomass but doesn't always translate into proportional gains in total ecosystem carbon storage.
Scientists say restoration strategies should match the historical and ecological character of a site, rather than assuming that more trees necessarily mean greater climate or biodiversity benefits.
Even when labeled for restoration, utilization zones allow more infrastructure, monitoring activities and human presence than core zones. That can reduce the effective roaming space for wide-ranging species such as elephants and tigers, said Irfan Tri Musri, director of the Lampung chapter of the Indonesian Forum for Environment (Walhi), the country's largest environmental advocacy group.
"That increases the risk of elephants moving outside the park," he told Mongabay.
"If the goal is conservation, why not plant elephant food in the utilization zone or design an ecosystem cycle that supports their food supply?"
The areas slated for reclassification are considered ecologically important. Wako is known as an elephant range, while Way Kanan and surrounding wetlands support waterbirds such as white-winged ducks and milky storks.
Historically, the same landscape has been associated with the last rhino occurrences in the park, though current data are limited.
Conservation scientists note that maintaining connectivity between habitat blocks is critical for wide-ranging mammals. Any zoning changes that alter the continuity of strictly protected areas could influence how species move across the landscape, depending on how the revised zones are managed.
Tourism proposal and access
On the tourism front, Hari Kaskoyo of the University of Lampung, a member of the project team, told Tempo that the plan involves a small number of high-end lodges and a helipad to transport visitors.
The concept, he said, draws on premium, low-volume tourism models used in parts of Africa, and could generate conservation funding. He added that local residents could benefit by providing transport and services, with visitors paying as much as $14,000 per night to stay at a luxury resort.
Hari did not respond to emailed questions from Mongabay. Critics argue that this kind of exclusive tourism has historically delivered limited benefits to surrounding communities and risks undercutting existing community-based ecotourism such as homestays.
"Conservation will only be able to be accessed by the wealthy," Walhi's Irfan said.
Some conservationists also question whether tourism should be prioritized ahead of long-standing problems such as encroachment and human-elephant conflict.
"If conflict continues, what's the point [of establishing premium tourism]? The most important thing is handling the conflict," Wishnu said.
Without addressing the park's underlying problems, tourism could simply expose governance failures and discourage visitors, he added.
"If a resort is built, tourists may see captive elephants, but the problem of elephants entering villages and plantations will still happen," Wishnu said. "That would be embarrassing."
To solve human-elephant conflict, the government should provide better protection for elephant habitat and improve its quality through habitat engineering such as creating lakes or water channels to provide water for the wildlife, Wishnu said.
Jeffrey Chatellier, a conservation scientist and CEO of Forest Carbon, a forest restoration and conservation company with offices in Jakarta and Singapore and several carbon projects in Indonesia, said the kind of premium tourism envisioned by the government for Way Kambas is something that could help protect national parks by changing local communities' perceptions of land value.
"It will be really a good thing, because if there's no tourism coming to national parks, it's considered as not something of value," he told Mongabay. "Communities say no one coming here for tourism, so why can't we build farms on the edges of the parks? That creates conflict with the elephant population."
Chatellier cites Tesso Nilo National Park, in Sumatra's Riau province, as a cautionary tale. The park has been widely taken over by farms and its land cleared for illegal oil palm plantations, despite its protected status.
If the Way Kambas tourism project is implemented by a private company with a strong track record in biodiversity-rich areas, the park has the potential to become "a flagship tropical rainforest safari destination," Chatellier said.
However, replicating safari experiences like those in Rwanda with mountain gorillas may be more challenging in Sumatra, he said.
"It's harder to spot animals like tigers. It's almost impossible to spot them," Chatellier said. "So it's about finding a happy medium of getting revenues but not beyond the reach of the big segment of the market."Way Kambas National Park in southern Sumatra is one of the last remaining areas inhabited by wild Sumatran rhinos. Photo by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
A question of governance
For conservation scientists, the central issue is not whether restoration or new funding mechanisms are needed, but how they're implemented.
Aida Greenbury, a sustainability expert who sits on the advisory board of the World Bioeconomy Forum, said any rezoning should be preceded by proper public consultation and the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of affected communities. (Greenbury also sits on Mongabay's advisory council.)
"Given its national significance, has the national public consultation and FPIC with local communities been conducted? Proper FPIC is essential for a high-integrity carbon project," Greenbury said. "These consultations and consents must precede any changes or project proposals."
Irfan said the government held a public consultation on the rezoning plan at a hotel in Lampung, the closest major city to Way Kambas, on Dec. 12, 2025. However, he said Walhi and other NGOs critical of the plan were not invited.
Instead, the consultation included only organizations that already have projects inside the park, which Irfan said raised concerns about whether the process allowed for meaningful participation.
"There was no meaningful participation in the rezoning process," he said.
Greenbury also emphasized the importance of transparency about how carbon revenues would be used.
"We need to know how much of the carbon sale proceeds will be returned to the forest and local communities, and who the buyers are," she said.
Likewise, Chatellier said a high level of transparency is essential for carbon projects, along with continuous monitoring, environmental risk planning and community grievance systems.
Having these components in place would add transparency to how national parks are managed and how local communities are engaged and incorporated into park management, he said.
Some studies have raised concerns about the integrity of rainforest carbon offsets. A 2023 investigation by journalists and researchers found that many projects certified by Verra, the industry's leading carbon credit certifier, may have overstated their climate benefits, a finding the organization disputes.
Without proper public consultations and transparency, carbon credits from Way Kambas could risk being used to offset emissions from large fossil fuel producers without delivering meaningful conservation benefits, Greenbury warned.
"We need to be careful here – Way Kambas is a national asset," she said. "Additionally, significant portions of carbon project funding are reportedly consumed by intermediary developers and transaction costs rather than benefiting forests and local communities. This cannot happen."