NGO calls for replacement of top officials in Sarawak "who should have dealt with these problems a long time ago but failed to do so"
FMT
KUCHING: The Swiss-based Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) has called on the Sarawak Government in a statement to establish a Green Task Force “to deal with the urgent problems of corruption in the timber industry, deforestation and the loss of biodiversity”.
The Task Force, adds the NGO, should see the replacement of the top officials in Sarawak “who should have dealt with these problems a long time ago but failed to do so”.
The BMF call for the Task Force follows two events on November 17.
REDD-Monitor, an international body based in Frankfurt, Germany, labeled Sarawak as “ground zero of deforestation”.
November 17 is also the day that Chief Minister Adenan Satem apparently publicly humiliated the Big Six in the Sarawak timber industry by getting them to sign a Corporate Integrity Pledge worked out by the Malaysian Integrity Institute.
“This must have been bitter for Sarawak’s timber giants who have earned billions of dollars under Adenan’s predecessor, the notorious Taib Mahmud,” said the BMF statement.
While Adenan has since qualified the strong words he reportedly used in the presence of the Big Six and journalists, notes BMF, he did reiterate that corruption and illegal logging in Sarawak were “very serious“ and that Sarawak needed more protected forest areas.
Adenan reportedly told the heads of Rimbunan Hijau, Samling, Shin Yang, WTK, KTS and Ta Ann . . . “I will put the fear of God into people who are dishonest”, “don’t mess with me”, “I mean business” etc and/or words to that effect. The Chief Minister clarified the next day that the harsh words were actually meant for those working with the Big Six, the lesser mortals, and others in the Sarawak Government, not the heads of the Big Six.
“While the Bruno Manser Fund commends the new Chief Minister’s resolve to fight corruption and combat illegal logging, pledges alone will not be enough to save Sarawak’s’ threatened old-growth forests, which have been reduced to less than ten per cent of the state’s surface,” said the BMF statement.
The NGO called on Adenan to seriously consider, as among Task Force initiatives, an export ban like that imposed by Myanmar and Gabon on raw logs.
Among other measures, it advocates freezing of timber concessions over high-conservation value forests, the publishing of all forestry and plantation concessions in order to create transparency, as well as a comprehensive review of indigenous communities’ claims over forests in the light of the latest court decisions on native rights.
“It appears particularly important that indigenous communities who wish to protect their native lands from being logged or converted into plantations, should be allowed to do so without restraints,” said BMF.
It cited the proposed “Penan Peace Park”, a model that integrates forest protection with socio-economic development in Upper Baram, as a case in point.
KUCHING: The Swiss-based Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) has called on the Sarawak Government in a statement to establish a Green Task Force “to deal with the urgent problems of corruption in the timber industry, deforestation and the loss of biodiversity”.
The Task Force, adds the NGO, should see the replacement of the top officials in Sarawak “who should have dealt with these problems a long time ago but failed to do so”.
The BMF call for the Task Force follows two events on November 17.
REDD-Monitor, an international body based in Frankfurt, Germany, labeled Sarawak as “ground zero of deforestation”.
November 17 is also the day that Chief Minister Adenan Satem apparently publicly humiliated the Big Six in the Sarawak timber industry by getting them to sign a Corporate Integrity Pledge worked out by the Malaysian Integrity Institute.
“This must have been bitter for Sarawak’s timber giants who have earned billions of dollars under Adenan’s predecessor, the notorious Taib Mahmud,” said the BMF statement.
While Adenan has since qualified the strong words he reportedly used in the presence of the Big Six and journalists, notes BMF, he did reiterate that corruption and illegal logging in Sarawak were “very serious“ and that Sarawak needed more protected forest areas.
Adenan reportedly told the heads of Rimbunan Hijau, Samling, Shin Yang, WTK, KTS and Ta Ann . . . “I will put the fear of God into people who are dishonest”, “don’t mess with me”, “I mean business” etc and/or words to that effect. The Chief Minister clarified the next day that the harsh words were actually meant for those working with the Big Six, the lesser mortals, and others in the Sarawak Government, not the heads of the Big Six.
“While the Bruno Manser Fund commends the new Chief Minister’s resolve to fight corruption and combat illegal logging, pledges alone will not be enough to save Sarawak’s’ threatened old-growth forests, which have been reduced to less than ten per cent of the state’s surface,” said the BMF statement.
The NGO called on Adenan to seriously consider, as among Task Force initiatives, an export ban like that imposed by Myanmar and Gabon on raw logs.
Among other measures, it advocates freezing of timber concessions over high-conservation value forests, the publishing of all forestry and plantation concessions in order to create transparency, as well as a comprehensive review of indigenous communities’ claims over forests in the light of the latest court decisions on native rights.
“It appears particularly important that indigenous communities who wish to protect their native lands from being logged or converted into plantations, should be allowed to do so without restraints,” said BMF.
It cited the proposed “Penan Peace Park”, a model that integrates forest protection with socio-economic development in Upper Baram, as a case in point.
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