Malaysian record raises Royal concern for Cambodia

R oyal

biographer Julio A. Jeldres, after reading a concerned article by King

Norodom Sihanouk, decided to do his own research into Malaysian forestry giant

and Cambodian concession-holder, Samling Corporation.

A YEAR ago, the

Cambodian government granted a generous 60-year logging concession to the

Malaysian company Samling Corporation. The concession involved 800,000 hectares

in the provinces of Kratie, Mondolkiri, Kompong Cham, Koh Kong and Kompong Speu

- about four percent of Cambodia's total territory.

Critics signaled, at

the time, that the deal signed by Cambodia's First Prime Minister, Prince

Ranariddh, during one of his frequent visits to the Malaysian capital, lacked

environmental controls and that the logging, if it proceeded unchecked, could

cause vast destruction. They pointed out that Cambodia's forests could not last

another five years confronted with such high level of deforestation.

"Not

so", said Malaysia's Ambassador to Cambodia, Deva Mohd. Ridzam, when asked to

comment by the Phnom Penh Post (Jan 27-Feb 9, 1995) on the concession

granted to Samling Corporation, "they will do selective logging as well as

re-forestation and a-forestation". He said that Samling was one of the logging

firms cited internationally for its "sustainable forest development

program".

At the same time, His Majesty King Sihanouk sent me a copy of

an article he had authored on the destruction of Cambodia's forests. His

Majesty, quite rightly, felt that if measures were not promptly taken by the

Cambodian authorities, Cambodia risked becoming a desert in the very near

future.

I was deeply disturbed by these differing views and decided to

conduct my own research of the Malaysian logging experience and whether

Samling's executives were in fact as concerned by the environmental effects of

logging as Ambassador Ridzam had said they were. I asked the Australian branch

of the environmental group "Friends of the Earth" to help me and they kindly

selected a Malaysian-born officer with extensive contacts within Malaysia to

help me in my endeavor.

Samling Corporation is one of the largest logging

companies based in the East Malaysian State of Sarawak. It is owned by Yaw Teck

Seng and has logging concessions amounting to about 1.5 million hectares in

Sarawak until the year 2013.

The forests of the state of Sarawak are said

to contain the greatest diversity of plant and animal species existing anywhere

on earth. According to a book published in London in 1980, authored by R.

Hanbury-Tenison (Mulu, the Rainforest, Weidenfield & Nicholson), they hold

as yet undiscovered scientific secrets and play a vital role in balancing the

world's natural ecology.

In the 1960s, large scale commercial logging

began in Sarawak and these ancient forests have since been mercilessly

"massacred" by the chainsaws of loggers for quick profit.

Logging in

Sarawak is carried out through the granting of licenses by the Minister of

Forestry (currently also the State's Chief Minister). About half of the logging

concessions are on State land, where the removal of all trees (clear felling) is

permitted. In the remaining concessions, on "permanent forest estates", the aim

is to manage the forest for a sustainable timber yield. Here, the loggers are

supposed to remove no more than ten mature trees per hectare, leaving behind

enough undamaged trees (residual stands) to ensure a new crop of large trees

when the chainsaws return (normally after 30 years).

However, an FAO (UN

Food and Agricultural Organization) study has shown that it takes more than 40

years for the residual stands to recover. Under the Selective Felling System

(SFS) in Sarawak, regions of hill forests are supposed to be logged on a 25-year

rotation. Yet, in practice the forests have been cut a second or even a third

time within only a few years.

Environmental effects of logging in Sarawak.

In Sarawak, the activities of Samling Corporation and other logging concerns

have resulted in the following, among others, adverse environmental

consequences:

• Damage to residual stands.

This occurs when large trees with spreading crowns are felled in the

direction of neighboring trees which break and fall against successive stands.

This type of damage has been severe in Sarawak's forests which are characterized

by an abundance of vines and woody climbers. According to a report in the New

Scientist (14 March 1992), as many as 70 percent of trees in a forest may be

damaged or destroyed during the extraction of only 10 percent.

• Soil Erosion due to Logging.

The use of tractors and other heavy equipment in logging operations causes

soil damage such as top soil removal, soil compaction, soil heaps and back-up

flooding from high culverts. A Sarawak State Task Force on logging concluded in

1987 that the rate of soil lost in Sarawak from areas with exposed and disturbed

soil are greater than 100 ton/hectare per year as compared to no more than 0.1

percent of a ton/hectare per year for primary forest.

• River Flow Changes and Water Quality.

The forest cover has ameliorating effects on the flow of river systems. It

intercepts a considerable proportion of rainfall which it releases back to the

atmosphere through the process of evapotranspiration. It temporarily stores some

of the rain water as thoroughfall and slowly releases this water to the river

system as run-off. Soil under forest cover has high infiltration and water

holding capacities and, therefore, can absorb more rain water which is slowly

released to streams and rivers as run-off thus preventing flooding. With

extensive logging comes increased flooding.

Friends of the Earth-Malaysia

estimated that flooding in 1981 in Sarawak cost the local economy some $12

million in damage to crops and livestock alone while the State's Department of

Agriculture admitted that if the flooding is to be controlled, the logging

should be stopped immediately.

• Effects of Logging on Wildlife.

Logging has contributed to wildlife depletion in logged forests in Sarawak

through the destruction of natural habitat (resting and hiding places);

destruction of food sources such as fruits, leaves, roots and bark; through

killing and capturing of animals by hunters or loggers themselves.

• Effects on the Aquatic System.

Rivers that drain logged areas are often overloaded with soil particles,

vegetable debris and pollutants such as sawdust and diesel oil. This turns water

turbid. As a result local diets have suffered severely due to decline in fish

stocks and poor water quality.

Effects of logging on indigenous communities.

Sarawak is inhabited by several indigenous communities. The land, the forests

and the extensive river system form the basis for the livelihood and life of the

indigenous peoples of Sarawak. Their most cherished traditions and spiritual

beliefs are centered on their relationship to the land.

Traditionally,

this reverence for the land means that it cannot be bought or sold. Each

indigenous group thrived on a complex system of rights and responsibilities

towards the land and the forest known as "adat". The "adat" have been strictly

observed by all its members and each group has been living a subsistence

lifestyle, relying on the land, the rivers and the forests for survival. When

the government opens up forests for commercial logging, indigenous peoples are

displaced from their land and dispossessed of cultures.

Some of the

issues confronting Sarawak's indigenous peoples are: landrights; loss of food

sources from logged forests; loss of plants for medicines; loss of economic

activities (basketry, nuts, resins, bamboo goods are major sources of cash

income for some communes); lack of compensation by logging companies when lands

and forests, to which they have customary rights, are destroyed; displacement

and resettlement forcing many of them to seek refuge in urban centers where

young men end up as casual laborers inhabiting squalid slums as squatters and

young women prostitute to earn a living.

One needs to question, from an

environmental and ethical point of view, the Samling Corporation's track record

when dealing with indigenous peoples and land rights issues.

It is

through these kind of practices that Samling has built its huge business empire

which today includes concessions in Guyana and Cambodia.

As can be seen

from the above, rather depressing report on Samling's logging activities in

Malaysia, the company is far from being, to use Ambassador Ridzam's words, "one

of the logging firms cited internationally for its sustainable forest

development program".

The big question confronting the Cambodian

authorities that granted the logging concession to Samling is: Will a Malaysian

company that has shown complete disregard for the environment and the well-being

of its own country and its own indigenous peoples behave differently with regard

to the interests of the people of Cambodia?

"The extensive and ceaseless

destruction of our forests causes and shall cause, alas, every year, more and

more disastrous droughts and, consequently, lethal for our people, the small

citizenry which constitutes more than 80 percent of the Cambodian Nation" wrote

His Majesty King Sihanouk in his recent article on the destruction of Cambodia's

forests.

Let us hope that those responsible for the current logging

activities in Cambodia will heed this Royal plead and take appropriate measures

to protect Cambodia's forests from rapacious local and foreign

loggers.

- Julio Jeldres is His Majesty King Norodom Sihanouk's

official biographer and the former director of the Khmer Institute of

Democracy.