Abang Johari Openg, the premier of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, recently announced three new dam projects on Bornean rivers and suggested that local communities there had given their approval.

But Celine Lim, managing director of civil society organization SAVE Rivers, based in the Sarawak town of Miri, tells the Mongabay Newscast that her community in Baram district wasn’t consulted beforehand. “When this happened, it definitely threw the community into a frenzy because no one knew of this plan before the announcement,” she says.

Before Lim helped gather a 650-person petition for more information, she says the letters communities wrote and sent to representatives were ignored.

Among the reasons Abang Johari has given for the dam projects are increased power supply to the state, quelling crocodile population growth, and residents asking for them — but sources contacted by Mongabay have said otherwise.

“They [Sarawak officials] are only trying to lobby the investors,” says Willie Kajang, an activist and Tering Indigenous elder. “What they want is money from overseas, and the foreign investors [do] not know anything” about what is happening in Sarawak.

Rather than being used locally, as the premier suggests, the electricity generated in the state is currently exported to the neighboring Indonesian province of West Kalimantan, with plans to export more to Brunei and Singapore. Sarawak already has five hydro dams, four of which provide 61% of its energy.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website, or download our free app for Apple and Android devices to gain instant access to our latest episodes and all of our previous ones.

Banner image: A rainforest pool in the Lambir Hills, Sarawak. Image by Rhett Butler.

Rachel Donald is a climate corruption reporter and the creator of Planet: Critical, the podcast and newsletter for a world in crisis. Her latest thoughts can be found at 𝕏 via @CrisisReports and at Bluesky via @racheldonald.bsky.social.

Mike DiGirolamo is a host & associate producer for Mongabay based in Sydney. He co-hosts and edits the Mongabay Newscast. Find him on LinkedIn, Bluesky and Instagram.

Related Reading:

Sarawak government’s hydropower plans worry Indigenous communities