Malaysia's palm oil industry 'destroying indigenous land'
Malaysia's palm oil industry 'destroying indigenous land'
Agence France-Presse, Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia's lucrative palm oil industry and unabated logging are destroying native lands in eastern Sarawak state, while indigenous people are left in extreme poverty, an environment group said on Tuesday.
As logging has encroached for decades on the native lands of the Penan and other indigenous groups, palm oil plantations are a growing menace, said chair of Friends of the Earth International, Meena Raman.
"What the Sarawak government is doing now is pushing the expansion of oil palm plantations in Sarawak and the underlying premise for that is it will bring development to the state," said Raman.
"So in places where logging took place, this is being replaced by oil palm plantations, and this is not taking into account the plight of the Penan people and other indigenous communities," she told AFP.
The group in a statement on Tuesday called on the Malaysian government to revoke licenses and leases for large-scale plantations located on Penan native lands, and for the cessation of logging.
It said disappearing ancestral lands meant indigenous groups were losing their forest-based livelihoods, while little compensation or help was being offered.
"For the past two decades the Malaysian government frequently made various statements that financial assistance and facilities have been provided to the Penans on the pretext of solving their problems.
"However, this assistance and facilities have yet or have failed to improve the lives or livelihood of the Penans."
The Sarawak Penan Association, a gathering of tribal chiefs, in July appealed to the government to respect their rights and address degenerating health and living conditions, but little notice was taken, said Raman.
She said Friends of the Earth had also launched an international petition for the rights of the Penan to be upheld.
Logging is the economic mainstay for Sarawak, on Borneo, while the state government has identified oil palm cultivation as a growth area.
More than 67 percent or 8.22 million hectares of Sarawak's land is under natural forest cover, according to the state, which argues that its forestry practices are sustainable.
Malaysia is the world's largest producer of crude palm oil, and interest has been growing in the industry after the federal government announced last month it was investing in three palm biodiesel plants to produce alternative fuel.