TFF-Indonesia has recently received a major boost from The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in the form of targeted financial support to expand TFF's RIL training and related forest-market linking programs.

TNC has partnered with USAID in a three year, Regional program aimed at achieving significant regional changes in forest management and in the tropical timber trade.

The program brings together a catalytic group of NGO's, governments, and private sector institutions to create an impressive synergy for influencing change.

The Responsible Asia Forestry and Trade (RAFT) program, builds on the successes of the Global Development Alliance, a USAID-sponsored program in Indonesia, and applies lessons learned on a regional scale. RAFT works with forest producers in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Papua New Guinea. Additionally, RAFT works in other countries such as China, Japan, Singapore, members of the European Union, and the U.S. to address procurement and investment policies that promote the legal timber trade.

The RAFT initiative focuses on promoting responsible timber trade and the sustainable management of forest resources and biodiversity. The initiative aims to improve forest management practices, promote timber trade from certified legal sources, reduce forest-related conflict, and strengthen regional cooperation on forest management and trade.

The Nature Conservancy will lead a consortium of public and private organizations and NGO's including : World Conservation Union (IUCN), Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), Tropical Forest Trust (TFT), Tropical Forest Foundation (TFF), Regional Community Forestry Training Center (RECOFT), Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), ScanCom, DLH, The Home Depot, Lowes, and Xerox.

TNC's contract with TFF has been developed in order to promote the use of reduced impact logging techniques and to promote TFF’s program of forest-market linking. Reduced impact logging training addresses a key obstacle to good forest management that influences the ability of regional forest producer to meet the standards of credible independent certification.

The TFF program of forest-market linking, combines the adoption of sustainable forest management practices with strong, market orientated assurances of legality verified through independent third party auditing.

TNC is providing contractual support to the TFF to extend training on these issues at sites supported under the initial USAID-Indonesia GDA program.