Classify Sarawak as ‘high-risk’ for deforestation, groups urge EU

Several groups have urged the European Union to classify Sarawak as “high risk” under its new anti-deforestation regulation.

In a joint statement today, the groups said millions of hectares of ancient rainforests in Sarawak are at risk of being razed for timber and oil palm plantations to cater for international markets.

The statement was endorsed by the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), investigative outfit RimbaWatch, Sarawak-based Save Rivers, Penan rights group Keruan, Switzerland-based Bruno Manser Fonds, and The Borneo Project based in California, USA.

The groups added that there have also been violations of indigenous people’s rights in Sarawak.

“Sarawak’s current land code imposes insurmountable obstacles for indigenous communities to gain and maintain titles to their ancestral lands, while effectively allowing companies to ravage the rainforest.

“The EU anti-deforestation law should factor in Sarawak’s dismal track record in its benchmarking process. ‘High risk’ is the only reasonable classification,” said HRW senior environment and human rights researcher Luciana Téllez-Chávez.

The EU’s Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products (EUDR) will restrict imports of products such as wood and palm oil that are linked to deforestation or violations of human rights, land, and labour laws.

Once enforced in January next year, such products would not be allowed to be sold in EU markets if they originate from land deforested after 2020.

As of now, two-thirds of EU imports tainted with deforestation originate from five countries - Côte d’Ivoire, Brazil, Indonesia, Ghana, and Malaysia.

According to the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, the EU is the third largest destination of Malaysian palm oil exports.

Areas of concern

The groups claimed there were areas of concern that the EU’s should consider:

• The Sarawak government has a goal of establishing one million hectares of industrial timber plantations by 2025. To achieve this, over 400,000 hectares of naturally regenerating forest would need to be converted between 2022 and 2025.

• Sarawak laws fail to uphold indigenous peoples’ rights to own, use, and control their ancestral territories. Sarawak’s laws impose an arbitrary 1,000-hectare cap on the area for which indigenous peoples can get legal recognition. However, it also has the power to unilaterally revoke indigenous land titles without consent or compensation.

• The Sarawak government grants companies leases to operate in areas that it has not surveyed, delegating the responsibility of surveying to those companies. The land code requires companies to report, and then remove from their concession, any indigenous land their lease area encroaches on, but without penalties if they don’t. In effect, companies can disregard indigenous land rights without consequences.

• Sarawak has no law requiring companies to obtain free, prior, and informed consent from indigenous communities before leasing or conducting activities on their land. The certification programmes that require informed consent have a record of noncompliance, permissive auditing, inadequate enforcement, and no real avenues for recourse.

• No state laws protect indigenous peoples’ right to access information, even about their own territories. The government has not released any data about indigenous land it has allegedly surveyed, nor disclosed where it has issued leases to logging and palm oil companies. Accurate and up-to-date land-use maps are not publicly available.

Save Rivers managing director Celine Lim said logging firms are still clearing forests in Sarawak without proper consultation from indigenous communities.

She said these violations warrant a “high-risk” classification by the EU until the government addresses the violations.

Meanwhile, Bruno Manser Fond’s Annina Aeberli reminded the EU that Malaysia’s certification scheme usually does not guarantee compliance.

“And the EUDR is an opportunity for the Malaysian government to improve its sustainability standards, fix flaws in the auditing system, and create effective oversight mechanisms,” she added.

Detrimental to fair trade

In 2022, Deputy Prime Minister Fadillah Yusof criticised EU regulation aimed at banning products linked to deforestation and forest degradation.

He deemed the regulation, which targets commodities like palm oil, timber, cocoa, and rubber, as being detrimental to free and fair trade.

“The deforestation-free products regulation is a deliberate act by Europe to block market access, hurt small farmers, and protect a domestic oilseeds market that is inefficient and cannot compete with the cost of palm oil.

“Moreover, this regulation could lead to higher food prices and reduced output at a time of record global inflation,” he was reported as saying.

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