Following last year’s Blended Finance Session at the AFoCO General Assembly and the subsequent webinar on “Advancing the Forest-Positive Economy in Indonesia,” AFoCO is taking the next step to explore how forests, communities, markets, and finance can work together to build more resilient and forest-positive economies. 

In September 2026, AFoCO convened an Executive Roundtable in Singapore with representatives from governments, companies, investors, development finance institutions, NGOs, and landscape actors to explore an emerging idea: the Forest-Positive Economies Platform. 

The Roundtable brought together a diverse group of organizations spanning government, finance, global value chains, development cooperation, and civil society. Participants included representatives from the Ministry of Forestry of Indonesia, Artha Networks Inc., Asian Development Bank (ADB), GIZ, Mars, Barry Callebaut, Olam Agri, Golden Agri-Resources, Michelin, Pirelli, Shell, Beneficial Returns, AfterOil, Save the Children, TerraFormation, the Economics of Mutuality Foundation, and other organizations working across sustainable landscapes, carbon markets, and impact investment. This mix of perspectives created a timely opportunity to examin the same landscape challenges through the lenses of policy, production, procurement, community resilience, and capital.

Connecting the Pieces

Across forest and agricultural landscapes, many actors are already working to address deforestation, strengthen livelihoods, and build sustainable supply chains. Yet their efforts can remain fragmented. 

Farmers may have products but limited access to reliable markets. Companies may seek sustainable and resilient supply chains but struggle to connect with producers. Governments may have strong priorities and programmes but face coordination challenges. Investors may have capital available, while suitable investment-ready opportunities remain limited. The Roundtable highlighed a common need: better connections between government priorities, landscape needs, market demand, and capital.

The Forest-Positive Economies Platform is being explored as a way to help build these connections, while strengthening and linking existing initiatives rather than creating another parallel mechanism.

Learning from Central Sulawesi

Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, provides a practical landscape case for discussion.

Drawing on ongoing work in the landscape, participants explored the perspectives of farming communities, governments, buyers, and investors, while discussing what each actor can contributeㅡand what they need from othersㅡto enable more effective and collective action.

The discussion highlighted recurring challenges around coordination, market access, diversified livelihoods, evidence and risk-sharing.

It also reinforced a broader question: how can actors working in the same landscape move from frangmented interventions toward shared outcomes?

From Learning to Living Labs

These discussions also provided useful insights as AFoCO further develops its Living Lab approach.

Rather than serving only as a demonstration site, a Living Lab could help connect government priorities, community needs, technical solutions, evidence, market demand, and finance.

Its emerging pathway can be summarized as:

Testing solutions → Generating evidence → Building readiness → Connecting to markets and capital → Enabling replication

The value of the Living Lab would therefore lie in helpgin promising solutions move beyond testing toward stronger coordination, clearer market pathways, and greater readiness for responsible financeㅡwhile maintaining community, ecological, and biodiversity outcomes at the centre.

Where Markets and Finance Meet Forests

A forest-positive economy also needs functioning economic pathways.

The Roundtable highlighted the importance of connecting smallholders and local producers with a wider range of buyers, including companies, traders, and other market actors.

Farmers rarely depend on a single commodity. Cocoa, rubber, spices, food crops, and other products can coexist within the same landscape. This creates an opportunity to think beyond individual supply chains and explore how different market actors can contribute to the resilience of the same communities and landscapes.

Stronger procurement and offtake relationships can help create more stable livelihoods while encouraging sustainable production.

Finance can then play a catalytic role.

Many promising landscape opportunities remain dificult to finance because of uncertain revenues, fragmented producers, limited collateral, long investment horizons, and high transaction costs. Blended finance and risk-sharing mechanisms can help address these barriers by combining different forms of capital and improving the conditions for larger-scale investment.

Putting the Approach into Practice: RE-SOLVE Cambodia

AFoCO also introduced RE-SOLVE Cambodia as an example of how landscape priorities, markets, and finance can being to connect in practice.

Focused on the Tonle Sap landscape, RE-SOLVE seeks to combine forest and climate outcomes with more resilient community livelihoods.

The initiative is exploring both carbon and market-based solutions, helping diversity potential revenue streams rather than relying on carbon alone.

It also reflects several principles discussed during the Roundtable: early government engagement, stakeholder mapping, alignment with local priorities, and investor engagement during project development.

AFoCO is working with Artha Networks to explore how catalytic and private capital can support the initiative as opportunities become more structured and investment-ready.

From One Landscape to a Regional Approach

The Government of Indonesia emphasized an important principle: countries are not starting from zero.

Existing mechanisms such as Social Forestry, Integrated Area Development, demonstration plots, and field schools already provide important foundations. The value of the Platform should therefore lie in strengthening connections between existing landscape efforts, evidence, market demand, procurement, finance, and investmentㅡnot in creating parallel systems.

This also points to a potential role for AFoCO as a neutral public-sector anchor and regional convenor.

Working with its Member Countries, AFoCO can help connect landscape initiatives with government priorities, facilitate knowledge exchange, and link emerging opportunities with appropriate market and financial partners.

Different landscapes will require different approaches. The goal is not to replicate one model everywhere, but to learn what works, adapt it to local contexts, and share those lessons across the region.

The Forest-Positive Economies Platform is still taking a shape. But one message from the Singapore Roundtable was clear:

building forest-positive economies means connecting the dots between forests, people, markets, and capital.

The next step is to turn these connections into practical pathways for action across Asia.

Submitted by Somin Oh, Program Officer, Blended Finance Division