
Communities have demonstrated flaws in the consultation process for timber certification during a recent briefing at a hotel, but no one is taking responsibility and questions are left unanswered. Save Rivers comments.
Members of the communities within the Gerenai concession were invited by Samling, the owner of the forest management unit (FMU), to attend a one-day seminar, at a hotel in Miri to learn about the certification process under the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme (MTCS).
During the briefing, community participants demonstrated that:
- there is a lack of transparency
- the process for in getting the free, prior and informed consent is flawed
- there is a lack of a functioning or responsive complaints mechanism
Erang Ngang of Long Tungan expressed the disappointment of many of the participants from the villages: “Sirim and MTCC [Malaysian Timber Certification Council] acknowledged the shortcomings in Samling’s consultation and information policy during the Gerenai certification process. But no one takes the responsibility for it.
“We have clearly shown that our communities were not consulted; why can no one take action now and revoke the certificate? Samling clearly failed to follow requirements of the MTCS such as obtaining free, prior and informed consent. So, how can they keep the certificate? This renders the MTCS certificate meaningless.”
“The management of the FMU must ensure full participation of the community affected especially as regards to the physical boundaries on the ground so that any activities of illegal logging can be monitored by the communities themselves.
- Sign up for Aliran's free daily email updates or weekly newsletters or both
- Make a one-off donation to Persatuan Aliran Kesedaran Negara, CIMB a/c 8004240948
- Make a pledge or schedule an auto donation to Aliran every month or every quarter
- Become an Aliran member
“The act of giving maps of the FMU to the affected villages may be good but may not be very meaningful if the villages do not know how to relate the coordinates to the physical area or points on the ground”, he added.
Some of those in attendance were open to logging but felt the consultation process was inadequate; others sought to halt all logging activities on their land.
Whether communities support logging or not, they expect to be properly informed and consulted as the standard requests. “The meeting we had in Miri was not productive or transparent as they did not respond to our questions,” Boyce Ngau from Long Selawan explained.
“Samling didn’t discuss this with the people from my village. We don’t know of any agreement between Samling and our community. So, how can we monitor? What is the role of our community committee in the management?
“You have to give us the answers to our questions before we can make a decision on this project and might participate. Otherwise our answer is no, we are against it.”
The panel members and speakers at the event were from the Forest Department Sarawak, the MTCC, Sirim QAS International Sdn Bhd, WWF and University Putra Malaysia Bintulu.
Participants included the Community Rights Action Committees, various government agencies, civil society organisations and Samling staff.
During Sirim’s session, auditor Khairul Najwan explained how complaints should be made. Any form of written complaint must be addressed to the manager of the FMU and forwarded to Sirim if FMU manager does not resolve the issue. These complaints will be noted by Sirim and used in future audits. Samling must be able to comply with this as it would affect the certification process. This opens up a channel for the communities to express their discontent.
This complaint mechanism, however, is flawed in reality.
Prior to the movement control order in March 2020, a letter written by the Long Tungan community, addressed to Samling’s chief forester, David Marsden, was responded to quite poorly. He did not offer any form of solution but instead pushed the matter elsewhere, saying, “Please note that all official correspondence should be addressed directly to Samling’s COO (…) Matters concerning allocation of forest areas, proposed land use, etc, (…) should be addressed directly to the Director of Forests.”
Because of this curt and dismissive response, communities were keen to speak with Marsden at the recent briefing, but he was never introduced during the meeting. His lack of participation in the event raised a lot of questions with the community, as he was aware of the complaints made.
No representatives from the FMU were present during the question-and-answer session, highlighting that Samling is not ready to face the community and the seminar was just a facade to fulfil their corporate obligations.
Peter Kallang, speaking on behalf of the Indigenous People’s Network of Malaysia (JOAS), asked whether Samling really understood what free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) means in the context of consulting indigenous communities. “If you are only visiting the villages now, with only a few people there, that could not be considered as majority consent. If you are only speaking with headmen, that is certainly not FPIC.”
Save Rivers urges Samling to take heed of the matters raised at the seminar and take responsibility. In the meantime, we encourage all concerned to sign the petition to stop the destruction of Sarawak’s forests and stop certification without compliance by heading to saverivers.org/stopthechop
AGENDA RAKYAT - Lima perkara utama
- Tegakkan maruah serta kualiti kehidupan rakyat
- Galakkan pembangunan saksama, lestari serta tangani krisis alam sekitar
- Raikan kerencaman dan keterangkuman
- Selamatkan demokrasi dan angkatkan keluhuran undang-undang
- Lawan rasuah dan kronisme