Our team is interested in investigating the possible links between basic income, biodiversity conservation and climate change. The aim is to explore a new and doable approach that can address the social and environmental challenges associated with climate change and biodiversity loss.

Basic Income, Climate Change Mitigation and Biodiversity Conservation in Indonesia

We are specifically looking at Indonesia’s potential to contribute to climate change mitigation through the protection of carbon stocks within its forests in Indonesian New Guinea (Tanah Papua). The survival of these extraordinarily biodiverse forests is not only vital for its inhabitants but also of global importance in that these forests act as natural carbon stores. The region therefore deserves our special attention. In order to encourage and incentivize sustainable use of forest resources while at the same time opening up alternative development pathways, tailormade financial mechanisms are needed for the inhabitants of this region. In this context, basic income could play a central role in enabling such sustainable management of the forest.

The Basic Income approach in Tanah Papua

The Basic Income Lab at the Research Center for Climate Change at the University of Indonesia (RCCC UI) has developed a feasible/practicable concept of a basic income scheme that is linked to nature conservation. The scheme is based on mobilizing financial resources generated by putting a value on the existing forest carbon stocks and then distributing this as dividends via a so-called “Forest Carbon Dividend” (FCD).  This aims to provide a regular payment of dividend in the form of cash to all qualified residents in the Papua and West Papua Provinces. We believe that a basic income scheme such as this would incentivize sustainable forest management and reward the local people for conserving one of the world’s most important forests. Such a scheme could also contribute to the development of a social protection infrastructure in Tanah Papua, where the poverty rate is the highest in Indonesia.

How FRIBIS contributes

BINC is a joint initiative between FRIBIS and RCCC UI and gets support from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). Further research on the basic income scheme will be done within FRIBIS to explore the feasibility of FCD in Tanah Papua and its possible impact on various aspects of social and personal life. FRIBIS provides scientific expertise, financial support as well as facilitating advocacy and policy dialogue of the proposed basic income scheme at the international level. The long-term goal of the project would be to implement a multi-year basic income pilot project on an appropriate scale in one of the districts in Tanah Papua.

Learn more about Basic Income for Nature and Climate here:

• Mumbunan S., Maitri, N.M.R., Tazkiana, D., Prasojo, A., Sihite, F., Nabella, D.M. (2021). Basic Income for Nature and Climate. On the first Basic Income proposal to conserve nature and combat climate change on the largest tropical island on Earth. Depok: Research Center for Climate Change Universitas Indonesia. (ISBN 978-602-60534-3).
• Schmidt-Pramov, F. (2021). A basic income for nature and climate in Tanah Papua. Berlin: GIZ. (Policy Brief).
• A webinar on the launching of the first Basic Income for Nature and Climate report and dissemination of findings can be found here [videos available in Indonesian only].

Gudrun Kaufmann
studied economics at the University of Freiburg and was the managing director of FRIBIS. She is the coordinator of the “Sanctions-Free” and “Tanah Papua Basic Income for Climate and Nature (Indonesia)” teams. The latter is still being established. Her main interests are: narratives in economics, care economics, commons, and social policy in the tradition of the Ordoliberal Freiburg School.

Niharika Jaokar
is currently studying economics (M.Sc.) at the University of Freiburg. She is a team coordinator of the “Basic Income for Nature and Climate” (BINC) Team and a member of the “Social Contract and New Ordoliberalism” (SoCoBis) Team. She is working as a research assistant at FRIBIS. She supports the teams SoCoBis and WEF_FABI in coding Social Contract Laboratory experiments (z-Tree) and provides additional support for other teams in their experiments.
Lives in Freiburg i.Br., Germany.

Contact: niharika.jaokar@fribis.uni-freiburg.de

Fabian Schmidt-Pramov
worked for many years in Germany and abroad with the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) as a policy advisor in the field of mobilizing finance for forest and climate protection. He is co-founder of the consulting firm “Amsel & Ara” and the nature-tech startup “biometrio.earth”. He has an extensive expertise in forests and climate change, nature-based solutions, deforestation-free supply chains, REDD+, carbon markets and forest finance with work experience in Peru, Costa Rica, Panama and Indonesia. Fabian holds an M.Sc. in Tropical Forestry and Management from the University of Dresden.
He lives in Bremen, Germany.

Robert Fletcher
is Associate Professor in the Sociology of Development and Change group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He is an environmental anthropologist with research interests in conservation, development, ecotourism, globalization, climate change, social and resistance movements, and non-state forms of governance. He uses a political ecology approach to explore how culturally-specific understandings of human-nonhuman relations and political economic structures intersect to inform patterns of natural resource use and conflict. Among other publications, he is the author of Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism (Duke University, 2014) and Failing Forward: The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Conservation (U of California, 2023), and co-author of The Conservation Revolution: Radical Ideas for Saving Nature beyond the Anthropocene (Verso, 2020).