The Upper Baram Forest Area, also known under the name of Baram Peace Park (Taman Damai Baram), is a community initiative designed to protect Sarawak’s last islands of primary forest, celebrate local cultures, and develop sustainable livelihoods. The vision is spearheaded by communities in the upper reach of the Baram River in northern Sarawak, who want to limit logging in their ancestral lands and develop alternative income sources.
Background
The idea of a Peace Park was originally initiated in 2009 by 18 Penan villages and was known as the Penan Peace Park. This initiative was a reaction to the constant encroachment of logging companies into the forest. The Penan communities developed the idea of the park as a way to integrate ecological and cultural conservation with economic advancement. The principle of self-determination is essential for the Peace Park: the initiative was developed to protect Indigenous rights — especially the right to land.
The late Chief Minister Adenan Satem and the Forest Department of Sarawak welcomed the project with great interest in 2015 and 2016, and recommended including all communities living in this area — Penan, Saban, Kelabit and Kenyah — in an ambitious project called Taman Damai Baram (Baram Peace Park).
Current status
After the project received support from the late Chief Minister Adenan Satem, the Sarawak Forest Department submitted a proposal for funding to the International Tropical Timber Organization ITTO with the support of NGOs (Keruan, SAVE Rivers, Bruno Manser Fonds, The Borneo Project). The project was officially accepted and approved by the ITTO in November, 2020. Partial funding was secured in 2021, and stakeholders are in the process of designing a phased-in approach.
Conservation significance
Some of the last remaining primary forests of Sarawak are found in the proposed project area; 28% of the total area is covered with primary tropical forest, 23% with agricultural land (primarily small-scale subsistence farms), and the remaining 49% with previously-logged forest. Four Dayak ethnic groups – the Penan, Kenyah, Saban and Kelabit are currently living in 32 villages of the proposed protected area.
According to a survey carried out by ITTO in the adjacent Pulong Tau National Park, the proposed protected area represents a “biological hotspot”. This study reveals that at least 819 plant species, 315 bird species, 20 big mammal species, 15 small mammal species, 84 fish species, 6 crustaceans species, 34 amphibian species, and 75 taxa of aquatic insects live in the area.
The timber company Samling has been encroaching into the area earmarked for the conservation zone of the Upper Baram Forest Area (also known as Baram Peace Park) in Northern Sarawak. Assistant Headman Suya Ara of Long Ajeng, one of the Penan communities currently affected, is alarmed and sending an alert...
