The overall goal of the Borneo Project and our partners is to secure protection for Borneo's forests and ensure community rights to manage development in ancestral territories. Our current programs are focused on legal aid, community mapping, and indigenous preschools. Past programs supported reforestation, community mapping and legal aid, rural economic development, renewable energy projects, and U.S.-based advocacy.

Accomplishments & Key Victories

Since 1995, Borneo Project trainings have enabled over 100 communities to map areas of ancestral land claims and win legal cases and negotiations. Villagers trained in mapping have become key staff at local environmental and human rights organizations.

Our work has supported legal aid, mapping for land rights, indigenous-led reforestation, watershed restoration, and sustainable energy and micro-enterprise. We have also assisted in the formation of small-scale economic cooperatives to promote women's income opportunities and preserve traditional handicraft skills.

Our work has strengthened community efforts and secured protection for tens of thousands of acres of rainforest. Accomplishments include:

·       Training for dozens of indigenous activists in community mapping using GPS and GIS. Over 13 years, they have produced hundreds of accurate and detailed maps to support indigenous land rights claims.

·       Court victories! Nor Nyawai, Madeli Salleh, Rambilin Ambit: these 3 cases at the forefront of strengthening native customary land rights are setting major legal precedents in Malaysia.  Borneo Project partner support has made these legal victories possible.

·        Negotiation victories! Uma Bawang Residents Association (SisterCity to Berkeley, California) kicked loggers off their lands and won exemption from a state-planned plantation using the community map they made during a 1995 workshop by the Borneo Project.

·       Communities organized and standing strong: Paralegal education and mobile legal aid clinics have helped over 200 longhouse communitieshold off destructive logging and industrial plantations.

·       Coordinated over $500,000 in grants from international sources for community reforestation, organic gardening, territory demarcation, and other village projects.

·       Completed 3 microhydro systems, still running smoothly, with 3 more in progress. They provide clean electricity, protect upstream rainforests and eliminate fossil fuel use in remote communities, without the destructive effects of large dams.

·       Produced and distributed the documentary film Rumah Nor: A Land Rights Test for Malaysia, in Iban with English and Malay subtitles. You can watch it here.

• Uma Bawang's nursery of over 30,000 replanted native tree species has revitalized the land and led to successful negotiations to protect community forests from logging concessions. Their efforts have earned international acclaim from the United Nations and others and generated interest from neighboring communities in replicating the successful model.
  
• In 2004, nine Penan, Kayan, and Iban villages came together to establish the Indigenous Forests Restoration Initiative. The villages share skills and strategies in reforestation of timber trees, rattans, medicinal plants, fruit trees, and vegetable gardening.
•  In 2004, the Penan community of Long Sayan won an important legal settlement, where the logging company admitted wrongdoing for the arrest and abuse of four community elders. In Long Lunyim, where the Borneo Project has sponsored participatory ethnobotanical research in the community's forest, local men were accused by the logging company of threatening their operations. These charges were dropped thanks to successful legal defense.