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Saharuddin Usmi, a fisherman from Wakatobi district in South Sulawesi, appears to reflect the spirit of the age by spending his days worrying about conserving fish habitats. But his worry owes less to an environmental conscience than his desire to ensure adequate future catches.

“A few years ago, it was hard for us to find fish,” he said on Thursday. “So we tried to identify the areas where the fish spawned. Now we preserve the coral reefs there and we fish outside those areas. As a result, the fish population has increased. Now we can catch at least a bucketful of them, worth around Rp 80,000 [$9] a day.”

The fishermen were not concerned about conservation when they mapped out the spawning grounds back in 2007, Saharuddin said. They were simply acting on pragmatic concerns about decreasing catches. “We’re not saying you shouldn’t fish in those areas, there’s no such rule,” he said.

“But because our community depends on those fishes, they leave those areas alone. It’s because they need it in their daily lives. It’s that simple.”

Saharuddin is a member of Komunto, an independent community group set up by local fishermen in 2006 to help improve their welfare.

Komunto also serves as a cooperative to fund education, health care and women’s empowerment programs. The money comes from the subscriptions that the fishermen pay, as low as Rp 5,000 a month per member.

“We set up this organization without any funding from donors or NGOs, and it turned out well,” Saharuddin said.

“In my area, Tau-Tau, we have 40 members and we’ve managed to save up Rp 78 million.”

For its work, Komunto received the Equator Prize in September from the United Nations Development Program, awarded every two years to outstanding local and indigenous efforts to reduce poverty through conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

The group was among 300 nominees from 66 countries, but Saharuddin is not letting the achievement go to his head.

“We’re proud of it, but I don’t think our work should be receiving awards just yet. It’s still too early.”

Another Indonesian recipient of the Equator Prize was Yayasan Mitra Tani, a farmers’ cooperative in North Timur Tengah district, East Nusa Tenggara.

Vinsensius Nurak, a farmer and director of the cooperative, said the group had managed to help farmers boost their productivity in this notoriously barren area.

“Their productivity increased from 1.7 tons of corn per hectare per year to 2.3 tons,” he said.

“Peanut yields have also gone up from 0.9 tons per hectare per year to 2.3 tons. These numbers are quite shocking for others because NTT has long been considered barren, so to even reach two tons per hectare is just amazing.”

He also said Yayasan Mitra Tani had encouraged farmers to diversify their crops from the basic staple of corn, and to adopt terrace farming methods to make the most of the limited water in the region.

As a result, the area’s food security — measured in the length of time the community could survive on stored produce alone — went from eight months to 11, and the farmers saw an average 40 percent increase in income.