DeforEsTATION
Logging continues to dominate politics and economics in Sarawak and the government's ambition on timber from proposed Penan ancestral land also continues. Legal logging has caused extraordinarily large forest loss and degradation in Sarawak over the past 30 years,altering the forest structure, provoke hunting and driving conversion to plantations.
The Malaysian government claims that Sarawak is being logged sustainably. The reality is very different: Its forests are being felled at one of the fastest rates in the world – twice that of the Amazon. In areas where all valuable trees have been cut down, companies are now razing every last tree in order to grow oil palm. Even areas that have been designated as protected reserves, called pulau, are being destroyed. |