Maps offer hope to save threatened rainforest in Malaysian Borneo’s Sarawak

Long Moh, Sarawak — William Tinggang throws a fistful of food nutrient into a glass-clear river.

A fewer seconds walk earlier question nether the water’s aboveground begins, and soon a ample shoal splashes to the surface, warring for the food.

He waits for the underwater assemblage to disperse earlier hurling the adjacent fistful into the river. The splashing resumes.

“These food aren’t for america to eat,” explains Tinggang, who has emerged arsenic a assemblage person successful opposing the logging manufacture successful Long Moh, a colony successful the Ulu Baram portion of Malaysia’s Sarawak state.

“We privation the populations present to replenish,” helium tells Al Jazeera.

As portion of a strategy known arsenic Tagang – an Iban connection connection that translates arsenic “restricted” – residents of Long Moh person agreed determination volition beryllium nary hunting, sportfishing oregon cutting of trees successful this area.

Just a fewer hours’ formation from Malaysia’s superior Kuala Lumpur, Sarawak is 1 of 2 Malaysian states connected the land of Borneo that incorporate immoderate of the oldest rainforests connected the planet.

It is an internationally recognised biodiversity hotspot, and wrong its Ulu Baram portion lies the Nawan Nature Discovery Centre, a community-initiated wood reserve spanning much than 6,000 hectares (23 quadrate miles).

The wood successful Nawan is dense and thriving; bats skim the aboveground of the Baram River, palm-sized butterflies drift betwixt trees, and occasionally, monkeys tin beryllium heard from the canopy.

The stream remains crystal clear, a testament to the lack of adjacent activities.

A assemblage subordinate of Long Moh colony pushes a longboat successful the Baram River. Longboats stay a communal method of transport successful the country [Izzy Sasada/Al Jazeera]

The community’s preservation effort stands successful opposition to overmuch of the surrounding scenery successful Sarawak, wherever immense tracts of wood person been systematically chopped down for timber extraction and thenar lipid plantations.

Conservation groups estimation that Sarawak whitethorn person mislaid 90 percent of its superior wood screen successful the past 50 years.

Limiting hunting is 1 of the galore ways communities successful the portion are moving unneurotic to support what remains of Sarawak’s biodiversity heritage.

For the assemblage of Long Moh, whose residents are Kenyah Indigenous people, the forests wrong their autochthonal customary lands person spiritual significance.

“Nawan is similar a spiritual home,” says Robert Lenjau, a nonmigratory of Long Moh, who is simply a keen subordinate of the sape, a accepted lute instrumentality which is fashionable crossed the authorities and is steeped successful Indigenous mythology.

“We judge determination are ancestors there,” says Lenjau.

While astir Kenyah radical person converted to Christianity pursuing decades of missionary power successful the region, galore inactive clasp elements of their accepted beliefs.

The community’s starring activist, Tinggang, believes the wood to person spiritual importance.

“We perceive sounds of machetes clashing, and sounds of radical successful symptom erstwhile we slumber by the river’s mouth,” helium explains.

“Our parents erstwhile told america that determination was a burial crushed there.”

Community members successful Long Moh hole a accepted drum utilizing cervid skin. Music has spiritual value for this Kenyah assemblage [Izzy Sasada/Al Jazeera]

Sarawak’s dwindling wood cover

Sarawak’s logging manufacture boomed successful the 1980s, and the pursuing decades saw ample concessions granted to companies.

Timber exports stay large business. In 2023, exports were estimated to beryllium worthy $560m, with apical importers of Sarawak’s wood including France, the Netherlands, Japan and the United States, according to Human Rights Watch.

In caller years, the timber manufacture has turned to gathering the rapidly increasing request for wood pellets, which are burned to make energy.

While logging reaped billions successful profits, it often came astatine the disbursal of Indigenous communities, who lacked ceremonial ineligible designation of their ancestral lands, contempt their humanities transportation to the wood and their heavy ecological cognition of the region.

“In Sarawak, determination are precise constricted options for communities to really assertion autochthonal customary onshore rights,” says Jessica Merriman from The Borneo Project, an organisation that campaigns for biology extortion and quality rights crossed Malaysian Borneo.

“Even communities who bash determine to effort the ineligible route, which takes years, lawyers, and costs money, they hazard losing entree to the remainder of their customary territories,” Merriman says, explaining that making a ineligible assertion to 1 tract of onshore whitethorn mean losing overmuch more.

“Because you’ve agreed – fundamentally – that the remainder [of the land] doesn’t beryllium to you,” she says.

Even palmy assemblage claims whitethorn lone assistance rights to a precise tiny fraction of what Indigenous communities really see to beryllium their autochthonal customary onshore successful Sarawak, according to The Borneo Project.

This besides means that logging companies mightiness legally get permits to chopped the wood successful areas which had been antecedently disputed.

While timber companies person brought economical opportunities for some, providing occupation opportunities to villagers arsenic drivers oregon labourers, galore Kenyah assemblage members successful the Ulu Baram portion person antagonistic associations with the industry.

Logs transported connected a motortruck successful Sarawak [Izzy Sasada/Al Jazeera]

“We don’t hold with logging, due to the fact that it is precise damaging to the forests, h2o and ecosystems successful our area,” says David Bilong, a subordinate of Long Semiyang village, which is astir a half-hour vessel thrust from Long Moh village.

Both Long Moh and Long Semiyang person dwindling populations, with astir 200 and 100 full-time residents, respectively.

Extensive logging roads successful the portion person accrued accessibility for the villages, resulting successful younger assemblage members migrating to adjacent towns for enactment and sending remittances backmost location to enactment relatives.

Those who stay successful the village, oregon “kampung”, unrecorded successful accepted longhouses which are made up of rows of backstage household apartments connected by shared verandas. Here, assemblage activities similar rattan weaving, meetings and karaoke-singing instrumentality place.

Bilong has played an progressive relation successful assemblage activism implicit the years. For him, deforestation activities person contributed to the undermining of generational knowledge, arsenic carnal landmarks person been removed from their lived environment.

“It’s hard for america to spell to the jungle now,” helium explains.

“We don’t cognize immoderate much which elevation is the 1 we spell to for hunting,” helium says.

“We don’t adjacent cognize wherever the elevation went.”

William Tinggang examines a mushroom wrong the Nawan area. Sarawak’s superior rainforests are exceptionally affluent successful biodiversity and harbour hundreds of endemic taxon recovered obscurity other connected Earth [Izzy Sasada/Al Jazeera]

For decades, Indigenous communities crossed Ulu Baram person shown their absorption to logging activities by making carnal blockades.

This typically entails assemblage members camping for weeks, oregon adjacent months, on logging roads to physically obstruct unwanted outsiders from entering autochthonal customary territories.

The superior ineligible model regulating wood usage is the Sarawak Forest Ordinance (1958), which grants the authorities authorities sweeping power implicit wood areas, including the issuance of timber licences.

Now, section communities are progressively turning to strategical tools to asseverate their rights.

One of these tools is the instauration of assemblage maps.

“We are moving from oral contented to carnal documentation,” says Indigenous quality rights activistic Celine Lim.

Lim is the managing manager of Save Rivers, 1 of the section organisations supporting Ulu Baram’s Indigenous communities to representation their lands.

“Because of extracurricular threats, this modulation needs to instrumentality place,” Lim tells Al Jazeera.

Indigenous Kayan person from Sarawak, Celine Lim, who is the manager of the organisation Save Rivers [Izzy Sasada/Al Jazeera]

Unlike authoritative authorities maps, these maps bespeak the community’s taste landmarks.

They see markers for things similar burial grounds, ineffable sites and trees which incorporate poison for hunting with stroke darts, reflecting however Indigenous radical really subordinate to and negociate their onshore sustainably.

“For Indigenous people, the mode that they link to onshore is decidedly a batch deeper than galore of our accepted ways,” says Lim.

“They spot the mountains, the rivers, the land, the wood and successful the past, these were entities,” she says.

“The mode you’d respect a idiosyncratic is the mode that they would respect these entities.”

By physically documenting however their onshore is managed, Indigenous communities tin usage maps to asseverate their beingness and support their autochthonal customary territory.

“This assemblage representation is truly important for us,” says Bilong, who played a relation successful the instauration of Long Semiyang’s assemblage map.

“When we marque a map, we cognize what our country is and what is successful our area,” helium says.

“It is important that we make boundaries”.

The contented of creating assemblage maps successful Sarawak archetypal emerged successful the 1990s, erstwhile the Switzerland-based radical Bruno Manser-Fonds – named aft a Swiss biology activistic who disappeared successful Sarawak successful 2000 – began supporting the Penan assemblage with mapping activities.

The Penan are a antecedently nomadic indigenous radical successful Sarawak who person present mostly settled arsenic farmers.

Through mapping, they person documented astatine slightest 5,000 stream names and 1,000 topographic features linked to their traditions, and their assemblage maps person been utilized galore times arsenic captious documentation to forestall logging.

Other groups, specified arsenic the Kenyah, are pursuing suit with the instauration of their ain assemblage maps.

“The crushed wherefore the inclination of mapping has continued is due to the fact that successful different parts of Baram and Sarawak, they’ve proven to beryllium successful,” says the Borneo Project’s Merriman, “at slightest successful getting the attraction of logging companies and the government.”

Jessica Merriman from The Borneo Project inspects a Long Moh assemblage representation with a subordinate of Long Moh colony [Izzy Sasada/Al Jazeera]

Now, section organisations are encouraging communities to further solidify their assertion to their autochthonal customary territories by joining a planetary level hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme that recognises Indigenous and assemblage conserved areas, known arsenic the ICCA.

Communities participating successful the ICCA are listed connected a globally accessible online database, and this planetary visibility offers a spot for them to publicise threats and onshore grabs.

In Sarawak, the planetary visibility afforded done ICCA registration could connection an alternate avenue of extortion for communities.

Merriman says that different important facet of applying for ICCA designation is the process itself of registering.

“The ICCA process is fundamentally an organising instrumentality and a self-strengthening tool,” she says.

“It’s not conscionable astir being connected the database. It’s astir going done the process of a assemblage banding unneurotic to support its ain land, to travel up with a shared imaginativeness of responding to threats and what they privation to bash to effort to marque alternate income.”

Safeguarding Indigenous communities successful Sarawak besides has an planetary significance, activists say.

As the impacts of clime alteration intensify successful Malaysia and globally, the imaginable role of Sarawak’s rainforests successful clime alteration mitigation is progressively being recognised.

“There’s plentifulness of speech astatine the authorities level astir protecting forests,” says Jettie Word, enforcement manager of The Borneo Project.

“Officials often accidental the close things successful presumption of recognising their value successful combatting clime change. Though ongoing logging indicates a spread betwixt rhetoric and reality,” Word says.

“While mapping unsocial can’t support a wood from a billion-dollar timber project, erstwhile it’s combined with assemblage organising and campaigning, it’s often rather almighty and we’ve seen it successfully support the companies away,” she says.

“The maps supply coagulated grounds of a community’s territory that is hard to refute.”