Each family in Uma Bawang-Keluan has planted an average of 200 fruit trees in degraded forests over the last decade.

Berkeley’s Sister City wins prestigious environmental awards

Last September, the village of Uma Bawang was chosen from a pool of 420 communities worldwide to receive the 2002 Equator Prize at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. Uma Bawang was one of seven communities to win the UN award for outstanding efforts to reduce poverty and sustainably manage biodiversity. A few months later, the Uma Bawang Resident’s Association won the Slow Food Award "for the formal protest and concrete actions carried out by this community to protect a part of the forest, with its resources and special features, so defending it from the logging industry. For setting up successful production projects and assuring better living conditions for local inhabitants. For providing new options for the survival of the ecosystem of the Borneo rainforests. For reasserting the sovereignty of indigenous tribes over this territory and for giving new life to their feeling of belonging." The Slow Food Association is an international organization “for the Defense of and the Right to Pleasure.” Congratulations UBRA!

Nomadic Penan get a reserve?

In July 2002, the Sarawak Forestry Department set aside 5,000 hectares of common forest reserve for the nomads of the Bareh and Magoh Rivers. This seems to be in response to continued pressure for protection of their land from Penan groups’ petitions, the Human Rights Commission (SUHAKAM) report on their poor living conditions and declaration from the last year’s gathering of 700 Penans. However, besides that the forests set aside for the reserve only encompass a part of the three groups’ customary hunting and gathering grounds, two thirds of the area have already been selectively logged or are currently being logged. Is protection of land for the Penan just lines on the map?

Sarawak Forestry Department goes corporate

Following the privatization of national park management, the Sarawak government announced that its Forestry Department will also become a corporation as of June 6. This move purports to follow recommendations by the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) to streamline management of the forest sector, thus ensuring sustainability of forests and efficiency of forest industries. The new Sarawak Forestry Corporation, wholly owned by the Sarawak government, will be chaired by State Secretary Abdul Aziz Hussein, who is brother-in-law of Chief Minister Abdul Taib. How will this step towards more "corporate" management affect Sarawak’s forestry sector fraught with over-extraction of resources and conflicts with native communities?

One destruction funds another: Bakun dam forges ahead

With a little help from palm oil, construction of the controversial mega-dam in central Sarawak that displaced 10,000 locals resumed in October 2002. The contract is undertaken by a multi-national consortium led by Sime Darby Group and China Water Resources & Hydro Power Engineering Corporation. Partial payment for the RM 1.788 billion main dam of the Bakun hydro-electric project will be in the form of palm oil from the state’s plantations. A Dubai company is setting up an aluminum smelter downriver which is slated for completion by 2007 and will absorb nearly 40% of the dam’s power output to process ores from the US and Australia.

Palm oil to pay for fighter jets and helicopters in Indonesia

The Indonesian government is in the midst of waging its own "war on terrorism" in the northern Sumatran province of Aceh, deploying up to 40,000 troops to quash the 5,000-member separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM). A month previous to the start of this "war," President Megawati signed a deal with Russia to purchase jet fighters and helicopters, skirting the military embargo imposed by the US, which was formerly its main arms supplier. The US has not lifted the four-year old embargo due to allegations of human rights abuses by the Indonesian Military (TNI), especially in outlying regions of East Timor, Papua and Aceh. Indonesia will pay for these arms with various commodities, including palm oil and rubber.

Malaysia announces Indonesian log import ban-again

Déjà vu? Not exactly. Despite the announcement of a total ban on Indonesian log imports almost a year ago, enforcement has been lax in Malaysian ports as investigation by UK and Indonesian environmental organizations revealed. Illegal timber from Indonesia has been imported into Malaysia and re-exported as Malaysian wood. The Kuala Lumpur government reiterated its commitment to cleanse the country’s timber supply of logs from illegal sources. As the Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC) attempts to gain international recognition of the country’s Sustainable Forest Management practices à la "eco-label," it is critical for them to establish credibility of the legality of timber exported from Malaysia.

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