Over recent days Sarawakians have been informed, via newspaper announcements, that the state will be winding down logging operations (there will be no more ‘timber politics’ as GPS leader, Abang Jo, put it); that the state government projects that a billion ringgit a year will instead be raised through carbon credit/reforestation schemes; and, just yesterday, that there will be an extension of Sarawak’s ‘totally protected forest’ areas – currently claimed to be 2.1 million hectares – by another eight hundred thousand hectares.
The list of initiatives concerning Sarawak’s land use continues. In fact, there is practically an announcement a day about what this GPS government intends to do with every square inch of Sarawak in cahoots with the many business enterprises flocking to take advantage of a regime that appears to suffer no regulatory restraints and is determined to shrug off federal oversight to boot.
Last Wednesday, there was an announcement about three planned carbon capture storage sites in the Borneo Post, citing proposed regions of Sarawak that had been selected for this highly novel and risky process but providing no further details or specifics as to where exactly these potentially destructive sites would be, let alone the exact process in mind.
Likewise, just days earlier, the hyper-active premier was opening a ‘mega-methanol’ producing complex in Bintulu. According to that particular newspaper announcement it is “one of six catalytic projects that will help Sarawak to generate an additional RM34 billion to Sarawak GDP by 2030”. What those other projects are who knows?
Days before, the same Abang Jo was again boasting through further newspaper announcements about the “vast potential” of Sarawak in the ‘green energy generation sector’. No more details, of course, but by now everyone knows he is largely referring to his vision of ‘cascading dams‘ to industrialise and destroy the biodiversity of the rivers of Sarawak.
The newspaper announcements have never gone so far as to detail what exactly is meant by these ‘cascading dams’ (it is a wide term) or where exactly the GPS administration proposes to impose them: nor has the ‘premier’ when asked, save to suggest that ‘cascading dams’ somehow get rid of crocodiles (as opposed to normal dams?).
It is unlikely that only crocodiles will be endangered, of course. Damming up more rivers will bring a deluge of environmental destruction and harm to native communities, despite all the claims that they somehow represent ‘green’ energy.
Where are the project details?
Meanwhile, a very contrasting feed of information has been coming up from the ground as communities find themselves confronted with the practical outcomes of the state government’s actual decisions and policies.
This past week alone the indigenous news platform Radio Free Sarawak has been alerted to five incursions into native areas by logging and mining concerns, some to the complete surprise of the majority of the local communities who were unaware of the plans until the machinery rolled in:
“This week alone we reported logging in Ba Data Bila ulu Baram by the Borneoland company, logging in Ulu Belaga by M.M Golden, eviction of residents in agricultural heritage villages by the Sarawak Forestry Corporation, a blockade by residents in Kelawit tatau river and blockade by residents in Merakai- Serian , against oil palm plantation company Trade Wind”.
These developments came hard on the heels of an alert issued by the Malaysian environmental NGO Rimba Watch, which had picked up via social media that no less than 9 land listings had been identified on Mudah.my and Facebook Marketplace which appear to advertise the sale of more than 80,000 hectares of forested land in Sabah and Sarawak. The NGO warned:
This analysis finds that, in total, 54,629ha of these lands can be classified as ‘undisturbed forest’, and a further 30,476ha as ‘degraded forest’. Together, this encompasses 85,105ha of forest which could be under threat if such sales are successful.
For context, 85,105ha is 12,000ha larger than the size of Singapore. It is three and a half times the size of Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, larger than Penang Island, and larger than the entire state of Perlis.
Such developments are either the result of illegal alienation and logging on the part of major, well-connected logging concerns (in which case why have the police as usual ignored the protests of local communities?) or concessions have been issued without consulting local communities or adopting any form of due process and transparency.
In the case of Belaga, few will be surprised at the irony that the company concerned in this appalling incident is linked to none other than the Sarawak businessman cum politician appointed as Malaysia’s deputy minister of natural resources, environment and climate change according to Radio Free Sarawak:
Two logging companies named M.M Golden and U.U Green are each linked to the deputy minister of natural resources, environment and climate change- Huang Tiong Sii. Residents of Long Bangan objected to the illegal logging and filed a police report. But the latest development is now that the same company (known as Babi company by the locals) has infiltrated Uma Sambop. Ben Lenjau said, these few days the residents of Uma Sambop tried to stop the logging that was done across the long house of Uma Sambop. Further intelligence shows that the company has logged in the most extensive part, namely in Penyuan – this is also the area of Uma Sambop’s land. The residents in the next few days will collect information and will make a report to the police and SPRM. For now we are not sure what to do. Because we still lack information and most of the people living in the village are the elderly – the young and educated are in the city to work. For the record M.M Golden is a logging company that was once chased away by Baram residents for trying to enter the Baram dam site to log. Now the same company is in the Belaga river. Is it because Sungai Belaga is proposed to be dammed by the Premier of Sarawak – Johari Openg? [Radio Free Sarawak]
So, whilst the ‘premier’ is claiming that logging has ended as an industry along with timber conflicts because his government is “discouraging the cutting of logs” and now “prioritising forest restoration” instead, a company owned by his own political colleague and a federal minister for the environment has marched into a native area and taken them by surprise, bulldozing trees.
The same thing is being repeated by crony companies all over the state, leaving locals totally uninformed about these plans or why they are taking place. Yet, all this while the premier is boasting to the world that every move he makes is in tune with the global effort to counter climate change and preserve biodiversity in hotspots like Borneo.
Distraught communities asked on Radio Free Sarawak if maybe their land has been selected for logging because their hitherto untouched forests are due to be flooded by one of Abang Jo’s mysterious cascading dams?
They simply have no idea because such is the appalling lack of basic transparency in Sarawak that no one knows anything outside of clandestine government circles until the day the bulldozers arrive with an alleged licence to tear up the landscape.
Wresting Native Lands for ‘Protected’ Forests
Across the state in Mulu we have seen a different variation of the same disgraceful pattern repeating itself in the same small window of the past few days.
Protests against the land grabs in the area by the Taib family company, Radiant Lagoon, previously gained international attention on the fringes of the UNESCO world heritage site and triggered a rare withdrawal of that particular corrupted crony licence by the state government.
However, this week locals have been ambushed by yet another government announcement – this time decreeing that this Native Customary Rights land belonging to the Tering tribe is to be absorbed into the Apoh National Park instead.
It is to be assumed the 4,000 ha former concession constitutes one of the areas of newly designated totally protected forest areas so proudly referred by the state government in its separate newspaper announcements.
However, protestors say there was no more consultation or recognition of the rights of the Tering people in this matter than there had been with the original handing of the logging concession to Radiant Lagoon.
Not so much as a by-your-leave to those communities to whom the land has belonged since time immemorial and whose status of ownership was recognised at the time of the founding of the state?
Local native rights campaigner, Denis Along, belongs to the Tering tribe whose rights have thus been twice ignored, first by the issuing of the logging licence and now the designation of a protected park where hunting and normal native land use will be curtailed.
He today told Sarawak Report that a group of locals who had agreed to fill in forms have now been invited to discuss ‘compensation’. However, those who were against the establishment of the Tutoh Apoh national park are not included in the process. “We are in the dark but we will produce an objection letter stating our stand against the proposed Tutoh Apoh national park and present our objection letter to SFC”.
Information is Power
It is therefore clear that the Sarawak state government continues to operate, as it has from the time of the corrupted dictatorship of the late Abdul Taib Mahmud, with reprehensible levels of secrecy.
The entire process of planning and public and native land use is kept tightly under wraps. Rights are ignored whilst information about the licences and concessions being handed out by the state are kept inaccessible as are contracts.
All this information should be placed online. It ought to be clear public knowledge who has applied for concessions where and what stage their application has reached. Such matters should be possible to research, cross-reference and check for updates so that everybody can know what is going on as would-be resource extractors petition the state to gain access to the wealth of Sarawak’s lands. Likewise, development or dam proposals, the building of factories or setting aside of lands for reforestation and national parks.
Instead, it remains impossible in this era of computer technology and the world wide web for communities to keep an eye out to see what applications are being made for the use of their lands, and virtually impossible, when they get wind of activities, to find out information about the companies and licences that have already been awarded.
If they complain to the police or the district officer or their local MP, they will find themselves pushed from pillar to post to gain proper information about the project that has disturbed them. The only recourse is to hire a lawyer, for which no legal aid is made available to these poorest of the poor in one of the world’s richest states.
More often than not, those lawyers will go through the paces but fail to stand up to the corrupt nexus of political and business interests who time and again abuse the process to delay legal judgements until long after their have completed their business: compensation, if provided, is invariably trivial.
Sarawak claims to be democratic. As we all know, Information is power and in a democracy power belongs to the people. Therefore the people of Sarawak are legally entitled to full and proper information that is easily accessible about what planning the state government is up to on their lands.
Likewise, the Sarawak government and its premier continually harp on about the state’s adherence to international principles on sustainability, climate change and good governance – amongst which transparency is paramount.
It is beyond time for the entire planning process to be opened up to public scrutiny, not treated as a deadly secret broken by misleading hints and self-serving announcements in a client media.
The state parliament moreover should sit, not just for two weeks a year (to rubber stamp the budget) but for at least half the year to do its job of proper oversight on these and other matters.
There is a huge amount of consultation and expert evaluation that needs to be undertaken with all these plans to play around with the Sarawak land bank and its native lands and this needs to be undertaken with true representatives of the people present at the table. Such reviews ought to be public and open as is appropriate in a democratic country.
Meanwhile, all the Sarawak forestry and plantation maps and all the concession lists from the land and survey department ought long since to have been placed to online, as should the register of all public contracts (which was briefly opened by the Badawi government to reveal the most unbelievable level of scandalous cronyism and corruption involving public figures before being swiftly returned to opacity).
‘Premier’ Abang Jo can say what he likes – and he does – in his endless streams of newspaper announcements. However, when the truth on the ground turns out to be the opposite of what has been announced only proper transparency can bring credibility to otherwise meaningless claims.