Hundreds of tribal people in Sarawak have started blockading a second big hydroelectric dam project being built by a government, which critics accuse of nepotism and corruption.
Late last month around 200 native Kenyah, Kayan and Penan people chased away workers and set up a blockade on a road leading to the site of the proposed 1200 megawatt Baram dam.
The dam, to be built on Sarawak’s second-biggest river, would flood an area of 388 square kilometers including 32 villages that are home to an estimated 20,000 people—around half of whom live permanently in the area.
Local activists have been campaigning for several years against the dam, which they say would produce significant amounts of methane gas, seriously affect fish migration and result in a loss of biodiversity as well as the destruction of their culture and livelihoods.
The protesters say they expelled the workers and started the blockade because earthmoving equipment had been brought into the area to start construction work on the project, which has not yet been approved.
Baram dam site blockade. Photo by Peter Kallang / Save Rivers
Sarawak Energy, the state-owned company responsible for the dams, insists workers had been doing only “preliminary feasibility works” and has threatened criminal and legal action over samples and equipment it says the protesters destroyed.
Meanwhile a blockade by around 60 people of the newly completed Murum dam, which will displace 1,400 mainly Penan people from their land along tributaries of Sarawak’s Rajang River, has been running for around two months.
The Murum and Baram dams are among 10 hydroelectric projects being investigated or developed by the state of Sarawak, which has surplus power for domestic needs but hopes to transform its economy by attracting energy-intensive industry with cheap hydropower.
Critics claim the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) initiative is being driven by the corruption and vested interests of Chief Minister Taib Mahmud, who is currently under investigation by the Malaysian Anti-corruption Commission.
Companies linked to the Chief Minister have been awarded contracts worth over $400 million under the SCORE plan since 2010, according to Bruno Manser Fund, a Swiss group that campaigns to protect Sarawak’s rainforest and the rights of the people who inhabit it.
A steam roller moving offsite at the blockade at Long Lama where the access road to the proposed Baram dam site joins the existing road. Photo by Peter Kallang / Save Rivers
Across southeast Asia regimes with poor governance and little accountability are working with foreign companies to build dozens of big dams. According to the NGO International Rivers, these projects will displace tens of thousands of river-dwelling people and threaten the food security of millions more.
“Right now there’s a dam-building boom happening in the region,” said Ame Trandem, the organization’s South-East Asia program director. “A lot of hydropower dams are being built in order to generate electricity and also to generate revenue through buying and selling schemes.”
“Because millions of people in the region depend on natural resources for their livelihood, these dams pose a significant threat.”
Trandem says there is a lack of transparency and public participation in development of dams right across the region, and that indigenous people affected by them invariably lose out.
“A lot of the deals are made behind closed doors … They are not applying [the principle of] free, prior and informed consent for indigenous people who are being impacted, so a lot of people who live along the rivers really are not aware of the plans to build these projects, and unfortunately they’re usually told at the very last minute that they’re going to have to be moved … They’re promised compensation packages that they usually don’t receive and they’re left in much poorer situations. So they’re definitely not benefiting from the hydropower projects.”
Sarawak Energy maintains the hydropower expansion program will improve living standards for the whole of the state’s population, including indigenous communities currently living below the poverty line, and the company emphasizes its commitment to following international standards for infrastructure development.
But according to former International Rivers campaigner Kirk Herbertson, while voluntary corporate standards are important, they are intended to complement strong domestic laws, and the
limits of their effectiveness in Sarawak are obvious.
“It’s like trying to put a bandage on a wound when what is really needed is surgery,” Herbertson said.
Chairman of Save Sarawak Rivers campaign group Peter Kallang told mongabay.com that the Baram blockaders would “stay put and face whatever comes.”
“The guys on the ground are very sure of themselves and they’re not going to move out until Sarawak Energy stops what they are doing.”
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