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Tag: Stop the chop

Timber giant Samling is logging some of the last intact forests in Sarawak against the wishes of local Indigenous communities. The #StopTheChop campaign is calling on Samling to stop logging without consent. It also calls on the MTCC and PEFC — the national and international timber certificationlabels — to enforce their own standards.

#StopTheChop is a rainforest protection campaign spearheaded by local communities and civil society in the Baram region, Sarawak. Indigenous communities in the area rely heavily on the forests for their physical and cultural survival. It is a biodiversity hotspot and critical wildlife corridor, with some of the largest areas of unprotected primary forest left in Malaysian Borneo. The region includes the Baram Peace Park (UBFA).

Communities have been fighting logging for decades, but started organizing under the #StopTheChop campaign in 2020 when reports from multiple communities revealed that timber giant Samling was logging without properly obtaining the free, prior and informed consent of local communities, as is required by the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme (MTCS). Our local partner SAVE Rivers published these reports on its website, and in response Samling has slapped them with a massive defamation lawsuit designed to silence and bankrupt them.

In the face of such threats, more communities continue to join the #StopTheChop campaign in solidarity.