The Baram Peace Park (Taman Damai Baram) is a community initiative designed to protect Sarawak’s last remaining primary forests, celebrate local cultures, and develop sustainable livelihoods. The vision for the park is spearheaded by communities in the upper reach of the Baram River in northern Sarawak, who have spent decades resisting logging in their ancestral lands while building an alternative vision for their forests and their futures.
Background
The concept of the Baram Peace Park originated in 2009 among Penan villages in the Upper Baram, initially known as the Penan Peace Park. This initiative arose in response to the constant encroachment of logging companies into the forest. The Penan communities envisioned the park as a means to integrate ecological and cultural conservation with economic advancement. Central to the Peace Park is the principle of self-determination, ensuring the protection of Indigenous rights — particularly the right to land.
In 2015, the late Chief Minister Adenan Satem welcomed the project and recommended expanding it to include all communities in the area — Penan, Saban, Kelabit, and Kenyah — into what was renamed the Baram Peace Park.
Conservation Significance
The Baram Peace Park encompasses 283,000 hectares of forests and farmlands in the Upper Baram, including a 79,000-hectare core zone of intact primary rainforest — the largest stretch of primary forest in Sarawak outside of a national park. Four Indigenous groups — the Penan, Kenyah, Saban, and Kelabit — inhabit 32 villages within the proposed protected area.
A survey conducted by ITTO in the adjacent Pulong Tau National Park indicates that the area represents a biological hotspot, with at least 819 plant species, 315 bird species, 20 large mammal species, 84 fish species, 34 amphibian species, and 75 taxa of aquatic insects recorded in the region.
Current Status
In November 2020, the Baram Peace Park project was formally adopted by the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) and the Sarawak government, under the name “Upper Baram Forest Area (UBFA).” The project was publicly presented as a model of collaborative conservation between the state and Indigenous communities, with funding from the Japanese government, the City of Basel, the Bruno Manser Fonds, and the Malaysian government. It was formally launched in March 2023.
What followed was a betrayal of that promise. While the project was being developed, the Sarawak government quietly issued a new timber license to Borneoland Timber Resources Sdn. Bhd. — a previously unknown company — over more than 100,000 hectares of the proposed conservation area, without public tender, community consultation, or Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. Logging began in the core protection zone in 2024. In October of that year, the Sarawak Forest Department unilaterally cancelled the UBFA project.
The ecological and human consequences have been severe. Community monitors estimate that more than 5,000 tons of timber are leaving the concession every month, cut from previously undisturbed primary rainforest. Rivers have silted. Wildlife habitats have been destroyed. Communities that built this vision over decades are now watching their forests fall.
In August 2026, our partners at Bruno Manser Fonds, Keruan, JATAN, and Friends of the Earth Japan published Plundering the Baram Peace Park — a report documenting how this happened, the actors responsible, and what must now be done. Read the full report below.
What if a conservation project becomes a logging project? For decades, Indigenous communities in the Upper Baram region of Malaysian Borneo have been fighting deforestation. Through sustained efforts, they have successfully protected large areas of forest. These efforts gave rise to the vision of the Baram Peace Park, which was...
by Peter Kallang The future of Upper Baram is no longer an abstract debate about development versus conservation. It is a real and ongoing conflict involving Indigenous communities, logging interests, and government authorities responsible for managing Sarawak’s forests. Since 2024, Indigenous Penan and Kenyah communities in Upper Baram have opposed...
What: Rapid expansion of native forest logging by Borneoland Timber Resources, moving toward the territory of Long Semiyang — an Indigenous Kenyah village on the Baram River in Sarawak. Where: Long Semiyang is located in the Upper Baram region of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. When: Borneoland Timber Resources has been operating...
Global campaign launched to save Malaysian Borneo’s last primary rainforests – Sarawak Premier Abang Johari under fire over ties to Malaysian timber tycoon (Miri, Sarawak) A newly released video by Swiss NGO Bruno Manser Fonds reveals alarming deforestation in the heart of Malaysia’s tropical rainforest. Filmed in Sarawak’s Upper Baram...
Bruno Manser Fonds launches “Save the Baram forest” campaign at UNESCO headquarters (Paris) Forest activists told Sarawak Premier Abang Johari during his visit to Europe that his first step towards climate protection should be the conservation of old-growth forests in Sarawak. A delegation from the Switzerland-based nature protection agency Bruno...
Lack of transparency and breakdown in communication cause cancellation of International Tropical Timber Organization’s (ITTO) showcase operation in Malaysian Borneo (MIRI / SARAWAK / MALAYSIA) International donors were stunned last Thursday when, minutes prior to the start of a project meeting in Miri, Malaysia, they learned that the Forest Department...
In an interview with Juliet Jacobs of BFM Radio, Malaysia’s only independent radio station, our friend and partner Celine Lim talks about the ongoing struggle to save the Baram Peace Park. Celine is Managing Director of Sarawak-based Indigenous rights NGO SAVE Rivers, which upports and empowers Indigenous communities to protect...
Save our forest and stop the logging – Baram Penan communities send clear message from the forest to Sarawak’s capital (KUCHING & BARAM / SARAWAK / MALAYSIA) Today, a delegation of Penan from the Upper Baram River Basin delivered a petition with over 500 signatures to government representatives at the...
Satellite analysis reveals logging road expansion nearing core protection zone of government backed project in the Baram River Basin (BARAM / SARAWAK / MALAYSIA) New satellite imagery shows major logging road expansion in the northwestern area of the Upper Baram Forest Area (UBFA), a conservation project in northern Sarawak supported...
Malaysian Borneo’s last primary rainforests under threat despite international conservation promises A new logging operation in Sarawak’s Upper Baram region poses an immediate threat to the Malaysian state’s last primary rainforests in the Heart of Borneo. Community sources say operators linked to Malaysian tycoon Hii King Chiong (“Hii”) have started...
