The Kayan Mentarang National Park situated in the interior of East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, lies at the border with Sarawak to the West and Sabah to the north. With its gazetted 1.4 million hectares, it is the largest protected area of rainforest in Borneo and one of the largest in Southeast Asia. About half of the reserve consists of species-rich dipterocarp lowland and hill forest while mountain forest ranges up to Kayan Mentarang's highest mountain at 2,000 m. Forty percent of the park has an elevation above 1,000 m. The area is considered to be one of the world’s 10 biodiversity hotspots, which contain a disproportionately high level of species diversity in a relatively small area.

     About 16,000 Dayak people live inside or in close proximity to this National Park. The communities living in and around the park are still largely regulated by customary law or "adat" in the conduct of their daily affairs and the management of natural resources in their customary territory. Roughly half of these people are primarily shifting cultivators. The rest are mainly wet-rice farmers. The inhabitants of the park and surrounding areas depend on hunting, fishing, and collecting wild plants for their subsistence needs. Trade in forest products as well as revenues from temporary employment in Malaysia and trade with Sarawak are the principal ways to earn cash.

     The Nature Reserve established in 1980 had a strict protection status, meaning that no human activities are allowed inside it. Although Dayak people had been living in the area for centuries, the forest was "state forest" whereby the state could decide to allocate exploitation rights or decide to establish a conservation area without prior consent of the local communities. Local communities had very little power in trying to defend the forest or secure the source of their economic livelihood against the interests of logging companies, mining exploration, or outside collectors of forest products.

     Under these circumstances, the WWF Kayan Mentarang project developed a strategy and program of field activities that would lead to the legal recognition of "adat" claims and "adat" rights so that indigenous communities could continue to use and manage forest resources in the conservation area. Following several meetings and discussions among the ten "adat" leaders from the customary lands around the park area, the Alliance of the Indigenous People of Kayan Mentarang National Park (FoMMA), was formed in 2000.

     FoMMA now legally represents the indigenous people on the Policy Board of the park, a new institution set up to preside over the park's management. The Policy Board includes representatives of the central government (Agency of Nature Conservation and Forest Protection), the provincial and district governments, and FoMMA. The board was formally established in April 2002 with a Decree of the Ministry of Forestry, which also spells out that the park is to be managed through collaborative management (a first in Indonesia).

     Thus, after decades of marginalisation, recent developments in the Kayan Mentarang National Park offer hope to the indigenous communities of Kalimantan with regard to more equitable forms of conservation and natural resource management. There are major challenges ahead, mainly the issue of economic benefits, but the recent policy developments at the Kayan Mentarang National Park prove to be a good step in the right direction.