Press statement by James Lalo Keso, former Penan Penghulu
of Long Lamai
Penan request moratorium on logging to save last
remaining islands of primary forest for Upper Baram Park
We, the Penan, are a nomadic tribe living in the
rainforest of Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. Our lives
depend very much on a sound environment, a rainforest that can provide us with
all for satisfying our needs; our identity and social wellbeing depends very
much on our ancestral lands, the territories our fathers and grandfathers lived
on. These forests are our history, our present and are meant to be our future.
James Lalo Keso, former community leader of the Penans
Our traditional way of living is threatened by
uncontrolled logging activities that started already in the 1960s. Since
independence we have been demanding and struggling for our Native Customary
Rights to land which have not been acknowledged.
We peoples of the forest, we do not have any means to
make our voices being heard. We know that there are international regulations
that give us the right to information and consultation. The world is becoming
more and more aware of the negative social and environmental consequences of
these logging impacts, which implicate the end of our way of living.
Several of our communities have written letters to the
government and no one has ever bothered to reply to our worries. As we do not
have any means to make the government accountable, we put our hopes on our
Chief Minister Tan Sri Datuk Patinggi Haji Adenan Satem to strengthen democracy
and listen to our voices.
We, the Penan communities from the upper Baram area,
request a moratorium on the logging activities in our area. We are very pleased
about the government’s interest in the realization of a park in our home area
and, two weeks ago, we handed in a proposal for a “Community Managed Protected
Area in the Upper Baram”.
The last intact forest areas are important assets of the
proposed park and we can currently watch how they are being destroyed. There is
no time for hesitation; they need to be protected as soon as possible.
Last week, we sent an official letter to our Chief
Minister, the honourable Tan Sri Datuk Patinggi Haji Adenan Satem, and
suggested a moratorium on logging and plantations in the upper Baram area.
In the letter, we explain that we fear that until the
park is officially established and the logging concessions will have expired,
the last remaining areas of primary forest will be logged in the Upper Baram
Area.
We emphasize the urgency of our request with the quickly
vanishing forests in our area. In the letter, I explain how the last islands of
primary forest are disappearing in our Ba Jawi area: in 2010, the Ba Jawi area
was still covered with pristine primary forest, while in 2015 – after five
years of logging – the area is severely degraded and the biological diversity
has been reduced considerably.
Only few areas in the Selungo area remain unlogged today
and are under immediate threat of being logged in the coming months.
We would like to ask our Chief Minister for his support
to approve our Baram forest reserve, the last remaining intact rainforest in
Sarawak. We hope that he will hear our voices and stop all logging activities
in the upper Baram in order to save Sarawak’s last islands of unlogged forest
and to realize a park.
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