Kaleka (formerly Yayasan Inobu) is an Indonesian, non-profit organisation that strives towards the sustainable management of Indonesia’s landscapes and seascapes for the benefit of local and indigenous communities. Founded in 2014, Kaleka is a women-led organisation, where the Executive Director and majority of managers and staff are women. With over 60 staff now, our staff represent the diversity of peoples in the Indonesian archipelago, all committed to upholding human rights and protecting the environment. Kaleka’s thematic strengths are in the areas of sustainable sourcing, conservation and restoration, agri-food systems, community development and environmental and social governance.

At the heart of Kaleka’s approach, is the concept of Collaborative, Applied Research. Before commencing any work, we work with our partners, in government, civil society organisations, companies, farmers and local communities, to identify their priorities. Through researching best practices in science, while incorporating local and indigenous knowledge, we test, implement, evaluate and refine innovations. This approach ensures their relevance to and acceptability among local partners while also allowing us to scale nationally.

We have three main modalities in which we work: jurisdictional approaches, civil society network and support for systems, platforms and policies. Through our jurisdictional approaches, we focus on specific regions to solve the intertwined challenges of environmental degradation and poverty. Since our inception, we have focused on two main geographical regions: Central Kalimantan and West Papua. In Central Kalimantan, part of Indonesian Borneo, our work has focused on the sustainable production of palm oil at the jurisdictional level, especially the two districts of Seruyan and Kotawaringin Barat. In West Papua, our work has focused on the promotion of markets and production systems for native species with economic value, that benefit indigenous communities while protecting the environment. Since 2019, we have been convening a network of local civil society organisations, which are led by indigenous communities in each of their regions, to improve collaborative, applied research in the topics of agri-food systems, conservation, climate change adaptation and sustainable sourcing. Finally, we have been working at the national level through developing policies, systems and learning platforms such as our farmer education platform Tani Baik and our agricultural youth program, Tani Space.