To achieve its ‘forest city’ ambitions, Nusantara needs to move beyond Indonesia’s exclusionary history of land governance and embrace a biocultural approach that centers its most affected human and nonhuman voices, recognizes customary rights, buttresses place-based livelihoods and advances environmental justice.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Department of Forestry and Tropical Environment of Universitas Mulawarman (UNMUL) and the communities of Pemaluan and Mentawir for their partnership and support. They also thank C. Boer and the many students from UNMUL and Cornell University who supported fieldwork and data analysis; V. Beard, C. J. P. Colfer, and H. Klinck for thoughtful discussions while designing the research plan; C. N. Annisa for her help reviewing the manuscript; and M. Winowatan for assistance with image editing. The authors are also grateful for their collaboration with artists T. Salina and I. Ahmet, whose participatory sonic exercise with Pemaluan and Mentawir community members embodied the relationship between development, ecological change and the human experience.
Funding
The authors acknowledge funding to support Nusantara research from Cornell University (Migrations Initiative, Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs, Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Southeast Asia Program, and Atkinson Center for Sustainability), Fulbright Program, American Institute for Indonesian Studies, and Carolina Asia Center.
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DePuy, W., Allred, S., Rustam et al. Advancing a biocultural vision for Nusantara.
Nat Cities (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-026-00460-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-026-00460-w
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