Kerinci Sebelat National Park was declared based on the decree of Forestry Minister No.192/Kpts/II/1996 dated May 1^St 1996 with 1.368.000 ha. It consist of 422.190 ha in Jambi provice, 310.910 ha in Bengkulu province, 281.120 ha in South Sumatra province, and 353.780 ha in West Sumatra province. Ecologically, the park is play important role because it has complete ecosystem, from lowland rainforest, higland rainforest, alpin vegetation, up to sub alpin vegetation with the top of the Kerinci Mountain as the highest spot (3805 mdpl). It is estimated about 4000 plant species, 36 mamals (24 of them are protected), 139 birds species (8 of them are endemic), 8 primatas , 8 reptyls, and 6 amphibia. Further more, the area also has important hydrologis function for the four provinces as water cacthment area for Batang Hari river, Sangir river, Indrapura river, Mejunto river, Ketahun river, Musi river and other rivers. More than 5 million people and 9,94 million ha farms are depend on the water from the ecological and hydrological sustain in the area.  

Beside general threats as in other National Parks such as illegal hunting, illegal loging, area expantion for farm and plantation, nowadays, there are 468 villages that the community is highly depend economically to the area. For that reason, Indonesia government applied a management strategy through an Integrated Conservation and Development Project (ICDP-TNKS) from World Bank loan No. 4008-IND and Trust Fund No. 28312. Through this approach hoped there will be an intergrated economical development for the community around the park and save the habibat based on the zonation. In the implementation, the project has 3 main component and 1 supporting component: they are Component A ( Park Management), Component B (Rural Development), Component C (Intergrating Biodeversity with the HPH management), and Component D (Monitoring and Evaluation).

WARSI plays part with the Rural Development component, especially for facilitating the effort to reach agreement between the community around the area, Local government, and the National Park Implementation Unit that stated in a Rural conservation agreement document. The document consist of 2 main subjects, they are community participation agreement in the park preservation and rural development planning and rural land spatial usage that arraneged  participatively and equal with the park presevation.  

WARSI has been involving in ICDP-TNKS since the beginning, started from pra-designing and implementing now :

• 1992 coorporated with WALHI and PACT-USAID, tried to observe the whole problem in the field through data collecting, identificating, and conflict resoluting, institution sthrengthening and find out an information  alternative media for the community around the park area.  

• 1994-1995 supported by Japan Grant Facility (JGF)- World Bank, coorporated with WWF Indonesia applied  a community participation assistenty in and at the border of the park area. This was an experiment to sthrengthen the community partipative in four villages and the fourth provinces.

• 1996 coorporated with WWF ID0094, fully involved in pra-implemetation of ICDP in ten model villages in the four provinces. By doing supervision, recruitment, selection and staff recomeded as Rural Consevation Fasilitator and local people as local organisator. In this fase, tried to apply and repaired the design that would be implemented.

• 1996-now, coorporated with WWF ID0094 implemented the community fasilitation in some villages in Bungo Regency (Jambi province) and Sawahlunto Sijunjung Regency (West Suamtra) and place other rural fasilitators in other seven regencies. Since June 2001, fully facilitated villages in North Bengkulu Regency (Bengkulu province).