The Penan of Sarawak

originally compiled by Rhymi Chavid, March 2008

Sarawak became an autonomous state of the federation of Malaysia on 16 September 1963. Since this time, logging has depleted 90% of Sarawak’s old growth forest ( >10 Ma ).

Area of Conflict: The Sarawak state of Malaysia on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia
Population: 2.4 M (2006)
Area: 124,450 km^2

Ethnic majority: none
>40 ethnic groups, each with their own distinct language, culture, lifestyle.

Dayak people:
>200 ethnic subgroups of indigenous peoples of Borneo
Orang Ulu:
Collective term for the ~30 tribes living in Sarawak (5.5% of the population).
Both terms are used for the Penan.

The Penan are one of the last nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes alive today and live along rivers deep within the tropical forests of Sarawak and Brunei. Numbering 10,000 total, only 350-500 individuals have yet to be forced or coerced into settling in longhouse ghettos predominately located in logged areas that have been stripped of their resources.

For the Penan, only what is needed is taken (‘molong’) and all is shared. Resources from the forest allow them to hunt (poison blowpipe) and harvest (sago palm) with a minimum impact on the land.

The Rainforest

“Eighty percent of Borneo is covered in tropical rain forest, one of the oldest and richest ecosystems on earth. Many of the life forms on Borneo are unique to the island. About one third of its plant species are found nowhere else on earth. Thirty of its birds are endemic, as are thirty-nine of its terrestrial mammals. Borneo is home to scattered populations of rare and endangered animals such as the Sumatran rhino and the orangutan. One entomologist working in Borneo identified some 600 species of butterflies and caterpillars in a single day. Another reported over a thousand species of cicadas.”

The Conflict

“Thirty years ago, the introduction of commercial logging [mainly The Samling Group] spurred encroachment onto the lands of Borneo’s indigenous peoples. The majority of all forests of Borneo have been licensed to logging and plantation concessions, and most of these overlap with ancestral indigenous land claims. In violation of international and national law, logging and oil palm companies are clearing and burning vast tracts of ancient forest on a scale often exceeding rates of destruction in the Amazon. Current estimates predict that Borneo’s rainforests will disappear by the year 2010.
Industrial logging and plantation development in Borneo’s forests have polluted rivers, degraded fragile forest ecosystems and made it difficult for communities to find the forest products they need to survive.

Forest destruction has led to a decline in the bird, fish and mammal populations dependent on trees for seeds and fruit, as well as to a loss of medicinal plant, rattan, and palm species. The incursion of roads has enabled poachers to access the area, and hillside erosion has led to extreme siltation of watersheds and coral reefs, which are affecting regional and global climate patterns. Forest destruction has threatened traditional systems of land management and inflicted poverty, pollution and social disintegration on once thriving communities.

Efforts to protect remaining land through blockades, demonstrations, and court cases have met with repression and brutality on the part of government agencies and corporations. As forest resources have become depleted, economic pressures have driven young villagers to leave their communities in search of employment. Industrial appropriation of indigenous land has compelled traditionally nomadic tribes to settle and become agriculturist, as their basic needs can no longer be fulfilled by forest resources. Recently settled nomads (Penan in Sarawak, Punan in East Kalimantan) are increasingly reliant on a cash economy for food, medicine, and other necessities. Tribes in transition to a settled lifestyle have little access to education and health facilities and lack basic survival knowledge such as food crop cultivation and construction of permanent living structures.

The Malaysian and Indonesian governments have done little to mitigate the impacts of forest destruction, and governmental conservation efforts have largely been a failure due to high demand for illegal timber by exports mills. In protected areas, bribes offered to government officials enable logging companies to carry out illegal operations. National and international laws that defend indigenous land rights are rarely enforced and frequently broken. Lands without written documentation of ownership are considered available for exploitation, and while Malaysian law recognizes native customary rights to lands occupied and cultivated by indigenous peoples, there is no official procedure to document such claims. Government requirements for written documentation of land ownership leave the burden of proof on communities who have had little or no access to titles or maps for these purposes.”

“Beginning in the late 1980s and continuing today the Penan and other Dayak have set up blockades in an attempt to halt logging operations on their land. These succeeded in many areas but the efforts were hard to sustain and ended in large-scale clashes between the indigenous communities and the state backed logging companies, supported by the police and Malaysian army. The confrontations ended with several deaths, many injuries and large-scale arrests of indigenous people.”

Bruno Manser

Bruno Manser, originally from Switzerland, lived among the Penan for six years (1984-1990) and was the initial impetus to action for the Penan. Sarawak officials denounced Bruno Manser as “a communist and Zionist” due to his living with the tribe and was declared persona non grata in Malaysia with a bounty of $40,000 on his head. He was last heard from through correspondence in 2000 from Sarawak and is missing/presumed dead.

Bulldozers and Blowpipes (VHS) featuring Manser, and his journal/testimonial book from those years (with wonderful drawings), Voices from the Rainforest, are recommended.

Anderson Mutang Urud

Anderson Mutang Urud from the Klabit (a settled tribe) has traveled internationally to increase awareness and heighten international concern for the situation in Sarawak. He was instrumental in founding the Sarawak Indigenous People’s Alliance (SIPA) in 1991 to disseminate information and campaign against unsustainable logging. He has been arrested and named in many court cases as a result of his efforts. The following excerpts are taken from the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1992 and from an interview on January 14, 1994 conducted by Prasiidananda Avadhuta

“When a timber company moves into the forest, it doesn’t consult us or pay us any compensation. When an area is logged, fish, wild animals, sago palms, rattan and medicinal plants disappear. The trees which bear the fruit which feeds the wild pigs are cut down for timber so the pigs disappear, and with them the main source of meat for our peoples.

Many of us are now hungry. Trees and vines with poisonous barks are felled, and find their way into the streams, killing the fish. Mud from land which can no longer keep its topsoil pollutes the rivers, bringing disease and destroying our sources of drinking water. Even when we mark our burial grounds, the logging companies bulldoze them with no regard for our feelings. Hundreds of graveyards have been destroyed in this way. When we complain about the destruction, they sometimes offer us a small sum of money as compensation. But this is an insult to us. How can we accept money that is traded for the bodies of our ancestors?

The Penan people are our neighbors in the forest. The Penans are totally dependent on the forest for their survival. Now, bulldozers and chain saws are destroying their way of life. As one of our old women said, ‘This logging is like a big tree that has fallen on our chest. I wake up in the middle of every night, worried and depressed. I talk to my husband and wonder what the future holds for our children.’

Our situation now is like a child who has fallen into a fast-flowing river and cannot swim. The child cries out, extending its arm for someone to help. If no one takes the hand, the child will surely drown. I ask you, the United Nations, must people die before you respond? Must there be war, and blood running in the streets, before the United Nations will come to a people’s assistance? Even though we are desperate, our people have avoided violence. We have used only peaceful methods of protest.

An old man I know once asked a policeman why it was he could not blockade a road on his own land. The policeman told him that Yayasan Sarawak had been given the license to log the forest, and so the land belongs to the company. This is what the old man said in reply, ‘Who is this Yayasan Sarawak?’ If he really owns the land, why have I never met him in the forest during my hunting trips over the last sixty years?’

The government says that it is bringing us progress and development. But the only development that we see is dusty logging roads and relocation camps. For us, their so-called progress means only starvation, dependence, helplessness, the destruction of our culture, and the demoralization of our people. The government says it is creating jobs for our people. But these jobs will disappear along with the forest. In ten years, the jobs will all be gone, and the forest which has sustained us for thousands of years will be gone with them. Why do we need jobs? My father and my grandfather did not have to ask the government for jobs. They were never unemployed. They lived from the land and from the forest. It was a good life. We had much leisure time, yet we were never hungry, or in need. These company jobs take men away from their families for months at a time. They are breaking apart the vital links that have held our families and our communities together for generations. These jobs bring our people into a consumer economy for which they are not prepared.

I say to my country, and to other developing countries, that in our race to modernize, we must respect the ancient cultures and traditions of our peoples. The wealth of indigenous communities lies not in money or in commodities, but in community, tradition, and a sense of belonging to a special place. The world is rushing toward a single culture. We should pause, and reflect on the beauty of diversity.”

Sources:

The Borneo Project

Bruno Manser Fonds

 

Contributed by R. Chavid

Rely on the Tiger

By Rhymi Chavid, March 2007

Ranked number one on the 2006 Fortune Global 500, ExxonMobil reported revenues for that year at just under $340 billion, earning the corporation a daily profit of nearly $100 million (Fortune). In 2004 (the latest year with available data), ExxonMobil was responsible for the production of over one billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, snagging the corporation another top ten ranking: sixth in emissions behind the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and India (UCS report 4).

On their website, ExxonMobil “…pledge[s] to be a good corporate citizen in all the places we operate worldwide. We will maintain the highest ethical standards, obey all applicable laws and regulations, and respect local and national cultures. Above all other objectives, we are dedicated to running safe and environmentally responsible operations” (ExxonMobil). Yet company affiliated memos tell a different story.

One such internal memo of the Global Science Team (created by ExxonMobil in 1998) states, “Victory will be achieved when average citizens understand (recognize) uncertainties in climate science… [our] strategies and tactics [are to]…develop and implement a national media relations program to inform the media about uncertainties in climate science” (UCS report 40).

During the 2004 election cycle, ExxonMobil made $935,000 in political contributions to block climate and emissions legislation. This was on top of the $16 million it spent through 43 advocacy groups and the $61 million paid to lobbyists (between 1998 and 2005) in order to manufacture uncertainty over the science of global warming (USC report 5). A hefty portion of the $16 million alottment was given to the Competitive Enterprise Group (CEI), a “non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government” (CEI). With $2 million of ExxonMobil’s money burning a hole in their pockets, CEI created two television ads to further ExxonMobil’s interests.

The first ad presents carbon dioxide under a false light. Sunny images of children blowing bubbles and the floating seeds of dandelions are accompanied by the voice-over:

“There’s something in these pictures you can’t see. It’s essential to life. We breathe it out, plants breathe it in. It comes from animal life, the oceans, the earth and the fuels we find in it. It’s called carbon dioxide- CO2. The fuels that produce co2 have freed us from a world of back-breaking labor. Lighting up our lives, allowing us to create and move the things we need, the people we love. Now some politicians want to label carbon dioxide a pollutant. Imagine if they succeed. What would our lives be like then? Carbon dioxide- they call it pollution, we call it life” (CEI 1).

The ad emphasizes the ‘naturalness’ of carbon dioxide, which is presented as a helpful little chemical compound responsible for liberating us from darkness, toil, and isolation. Indeed, carbon dioxide is naturally occurring, as are numerous other elements and chemical compounds that nonetheless become toxic when consumed or produced in excess. Iron, for example, is one of the ten most abundant elements on earth and an essential dietary mineral. However, iron consumption in excess of between 180-300 mg per kg of body weight can result in iron poisoning, leading to shock and eventually death from liver failure (Nieman 2). And what about the chemical compound H20- water? Covering two thirds of the earth and also essential to life on earth, water can also be dangerous in excess, as it is with floods, water intoxication, and drowning. This circular logic does nothing to prove that an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not cause harm. Additionally, the either/or argument posed in the ad above completely omits the existence of cleaner energy sources that would alternatively “light up our lives…create and move the things we need [and] the people we love.”

The second ad invents uncertainties in the science of global warming expressly through illogic and misrepresentation. Headlines from newspapers flash over the screen as the narration announces:

“You’ve seen those headlines about global warming. The glaciers are melting. We’re doomed. That’s what several studies supposedly found. But other scientific studies found exactly the opposite. Greenland’s glaciers are growing, not melting. The Antarctic ice sheet is getting thicker, not thinner. Did you see any big headlines about that? Why are they trying to scare us? Global warming alarmists claim the glaciers are melting because of carbon dioxide from the fuels we use. Let’s force people to cut back, they say. But we depend on those fuels to grow our food, move our children, light up our lives. And as for carbon dioxide it isn’t smog or smoke it’s what we breathe out and what plants breathe in. Carbon dioxide- they call it pollution, we call it life” (CEI 2).

This ad projects an ‘us against them’ stand by using ‘we’ as though scientists and the public are at odds. “We’re doomed,” “why are they trying to scare us,” “the fuels we use,” “cut back, they say,” “we depend on those fuels to grow our food, move our children, light up our lives,” and “what we breathe out.” Aligning the voice of the ad with the audience sets up the ad’s punch line- if ‘they’ call it pollution and ‘we’ call it life, then it follows that ‘we’ (the audience), call it life and not pollution, too. Straw-person attacks assist this strategy with the assertion that “we’re doomed,” asking “why are they trying to scare us?” and alleging the wish to “force people to cut back.” It’s a bit of a stretch to compare researching climate change and reporting your findings to the assertion that we’re all doomed with an underlying desire to scare and force the public into submission.

Continuing with wordplay, the placement of a few choice terms—“supposedly,” “exactly,” and “claim” cunningly slant the certainty away from the science and towards speculation. A bit of semantics are involved as supposedly is defined as “accepted or believed as true, without positive knowledge” and “merely thought to be such; imagined” (Dictionary). As science shies away from declaring absolutes, the former definition indeed applies, yet the connotation of ‘supposedly’ leans toward the latter definition—one of speculation and controversy. Similarly, ‘claim’ is properly used, but implies speculation. On the flip side, ‘exactly’ connotes precision, yet in this context, refers only to the contradictory studies being precisely the opposite of the initial studies.

Ultimately, however, that statement is inconsequential as CEI cherry-picked the information to begin with. When questioned about CEI’s ad, Ola Johannessen, lead author of Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in Interior in Greenland (one of the two articles ambiguously referenced in the ad), “replied, ‘They have misused my paper.’ Essentially, the ice-sheet growth is an indication, not a refutation of global warming” (Dheere 3). And as author George Monbiot points out in his commentary over the ads on BBC’s Newsnight, “70 out of the 81 glaciers measured by the World Glacier Monitoring Service are shrinking” (Monbiot).

As an environmentalist who opts to spend four hours a day on public transit in lieu of driving her car, has written several reports, and has given presentations on climate change, I can’t help but feel more than a little miffed over the egregious content of these ads. In fact, I find them downright insulting. As more time passes and emissions increase exponentially, the severity of consequences also increases. Well-funded disinformation campaigns such as the ones backed by ExxonMobil delay the curbing of global emissions, the implementation of stricter regulations, and modified energy practices. Despite the overwhelming peer-reviewed data available attesting that “… the primary source of the increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial period results from fossil fuel use” (IPCC report 2), the population of our world is at the mercy of a few powerful corporations with large bank accounts. How long will we allow these money-hungry entities to obscure the truth and delay action without repercussion? More importantly, what does it say about our society that we are willing to believe a mass of lies swimming in illogic because it is more convenient, instead of making changes that are necessary for the health and survival of life on our planet?

Works Cited
“Fortune 500.” Fortune 17 Apr 2006. 13 Mar 2007 <http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/snapshots/496.html>.

Union of Concerned Scientists, et al. Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to “Manufacture Uncertainty” on Climate Change. Union of Concerned Scientists. 12 Feb 2007. 12 Mar 2007 <http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWarming-tobacco.html>.

ExxonMobil Corporation. 12 Mar 2007 <http://www2.exxonmobil.com/corporate/>.

Competitive Enterprise Institute. Competitive Enterprise Institute: Advancing Liberty, Public Policy Research, CEI. 2007. 12 Mar 2007 <http://www.cei.org/pages/about.cfm>.

“We Call It Life.” Competitive Enterprise Institute: Advancing Liberty, Public Policy Research. CEI. 2007.12 Mar 2007 <http://www.cei.org/pages/co2.cfm>.

Nieman, Judith. “Metals as Toxic Agents.” Metals in Health and Disease. 13 Mar 2007 <http://www.portfolio.mvm.ed.ac.uk/studentwebs/session2/group29/irontox.htm>.

“Supposedly.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 13 Mar 2007. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/supposedly>.

Dheere, Jessica. “A Convenient Excuse, but the Wrong Kind of Green.” Villager [New York] 21 June 2006. Voted New York State’s Best Community Newspaper. 13 Mar 2007 <http://www.thevillager.com/villager_164/talkingpoint.html>.

Monbiot, George. BBC. Fall 2006. 12 Mar 2007. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at0T7Fi5l_I>.

Contributed by R. Chavid