Call for better community inclusion
KUCHING: Alliance of the Indigenous Peoples in the Highlands of Borneo (Formadat) and Community Representative Committee (CRC) members from Long Semadoh and Ba Kelalan have handed a memorandum to the Sarawak Forest Department, calling for better community inclusion in timber certification.
The memorandum was presented to the department’s acting director Hamden Mohammad earlier this week, according to a press statement received here yesterday.
Formadat entourage from Bario, Ba Kelalan and Long Semadoh led by its national chairman Penghulu George Sigar paid a courtesy call on various government departments and stakeholders in Sarawak between June 4 and 7.
Accompanying them were WWF-Malaysia senior community engagement and education officer Alicia Ng and community and education officer Henrita Samuel.
In the memorandum, the community is urging the department as chairman of the Sustainable Forest Management Community Liaison Committee to continuously engage and involve CRCs as active community platforms to bring up people’s voices to the timber companies operating within the area, and recognise the roles of CRC in addressing issues affecting the local communities.
Representation of communities living within or adjacent to timber concession such as CRC is part of the requirements for sustainable forest management and certification in Sarawak.
The memorandum also stressed the importance for timber companies in recognising CRCs as an important communication channel linking local communities to the licensee on issues related to sustainable forest management, and to provide support in watershed and river protection activities such as river adoption programme.
Between 2015 and 2016, Formadat has marked and tagged all 71 rivers identified in Long Semadoh for an adoption programme with the hope that these areas can be incorporated into the forest management plan as conservation areas.
The community requested for the department to recognise initiatives done by local communities in mapping important community-used areas by working closely with CRC and acknowledge materials produced by Formadat such as maps, as official verifiers for the certification process.
Formadat is a trans-boundary, grassroots initiative that aims to increase awareness and understanding of the communities of the highlands, maintain cultural traditions, build local capacity, and encourage sustainable development in the Heart of Borneo (HoB) without risking the degradation of the quality of the social and natural environment.
Apart from the visit to Forest Department, the entourage also met Deputy Speaker and Mulu assemblymen Dato Gerawat Gala, Ba Kelalan assemblyman and Selangau MP Baru Bian, and director of Institute of Social Informatics and Technological Innovations of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) Professor Dr Narayanan N. Kulathu Ramaiyer to seek their assistance and support for Formadat.