The Sarawak state government’s announcement in February that it will no longer grant provisional leases to palm oil companies is hugely significant for Indigenous peoples and their forests.
Previously, the state government granted “provisional” leases to palm oil and timber companies to develop plantations before the state had surveyed the land. Despite the name, these leases can last up to 60 years. With such permits, companies could take over the territories of Indigenous communities who live in a lease area that had not been surveyed. The communities then faced an uphill battle to extricate their ancestral land from the lease.
There’s a history to Sarawak’s recent announcement.
In 2018, the Malaysian federal government capped the expansion of oil palm plantations across the country. It also ordered every plantation to comply with the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil standard, which has provisions on Indigenous land rights. But ultimately, states are responsible for enforcing these directives. Sarawak’s announcement nearly seven years later signals, finally, a willingness to comply.
But there’s a catch.
The cap on oil palm plantations will not be sufficient to end the assault on Sarawak’s rainforest and Indigenous territories because timber plantations have now become the greatest threat to the rainforest and its Indigenous residents.
According to RimbaWatch, a Kuala Lumpur-based environmental organization, nearly 1.5 million hectares of forests across Malaysia are at risk of being replaced with tree plantations. That’s more than three times the size of planned oil palm concessions in the country. The overwhelming majority of the planned timber plantations are in Sarawak.
Unlike with oil palm, the Sarawak government appears committed to aggressively expand its timber plantations. Although it refers to these as “planted forests,” the process of establishing them involves clearing natural forest to make way for one particular type of tree, in many cases a non-native species.
At least 207,762 hectares of land claimed by Indigenous communities in Malaysia overlap with timber plantations. These territories are at risk of being claimed by the timber companies.
The federal government should address this situation by also setting a national cap on timber plantations and making sustainability certification mandatory for timber leases.
The Sarawak government has started heading in that direction. It required timber plantations to be accredited by the end of 2024 under certification programs that contain provisions on Indigenous peoples’ rights and prohibit conversion of natural forests to tree plantations, with few and very tight exceptions.
However, only 122,800 of over 2 million hectares of timber plantations in Sarawak have been certified. The Sarawak Forest Department has yet to clarify how it will deal with plantations that have not been certified by the deadline, and those that won’t be certified because they are unable to meet the standards. Sarawak can take a major leap toward halting deforestation by permanently revoking permits that don’t meet the standards.
This decision need not come at the expense of the state’s economic development. Sarawak could survey severely degraded or fallow lands and prioritize these areas for plantations, rather than clearing new areas. The same could be done for the rest of Malaysia. Generating this data would also assist the federal government in meeting its pledge to keep 50 percent of Malaysia under forest cover.
Reforms to the timber industry will also further Malaysian exports in the wake of more stringent trade laws, like the European Union anti-deforestation regulation. Four EU countries are among the top 10 buyers of certified Malaysian timber products. The anti-deforestation regulation requires wood products to be deforestation-free and uphold the right of Indigenous peoples to free, prior, and informed consent. The latter requires communities to be consulted about decisions over their lands and resources.
Indigenous peoples in Malaysia have for decades witnessed encroachment and devastation to their forests. There is movement in the right direction, but timber plantations – today’s biggest threat of deforestation and disenfranchisement – need to be an urgent priority for regulators.
