Some of Malaysia’s most precious rainforests and the Indigenous communities who live there will now be protected.
We partnered with Indigenous leaders and environmentalists in the state of Sarawak, home to 25 Indigenous peoples and most of Malaysia’s remaining rainforests, to document how laws and policies enable the takeover of Indigenous land by private companies, leaving communities displaced and destitute.
We met with Malaysian officials, and we impressed our findings on European Union authorities, urging them to use their leverage.
On February 20, Sarawak announced the state will no longer issue provisional leases for oil palm plantations, specifically with the aim “to mitigate deforestation” and citing “international scrutiny, especially from the European Union.”
These “provisional leases” have been one of the most harmful weapons the Sarawak government has yielded against Indigenous peoples, as they do not require the state to survey the land before leasing it and can last up to 60 years.
Our researchers met repeatedly with Malaysian government officials to raise the specific issues in Sarawak. We followed it up with an advocacy briefing in May 2024 and at the same time, we conducted sustained advocacy in Brussels with the EU and presented our findings to the government agencies in charge of enforcing the EU’s new deforestation law. We also built public pressure through media coverage.
We are thrilled to see our long-term strategy and close collaboration with frontline communities come to fruition in one of the toughest deforestation frontiers. Our next step will be to press the Sarawak government to put its newly announced commitments down on paper to guarantee long-lasting protections for Indigenous peoples and their biodiverse territories.
