A Tribal Struggle to Preserve What's Left of a Borneo Forest
Copyright © 2001 the International Herald Tribune
September 12, 2001
Paul Spencer Sochaczewski IHT
RUMAH NOR, Malaysia Lani anak Taneh points out a metal sign announcing that the land we are about to enter belongs to his communal longhouse, Rumah Nor. We start walking through a desolate landscape that is all too common in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo. What once was rain forest owned by a local community has been destroyed in the name of development..
Rumah Nor, 60 kilometers (about 40 miles) southeast of Bintulu, site of the world's largest natural gas complex, is the scene in a land rights struggle in which Sarawak's indigenous people are fighting government and industrial powers. Lani, 33, was one of four plaintiffs in a legal battle that conservationists say has produced a major victory. His Iban tribal longhouse community of 70 families successfully sued to regain 672 hectares (1,660 acres) of land. The court decided the land had been illegally acquired by Borneo Pulp and Paper and the Sarawak state government, which turned forest into a huge acacia plantation.
."This case will open the floodgate to other suits," said Baru Bian, the lawyer for Rumah Nor. "Anyone can now sue the government based on this precedent." He estimates that there are more than 20 similar cases now pending in Sarawak against companies involved in oil palm, logging, pulp and paper and mining.
.When the rain forest was cleared around Rumah Nor, the thin layer of topsoil was exposed to the heavy tropical rain. It washed away, leaving sand and clay that eroded into curious cream-colored spires. "This is our pulau menoa, our rain forest," Lani said grimly. "This is what we won back."
.I first lived in Sarawak in 1969, when it was largely covered in virgin jungle and people traveled to isolated longhouses by boat. Today logging roads crisscross much of the state, which is three times as large as Switzerland. About 70 percent of the natural forest has been destroyed or damaged.
.Sarawak government officials argue that the timber business brings in revenue and that development benefits local people. A few years ago I asked James Wong, at the time both state minister of tourism and local government and one of the area's biggest timber tycoons, why the state encouraged rain forest exploitation. "Where else can we get money for schools and hospitals and transport if not from the forest?" he replied. He did not add that granting timber concessions was a lucrative process for politicians, concessionaires and contractors.
.Mr. Wong said that Sarawak was part of a model nation. "We have 25 races and many different religions living side by side without killing each other," he said..
Yet some people in Sarawak have become so unhappy with this kind of development that they blockade timber operations and sue the government. Which, I suppose, is probably a healthier alternative to killing each other. Sidi Munan, an Iban on the supreme council of the Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak and a former deputy chairman of the Sarawak land authority, said that "up to now we have been free of the kind of hatred that we see in neighboring Indonesian Kalimantan." He was referring to the orgy of beheadings that took place there this year.
.Those 500 gruesome murders in the Indonesian part of Borneo appeared ethnically based. Beneath the race issue, however, was the fact that indigenous Dayaks were fed up with Madurese immigrants coming in and taking away their land.
.At the end of my visit to Rumah Nor, Lani's father decided to walk back to the car with us. We drove together to the point where the acacia plantation gives way to natural forest. The demarcation between fast-growing acacia, where few animals live, to a rain forest that has one of the great biological diversities on earth, is startling. The temperature changes dramatically. You can hear birds and insects. At least this bit of forest was saved by the court order.
.Lani's father took his backpack and shotgun and walked into the forest.
."Is it faster for your father to walk back to the longhouse this way?" I asked.
."No, it is longer," Lani replied. "But he wants to hunt."
.The writer's novel "Redheads" is based in Borneo and deals with native rebellion against forest destruction. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.