This briefing sheet is one of a series on the Bakun HEP
which have been compiled by the following organisations:
Many thanks to all those who have contributed to this series of briefings.
For many years, the indigenous peoples of Sarawak have been engaged in a well documented struggle for recognition of their land rights and the freedom to practise their traditional way of life. The struggle can be seen as one between two belief systems: the indigenous system in which land has a social, religious and historical value in addition to the economic, and the "modern" system where land is seen purely in terms of commercial value and ownership. Indigenous practices mean that land is never possessed by any individual but is held in trust by the community for future generations. This contrasts strongly with the individualised ownership patterns promoted by colonial and Malaysian administrations.
Successive changes to legislation, state-sanctioned logging and large scale development projects in Sarawak, including tourist development projects, have consistently undermined respect given to indigenous peoples' relationship to the land and have eroded their Native Customary Rights (NCR) [1]. The planning and implementation of the Bakun project affords yet another example of how the indigenous communities are likely to suffer at the hands of their government.
Figures in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) acknowledge that Native Customary Land constitutes 51% (or 35,490 ha) of the 69,640 ha reservoir area [2]. 9,000 to 10,000 people from sixteen longhouse communities will be forced to resettle to make way for the Bakun Dam [3]. The ethnic groups involved are Kenyah, Kayan, Kajang (Lahanan), Ukit and Penan. The majority of these communities continue to practise subsistence shifting agriculture and as well as cultivating hill rice, rely on the surrounding forest for hunting, gathering and fishing. The creation of the dam reservoir means an area the size of Singapore Island will be clear-cut, burnt and flooded. Homes, villages, schools, crops, fruit trees, communal forests, ancestral burial grounds, and the lands and forest which have supported these communities for generations will be lost forever.
In addition to those immediately affected, thousands of people living downstream of the dam will be affected through changes in water levels and quality.
The Bakun HEP is one of the largest development projects in Malaysia's history. Yet, as will be seen from other briefing sheets, its planning has been characterised by a remarkable lack of detailed or consistent information and has been devoid of any public accountability. This has seriously affected the indigenous people. First, the justification for the project still remains in doubt. Secondly, detailed assessment of the socio-economic impact on local communities living above and below the dam have been excluded from the EIA process. As the International Rivers Network noted "the EIA essentially proposes that the Sarawak Government dictates terms on the displaced population by deferring negotiation until after the decision to build the dam is made". [4] It has been demonstrated that resettlement criteria for the Bakun HEP do not even meet the minimum standards for successful resettlement as outlined by the World Bank, one of which is that "resettlement plans should be introduced on a voluntary basis, with broad-based consultation" [5].
The Sarawak state government, responsible for the resettlement of the indigenous communities, has set up the Bakun Development Committee (BDC) to act as "the only channel" for consultation and exchange with the local people. This committee comprises government-appointed officials and other spokespeople, not one of whom has been elected to the BDC by the indigenous population. Not surprisingly, many within the affected area have voiced serious dissatisfaction with the lack of consultation and information at longhouse level; few in the indigenous population know what discussion with the State government has centred on and what proposals exist for their resettlement. There is no avenue through which alternative plans and suggestions can be proposed.
Government and Ekran spokespeople have made a number of statements over the last two years about what the future holds for the indigenous communities. Many of these have been contradictory, but most envisage a single resettlement scheme in which the indigenous communities are "brought into the mainstream of development", meaning they will be integrated without any choice into a wage economy in an area chosen for them.
It seems too that a single resettlement site is being seen as the only possible option for relocation. It will almost certainly be located in the Belaga region, north east of the dam, down river of the dam site. Exact locations remain vague, although it has been reported that the area covers 40,000 hectares. There are concerns that the resettlement area includes land set aside for plantations and that families will not be allocated sufficient land on which to grow crops. Families currently own an average of 30 to 40 hectares of land, and it is rumoured that they will only receive 2 to 3 hectares per family [6]. Ekran's other projects in the area include the development of an oil palm plantation. 250 "modern homes" have been built to accommodate local labour.
According to the chairman of the Bakun Resettlement Committee, plantation work will enable the newly resettled to "earn their living and prepare themselves psychologically for a better tomorrow" [7]; they "will be offered jobs with a fixed income at the 12,000 ha oil palm plantation nearby" [8]. The change from subsistence farming into cash cropping is being resisted, "We are land owners and would like to remain so. We cannot accept the idea of being reduced to mere plantation workers...A regimented lifestyle might not appeal to many of us." Saging Bit, a headman from Long Sah A [9].
In 1994 the Sarawak State government commissioned research into resettlement. Despite promises to the contrary, such reports have been designated "confidential" and thus unavailable for public comment. However, one of these reports has been circulated. It is highly critical of existing plans for relocation and recommends the following: immediate consultation with affected people, the identification of alternative resettlement sites, the creation of an integrated settlement and development strategy, the continuation of shifting cultivation and access to forest resources [10].
It would appear from the direction in which the resettlement process is going that there is no interest in consultation or in exploring alternatives to settlement in the Belaga region. Although the reservoir will flood existing villages along the Balui River, local people have said they would prefer to stay near their former homes on higher ground in the upper reaches of the Balui. Such alternative sites had actually been identified as possible in a 1980s Sarawak Electricity Supply Company (SESCO) study but it seems the government is determined to ignore these. Instead those to be resettled will be presented with cash-cropping in the Belaga resettlement area despite the fact that the soil there is much poorer than in the upper Balui and is unlikely to support intensive cultivation.
It can also be noted that a significant consequence of present plans to depopulate the upper Balui will be the possibility for logging companies to exploit remaining forests without interference from local people. Some communities in the area have been involved since the early 1980s in long running disputes with logging companies who have encroached on their Native Customary Land. In the case of Long Geng, a Kenyah community, blockades of logging roads led to the arrests, court appearances and imprisonment of many local people.
It is not as though this is the first resettlement project to be handled by the Sarawak authorities. And one of the big fears of the local people is that the desperate experience of the 3,600 Iban [11] who were resettled as a result of the Batang Ai hydroelectric project during the early 1980s will be repeated. The majority of Iban felt that they had lost everything and gained nothing in being forced to make the transition into the cash economy in which they had little or no previous experience. The same uncertainty that has surrounded resettlement at Bakun was also present throughout the Batang Ai resettlement process. The Iban were promised free housing, electricity and water at the resettlement site but found that once they had moved they were expected to pay for their housing and utilities. Compensation levels were a subject of much controversy. The overwhelming experience has been one of loss, regret and social disintegration, as families struggle with debt, insufficient land to grow crops, crop failure and pittance wages on government managed agricultural schemes. [12] Relocation schemes have generally proved devastating for communities who are unable to cope with such a total change in their way of life.
Malaysian government policy to integrate indigenous peoples into the mainstream through development projects like Bakun is likely to result in cultural extinction for some groups. "Minority groups like the Bukitan, Ukit and Penan will be absorbed, through intermarriage and exposure to the more numerous and culturally dominant groups like the Kayan, Kenyah and Kajang". [13] Malaysians and, in particular, indigenous people are being asked to make sacrifices for the good of the whole in the quest for full industrialisation by the year 2020. In this case indigenous people are being asked to sacrifice the foundation of their identity - their land and way of life.
When the Bakun project was first seriously proposed in the 1980s, protest from within the indigenous communities was sustained and widespread. Nearly half of the population signed a petition opposing the dam and there was general relief when it was "cancelled" in 1990.
Since the revival of the Bakun HEP in 1993, the government has deflected and suppressed opposition to the dam by accusing critics of being anti- development, unpatriotic and manipulated by western environmentalists thus making serious discussion of the issues very difficult. Nevertheless opposition has been consistent and widespread. Indigenous people and NGOs have petitioned the government and companies involved to stop the project and over forty Malaysian NGOs have formed a coalition to campaign against the building of the dam.
In April 1995, representatives from longhouse communities in the Belaga district formulated the Bakun Declaration which concluded: "the Government should cancel the proposed mammoth Bakun Dam project to save our NCR lands, farms, crops and our property." In November 1995 a group of affected villagers managed to meet with British fund managers at the Bakun site to make clear their opposition to the dam. They presented a letter which stated: "We do not want to be resettled from our native lands because this land was given to us by our ancestors...we the poor people of Bakun, who make up the majority of the community, will die with this our ancestral land".
In January 1996 three indigenous residents of the Bakun area took Ekran and the government to the Kuala Lumpur High Court over the legitimacy of the EIA process. On June 19th 1996, the High Court ruled in favour of the three Bakun representatives, declaring that the government had failed to comply with its own environmental laws in approving the project. The judge declared that Ekran must comply with the 1974 Environmental Quality Act before carrying out work on the project, and also declared as invalid the Environmental Quality ( Prescribed Activities) ( EIA Amendment ) Order 1995 which transferred the approval of EIAs for projects in Sarawak, including Bakun, from federal to state jurisdiction.
Ekran subsequently appealed and obtained an order from the Court of Appeal suspending the High Court declaration, enabling Ekran to carry on with work at the site. Interpretation of the High Court ruling has been controversial. Opponents have used it to call for a new EIA process, while the government contends that the ruling applies only to jurisdictional procedure, and Ekran claims that current work at the site is preparatory and "non-prescribed", i.e. not part of the main Bakun HEP construction. As we go to press we await a date for the case to be heard in the Court of Appeal.
Given the way Malaysian politics works, it is unlikely that the voices of indigenous peoples will be heard. But their feelings are strong. We leave the last word to one of their spokespeople:
"It is untrue that we do not want to change or improve ourselves. But don't take away our native customary land rights, our rivers and our ancestral burial grounds. Don't force us to accept development that will not benefit us...
I will carry on the struggle because without our land, we have no future. Even though I am tired from so many years of struggle, I have to think of my children and their children's future that they will always be able to reap the benefits from the land they work on" [14].
If you are interested in finding out more about the project, we have prepared a series of detailed briefing sheets on a variety of aspects connected to Bakun. These are:
Briefing 1 costs 50p and is available from; Publications Despatch, Friends
of the Earth, 56-58 Alma Street, Luton LU1 2PH Tel: 01582 482297. Please
send payment with order. Postage & packing is free.
Briefings 2,3,4,5 & 6 are free. Please contact the Biodiversity team at Friends of the Earth for any of these briefings or for any other specific information. Tel: 020 7490 1555.
[1] The Sarawak Land
Code specifically recognises Native Customary Land, but there have been
major problems for many communities in gaining the title to such land.
The theoretical legal entitlement would allow indigenous communities
to practise their own system of land administration. In this, there
is a system of entitlements which establishes claims to land under cultivation.
Land which becomes uncultivated will be reabsorbed into the communal
ownership of the longhouse. Thus families within a longhouse can obtain
the use of land simply by cultivation. Two main kinds of land usage
are recognised within a community ie. communally and individually held
lands; however neither of these two categories exactly corresponds with
a European idea of "ownership". The overall structure of indigenous
cultural practice comes under the comprehensive system called "adat".
[2] DEIARP, (1995)
[3] The figure of those
to be resettled is 8,188 in the Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment
on Reservoir Preparation by the University of Malaysia, Sarawak, 1995
(DEIARP), but the higher figure of 9,148 has consistently been used
in the Malaysian parliament since the middle of 1995.
[4] Review of the EIA
(Interim Report) of the Bakun HEP, International Rivers Network (IRN),
California (1995).
[5] Rousseau, J. (1995)
The Bakun Hydroelectric Project and Resettlement: a failure of planning.
J. Rousseau, McGill University.
[6] Report in the Star,
12/12/95.
[7] Report in Borneo
Post, 6/9/95.
[8] Report by Bernama,
9/12/95.
[9] Report in Star 15/10/95.
[10] Rousseau, J. (1995) The Bakun Hydroelectric
Project and Resettlement: a failure of planning. J. Rousseau, McGill
University.
[11] The Iban are the largest indigenous race
in Sarawak.
[12] Report in Utusan Konsumer, September 1995.
[13] Hong, E. (1987) Natives of Sarawak, Institut
Masyarakat, Malaysia.
[14] Bawe Along of Long Geng (Star, 25/8/95)
November 1996
Published by Friends of the Earth Ltd
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November 1996
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Last modified: November 1996
