A Palm in the Ledger, a Forest in the Ground

How a new collaboration uses technology to turn donations into accountability for conservation in Indonesia

Caption: A Palm in the Ledger. A Forest in the Ground.

This artwork marks a commitment to protect land in Indonesia – not by turning nature into a financial asset, but by recording care, stewardship, and accountability over time.

A palm tree becomes a symbol of tension and responsibility: between extraction and protection, between forgetting and remembering.

What is written, documented, and stewarded has a chance to endure.

“Alam takambang jadi guru.”

Nature is our open teacher.

• Minangkabau proverb

Conservation fails not only when forests fall, but when protection leaves no trace – and those who carry the work remain unseen.

There are moments when technology actually serves people and the planet, over profits.
Not through spectacle or hype – but through alignment: the right tool, in the right hands, for a real-world need.

Indonesia is one of those moments.

Following recent catastrophic floods and landslides across Sumatra in late 2025, more than a thousand people lost their lives. 

Over half a million residents were displaced, and more than 146,000 homes and public facilities were destroyed, according to Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB). Extreme rainfall triggered the disaster – but decades of deforestation determined its scale.

In parliamentary testimony following the floods, Indonesia’s environment ministry acknowledged that degraded forest governance worsened the impact. WALHI, the country’s largest environmental network, echoed what communities had long known: logging, mining, and plantation expansion stripped away the natural systems that once absorbed rain, stabilised slopes, and protected people downstream.This is the context in which this project exists.

Not optimism. Not despair. Responsibility.

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Together Stronger

This initiative brings together four distinct roles:

• Rimba Non-Profit, working to purchase and protect land as part of long-term conservation and regenerative stewardship in Sumatra, Indonesia.
• Cardano Trees, whose Palm-tree artwork anchors the project in artivism rather than speculation.
• Impact Web3, providing the technical infrastructure to make fundraising transparent, traceable, and accountable over time.
• Sustainable ADA, supporting ethical funding pathways and long-term impact thinking within the Cardano and web3 for good ecosystems.

Together, we are testing a simple idea:
What if digital tools were used not to abstract nature into assets, but to prove that protection actually happened?

This is not “saving the rainforest with JPEGs.”
It is using a digital object as a receipt that remembers.

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Why a Palm Tree (And Why That Matters)

Palm is not an innocent symbol in Indonesia.

Industrial palm-oil monoculture has been one of the major drivers of deforestation, land dispossession, labour exploitation, and biodiversity loss – fuelled by global demand and enabled by weak land governance. Entire landscapes have been flattened into monoculture estates in the name of efficiency and economic growth.

This project does not romanticise that history.

But palm is older than plantations.

Mangrove and coastal palms are living infrastructure. They stabilise shorelines, absorb floods, store carbon, protect watersheds, and support local livelihoods. They sit at the climate’s edge – where resilience is negotiated daily between land, sea, and community.The palm in this collection holds that contradiction.
It marks what has been damaged, lost, and what still needs defending.

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Why Land, Why Indonesia, Why Now

Indonesia contains extraordinary ecological value within a relatively small area. 

With approximately 1% of the world’s land surface, it hosts around 10% of known plant species, 12% of mammal species, and 17% of bird species, as well as the world’s largest mangrove ecosystem – covering approximately 3.3 million hectares.

Yet between 2001 and 2024, Indonesia lost approximately 32 million hectares of tree cover – an area roughly the size of Germany – releasing more than 23 gigatonnes of CO₂-equivalent emissions. In Sumatra, forest loss has fragmented watersheds and made communities increasingly vulnerable to floods and landslides.

In this context, conservation is not abstract.

Land is protected because someone owns it – and chooses to keep it out of short term profit, destructive and extractive use.
In this project, land remains under local ownership and Indonesian law, stewarded by Rimba non-profit. 

Since 2012 they have been accountable to social and ecological realities, and centering community relationships on the ground. Part of a global movement to preserve forest and marine ecosystems, they

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NFTs as Proof, Not Promises

Most NFTs freeze a moment in time.

The NFT itself is immutable. It does not change.
What evolves is the documentation linked to it.

For example, a supporter who participates in 2025 may later see land documentation published in 2026, monitoring reports in 2027, and restoration updates in 2028 – subject to legal, safety, and ecological constraints.

There are no financial returns.
No land ownership.
No governance rights.
No tokenisation of ecosystems.

This project does not create tradable environmental commodities, nor does it abstract land into financial instruments. 

It creates a persistent, public link between support and stewardship – something traditional donations rarely offer.

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Power and Participation

This initiative is designed to avoid a familiar failure mode: Global North technology creating new ownership layers over Global Majority land.

There is no DAO governance over forests.
No fractional land claims.
No external control disguised as decentralisation.

Land remains under local authority.
Supporters gain transparency – not power.

If land governance frameworks evolve in the future in ways that strengthen indigenous rights and ecological protection, this infrastructure is designed to adapt only with legal clarity, community consent, and local leadership.

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From Donation to Accountability

The flow is intentionally simple:

1. Supporters participate via a Proof of Impact NFT
2. Funds support land acquisition and stewardship
3. Documentation is gathered as part of real operations
4. Evidence is published over time
5. Supporters can see what their contribution helped hold in place

No greenwashing
Outcomes and impact, with verifiable claims.

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Infrastructure with purpose

Forests do not need narratives.
They need contracts, protection, budgets, stewards, and time.

But people fund what they can understand and verify.

This artivism collection is a bridge:

• art on one side,
• land on the other,
• accountability throughout.

A palm in the ledger.
A forest in the ground.
A receipt that remembers.

To learn more and take action, visit: https://impactweb3.com/proof-of-impact/rimba