By Jettie Word | Director
Our field technicians for the Baram Heritage Survey have just completed their final month of data collection. This was despite Malaysia being under a movement control order to curb the spread of Covid-19 and despite serious flooding hindering our technicians’ ability to walk the transects in the final weeks of the survey.
This is the second time in 2021 that remote Indigenous communities in Sarawak have been heavily impacted by flooding, with many longhouses left stranded by rising waters. These repeated heavy floods raise important questions about the impact that selective logging has had on the soil quality, watersheds and rivers of this region.
In May, 36 Indigenous communities came together to lodge formal complaints about the timber industry to the Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC). These complaints include a lack of free, prior and informed consent and logging that took place outside of permitted coupes. They also call for environmental and social impact assessments to be released to communities as soon as possible, and for logging to be halted in the interim.
The villages we work with will continue to monitor their land and plan towards creating their vision of the future: the Baram Peace Park. Our international research team is hard at work crunching all the data collected for the survey, and we have some very promising early results — including primate data that has never before been collected and indicator bird species that confirm the significance and urgency of protecting this landscape. We are so grateful for your support in helping to make this happen — we could not have done any of this impactful work without our wonderful supporters. Thank you.
In solidarity,
Jettie Word
Director
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