Lake Sentarum National Park, frequently called the heart of Borneo, is the largest wetland ecosystem in Asia, covering 132,000 hectares of swamp and marsh. The park’s existence is so vital that the zone has held a place on the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance since 1994. An ecologist from CIFOR, Elizabeth Linda Yuliani, who has been conducting research in the park for four years, said physical changes on the park’s perimeter — its contours, topography and spatial plan — could alter Lake Sentarum’s role in the water cycle.
She warned such changes might reduce the rate of water flow, causing more mud to accumulate, and in turn lead to declines in the fish population.

The Lake Sentarum park hosts 135 wild orchid species, including the famous black orchid (Coeloyne pandurata). Uju said they learned to identify the different types after getting information about rare plants from an environmental NGO, Riak Bumi, and from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

Splintered, charred wood litters the outskirts of an expansive ranch that lies on recently cleared land in the Brazilian Amazon.Such scenes are becoming increasingly common as large swaths of the Brazilian Amazon are being bulldozed and burned to accommodate expanding cattle ranches. Deforestation, which is dismembering the Earth’s functional heart and lungs, is largely resulting from cattle ranching driven by economic incentives and demand for Brazilian beef, according to the Center for International Forestry Research.

Long before climate change had become the hot issue it is today, British biogeographer Alfred Russel Wallace had foreseen the correlation between deforestation and environmental disaster. Daniel Murdiyarso, senior scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) based in Bogor, West Java, said that in addition to deforestation, Sulawesi had experienced changes in its land use with parts of the forest turned into oil palm plantations. Daniel said that the change in land use would affect the region faster than climate change would.

Preliminary research suggests that once a framework for develops, pure economics alone may boost REDD. In areas where infrastructure is poor and carbon stores are high, REDD may offer attractive economic returns relative to conventional logging and agricultural use of forest land, especially for rural communities, which are often bypassed by industrial development of rainforests. For example, a study by CIFOR and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) showed that Indonesia currently is seeing benefits of $0.34 per ton of CO2—mostly from agriculture. By comparison,EU carbon prices are presently more than $20 per ton.

A new study has determined that keeping tropical rain forests intact is a better way to combat climate change than replacing them with biofuel plantations. "Conserving the existing forests is not only good for the climate as the emissions of greenhouse gases are reduced, but also generates additional benefits, such as biodiversity protection," said Dr. Daniel Murdiyarso of the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry (CIFOR).

Paying landowners to let forests grow is promoted by the United Nations as a viable way to fight global warming, but experts first have to puzzle out how to insure trees against going up in smoke. Forest owners want full access to credits as fast as possible. But insurers suggest that half be retained in buffer funds in case forests vanish in a few decades. If a forest disappeared, the credits in the funds would go to them. “How much land managers will see of the price is what the excitement is about,” said Frances Seymour, head of the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Indonesia.

Danau Sentarum merupakan kawasan yang banyak menyimpan kekayaan alam yang tentunya harus kita lindungi dari sekarang. Sudah sering dipaparkan di media ini yang menyebutkan, hasil riset yang dilakukan lembaga penelitian seperti CIFOR dan yayasan Riak Bumi tentang potensi danau ini. Nilai penting yang ada di kawasan TNDS, yang merupakan hasil penelitian dari CIFOR dan Yayasan Riak Bumi, selain disebutkan diatas (seperti perikanan, hutan dan lahan gambut), ternyata masih ada potensi-potensi lain, salah satunya adalah sebagai pemasok ikan air tawar terbanyak di Kalbar.