The Malaysian Government added to its long list
(fulfillment of the ITTO recommendations, best
forest management and engineering plans, sustainable
silvicultural forest management, initiative
to green the world, etc.), a perfect environmental
quality control regulation of EIA to deceive the
world and raise more false-hopes that it is concerned
with sustaining its forest resources, the environment,
its diversity and most important of all, this could
well be used to deviate international scrutiny
to the persistent conflicts between loggers (with
the aid of the Federal and State Machineries, be it the
police/para military forces to arrest and intimidate,
or the Forestry and Land Departments in denying the
legitimate rights of the indigenous peole to land
rights) and the local indigenous communities who
struggle for their land rights.
While this revelation that no environmental impact
assessment report has been received by the Department
of Environment should not be taken lightly, we
seek your continual emphasis on the struggle of
the affected indigenous communities to their rights
over their ancestral land, the insensitivity of the
Malaysian Government to their rights to consultation
and participation, in your campaigns.
We highlight here, the inefficiency of this setting
of EIA under the Malaysian Environmental Quality
Control Act 1987, gathered from our observations
and experience, which you or your
organization may find useful in your campaigns.
These controversial but relevant points must be noted:
1. The DOE is a federal concern. Forestry is
largely under the state's jurisdiction;
2. Only with a concession area of more than 500 ha.,
would it be required by the Act, to submit EIA report;
3. Only those concessions approved on or after
April 1, 1988, are required by the Act, to submit
EIA reports.
As we are all aware, in the case of Sarawak, political
elites in this state are dependent on the wealth
generated from timber exploitation (and other natural
resources) for their personal gains and to sustain
their political and economical dominance.
The logging magnates of Rimbunan Hijau, Sanyan,
Samling, WTK, Limbang Trading, KTS Groups and the
likes pawl on their political connections in the
state (increasingly influential at the federal
level now) to amass wealth at the expense of the people.
As Minister of Forestry and Resource Planning,
the Chief Minister of Sarawak Tan Sri Datuk Patinggi
Taib bin Mahmud is the person responsible to award
logging and mining concessions.
With such power, his absolute control over the state's
administration and the fact that only his family members,
friends and political allies are the sole benefiaries,
measures and policies initiated at the federal level
could not be enforced in this state. Examples are the
enpowerment of the army force to arrest illegal loggers
and the call that timber concessions be
awarded to only those who are doing the actual logging operations.
His administration sings praises to the EIA requirements
but does otherwise in practice.
Himself, together the Sarawak Director of Forest and
their deputies had on many instances, pointed out that
the DOE initiatives are not practical "considering the
Sarawak's situations", that guildlines are vague and
claimed that the state's management and engineering
plans formulated and implemented by the Sarawak Forestry
Department are more comprehensive to serve the purposes.
What the state authorities failed to point out is that EIA reports are public
documents but the much talked about Sarawak's forest management and engineering
plans are kept from the public.
We have found out, in the course of working with the
local affected communities, that many new logging
concessions were claimed to be extensions of
concessions awarded before the 1988 date and hence
EIAs are no consideration.
Also, large concession areas were found to be
appropriated into areas less than 500 ha and awarded
to different subsidiaries of the same parent companies.
The fact that more than 2,000,000 ha (figure
revealled by the FRIM director-general only) of
forest were logged since the EIA
ruling has come into force and yet not a single
EIA was submitted clearly indicated the lack of
political will and efforts to enforce the commendable ruling.
We have noted the persistent complaints and reports by the affected communities
to illegal felling, pollution of water-catchments, removal of protected tree
species, damages to their farmlands and crashes over land rights, adding to the
insensitivity of the state authorities to their native customary land rights.
No action has been taken against the real culprits but the indigenous people
were victimized.
While Science, Technology and Environmental Minister
Datuk Law Hieng Ding openly called for the co-operation
of state authorities to supply lists of loggers to his DOE,
it must be noted that his own brother also owns
substantial logging concession in Sarawak.
It only shows to us that the politicians, at state and
federal levels, have no commitment to address the
problems.
It's time we say to the Malaysian authorities that we have enough of their
initiatives in laws, policies and plans about conserving the country's forest
resources. It is time that they show some commitments in enforcing them.
By : C. Hollis
1st Oct 1993
--- * Origin: Asia Pacific Solidarity - Sarawak (90:600/108)--