Support Indigenous forest protection in Borneo

This month, an Indigenous delegation from Sarawak toured Europe to raise awareness about the shortcomings of the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme. Our local partner SAVE Rivers and local communities have been opposing logging concessions operated by timber giant Samling, many of which are certified under the scheme. The communities attempted multiple times to engage in dialogue, and filed an official complaint. Instead of engaging in a dialogue process, Samling filed a defamation lawsuit against SAVE Rivers.

In the first week of May, our delegation attended an anti SLAPP conference in Zurich, where international experts agreed that the case against SAVE Rivers is SLAPP (strategic litigation against public participation). Clare Rewcastle, editor of the Sarawak Report who exposed the 1MDB scandal and who has faced countless legal threats, labeled the Samling SLAPP suit against SAVE Rivers as an example of “a powerful company targeting Indigenous people, some of the most vulnerable and poor people in the world.” Read more here.

Last week, the delegation spoke with the Dutch government about suspending its endorsement of the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme. The Dutch government signaled its interest in starting a review of the scheme in response to the delegation’s serious concerns and experiences with MTCS.

The Netherlands is the number one importer of MTCS certified timber: 28% of the total export volume of MTCS timber went to the Netherlands in 2020. Laki Weng from the Penan village of Long Adang, said "I am very happy to see that the Dutch government is willing to meet us and to listen to us. In Malaysia, our concerns are not considered serious enough, we would never get the chance to present them to the government.” Read more here.

We hope these efforts have been fruitful and that the Malaysian timber certification body will take notice and remedy the situation.

Efforts to establish the Baram Peace Park have made incredible progress over the past year, and we’re looking forward to continuing this trajectory in 2022. This Indigenous-led initiative will protect forests and foster regenerative livelihoods in remote villages. 

The Borneo Project has been collecting baseline ecological, community and land use data over the past two years through the Baram Heritage Survey. This will inform plans for the peace park and ensure a grassroots model that is devised, documented and managed by and for local communities. 

While communities are organizing for a sustainable future, logging companies continue to threaten forests with logging in the Baram, pushing for timber licenses that will damage an already fragile ecosystem and warm the climate. Communities are hard at work organizing to challenge irresponsible logging licenses and launch the Baram Peace Park in 2022.

Links:

• Communities lodge complaint against timber giant Samling
• Communities launch signature campaign against logging