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Photo by Sahabat Alam Malaysia
The Penan, a Malaysian indigenous group, are still fighting to protect their lands against deforestation and a booming oil palm and acacia industry.
PLIGHT OF THE PENAN
Deforestation forces a Malaysian indigenous tribe to abandon ancestral lands STORY BY AZIRA SHAHARUDDIN
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difference between us and them is that their supplies are obtained free from the forest.” The Penan depend on the forests for fruits and vegetables and hunt wild boar, deer and monkeys with poison darts and blowpipes. While hunting and gathering, the Penan practice molong: a concept of conservation ethic and a notion of resource ownership. To molong a resource is to harvest it sustainably, insuring that it will regenerate. The Penan do this with a starch taken from palm stems called sago, which is their main source of food. When the group exploits sago in one place, they move to another sago cluster to allow that source to grow back. This ensures the resource is always available. But all this changed when large-scale logging started in the early 1960s. Sarawak, one of two Malaysian states in Borneo, is rich with natural resources. After Sarawak was admitted to the federation of Malaysia in 1963, the state’s main economic priority became developing its agriculture and forestry sectors. The state got
Photo by Dang Ngo
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n 1987, a Malaysian indigenous group built and erected 25 wooden blockades along logging roads to stop trucks from reaching the interiors of Sarawak’s rainforest on Borneo Island. Their fight to stop harvesters from destroying their ancestral lands received international attention. More than 20 years later, the indigenous Penan are still fighting to protect their lands — only this time against a booming oil palm and acacia industry. Only 12 percent of the group still lives in the foothills, mountain areas and forests of Borneo Island, according to recent statistics by the Sarawak State Planning Unit. Most have established permanent homes elsewhere through government resettlement programs. The remaining Penan depend completely on the forest for their livelihood. The forests are the group’s main source of food, income and medicines, wrote Harrison Ngau Laing, environmental activist, lawyer and a former member of parliament, in an e-mail. “In other words, the forest is their supermarkets and their banks,” Laing said. “The
The Penan build wooden blockades to prevent loggers from reashing the interiors of Sarawak’s rainforest on Borneo Island. nearly a third of its gross domestic product from agricultural husbandry, forestry and mining between 1963 and 1973. By the end of the late 1980s, nearly 2.8 million hectares of forests were cleared, according to the Borneo Project, a non-governmental organization based in the United States. That’s an area the size of Hawaii. The impact of logging and establishment of oil palms and acacia plantations on Penan’s land is devastating, Laing said. “The Penan are now cornered by these