Hacking their way through bushes and vines towering above their heads, a team of local women and men are clearing the last sections of a two-hectare patch on the bank of the Kinabatangan River in Sabah, in Malaysian Borneo. Under the hot tropical sun in October, they are preparing the land for what will become a new rainforest.

“We use machetes when we clear the plot because machines are not strong enough for the bushy environment where we work. It’s tiring for the body, but it’s efficient,” Nurul Susanti Nasir says. Together with her husband, Nurul is part of a seven-person crew that includes people in their teens and their 50s. They work quickly, occasionally taking short breaks to catch their breath and crack a joke.

It took the team two months to prepare and plant more than 3,000 tree saplings of the 5,000 planned for this plot, and it will take a couple more years of caring for them until they grow into a young rainforest that can sustain wildlife.

The reforestation group, who are all indigenous people, have been planting native tree species around their village of Batu Puteh in northeastern Sabah since 1999. Their work is part of a reforestation initiative established by Kopel, a community-led cooperative that runs a tourism venture in the four villages that form Batu Puteh Township.

“The forest was in trouble, and the people realised in some years we won’t have forests...