In May of last year, when we helped residents of Long Urun file a complaint with Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO), the community had already been watching its forests cleared for palm oil production for more than a year. After trying everything they could think of to stop the forest...
Originally published in Malaysiakini. It takes five and a half hours by boat across the Bakun reservoir to reach Long Jawe, a remote Indigenous village on the reservoir’s furthest inlet. When we arrived, our boat driver’s dogs came down to meet him. They were up to their necks in mud,...
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...
By Peter Kallang, Founder of SAVE Rivers This month marks ten years since the Sarawak government formally shelved plans for the Baram Dam, a massive hydropower project that would have flooded 412 square kilometres of native customary lands and displaced some 20,000 people from 30 villages in the Baram River...
The Borneo Project has spent the last 35 years standing alongside Indigenous communities in Sarawak, Malaysia, defending rainforests, resisting destructive development, and advocating for Indigenous rights. This critical work is made possible entirely through the shared commitment of our donors: a powerful community of supporters, partners, and allies who believe...
This article was originally published at Green Agenda Australia In Sarawak, eucalyptus plantations are replacing biodiverse forests under the guise of “reforestation”. Indigenous communities fight to protect their lands while Australia continues to import timber grown on stolen territories. When I think back to the Black Summer of 2019-2020, I...
This article was originally published by Eco-Business Asia For years, Indigenous communities in Sarawak fought against logging on their lands. Today, they can claim a rare victory: timber giant Samling has withdrawn from Baram’s forests, and may well have withdrawn from logging native forests for good. Indigenous communities in the...
This article was originally published in Malaysiakini. The sound of a forest tree being felled tugs at some primal place of fear in our bodies – the thunder of a trunk losing its structural integrity, the ripping of vines and branches, then an eerie silent millisecond before its full weight...
Dear Friends, When I joined The Borneo Project over a decade ago, we were a small but determined team—it was just me, an intern, and our dedicated board. Our main partner organization in Sarawak, SAVE Rivers, was run by a handful of volunteers. Our coalition was small, but we were...
This article was originally posted in Eco-business Asia We wind our way through a maze of logging roads in Sarawak, heading toward some of the state’s so-called reforestation projects. Sarawak claims to be at the forefront of Malaysia’s green revolution, planting millions of trees and launching its first carbon offset...
