The Penan indigenous people of Sarawak, Malaysia, on Borneo, fighting to keep the trees on their ancestral lands safe from logging, ask the government for help.
Making biodiversity an integral part of economic and development strategy can bring a return on investment in economic, social and environmental terms. Southeast Asia, home to at least 60% of the world's tropical peatlands, 42% of all mangroves and 15% of tropical forests, has huge potential to capitalise such investments.
Indigenous peoples from the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo are hopeful their objections to logging by Samling Group – covering an area of forest roughly equivalent to the size of Luxembourg – are finally being taken seriously after the country’s timber certification board ordered dispute mediation a year after they first complained about the plan.
The Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC) took action following complaints by 36 Indigenous Penan, Kenyah and Jamok communities from Sarawak’s Upper Limbang and Baram regions about alleged flaws in its certification of two logging concessions.
The dispute relates to two logging concessions in two Forest Management Units (FMUs): the 148,305-hectare (366,469-acre) Gerenai FMU, located in Upper Baram and the 117,941-hectare (292,438-acre) Ravenscourt FMU located in Upper Limbang.
PETALING JAYA: The Swiss city of Basel will be making a US$200,000 (RM830,960) contribution to the Baram Peace Park, a conservation project in the interior of Sarawak.
Basel mayor Beat Jans announced on Monday (July 5) that the contribution will be directed to the International Tropical Timber Organisation’s (ITTO) Upper Baram Forest Management Area.
He added that the government of Basel has decided to offer its support in order to sustain the livelihoods of the indigenous communities there as well as to honour Bruno Manser, a Basel-born environmentalist who had gone missing in Sarawak in 2000.
The ITTO project is set to benefit 24 indigenous communities in the 283,500 hectares of land, which consists of forests and agricultural areas which have traditionally been used by the communities to cultivate rice.