By Siva Sithraputhran
The wave of dam-building in Sarawak has created ripples
of fear among environmentalists and groups representing indigenous tribes.
MURUM
(Sarawak): The trucks that ply the rough road to the Murum dam under
construction in Sarawak kick up clouds of dust that obscure the trail and make
driving treacherous. Within an hour, at least 40 of them go by, laden with
freshly cut timber.
The dam on a tributary of the
Rajang river is just the start of a staggeringly ambitious plan to block many
of the state’s major waterways by 2020 to tap cheap energy and turn one of
Malaysia’s poorest states into a Southeast Asian industrial and energy hub.
Leveraging energy from the
state’s numerous rivers and what it calls a strategic location between China
and India, planners envisage up to 12 dams by 2020.
But that could leave the state
with more than 20 times more energy than it now needs and critics, including
opposition politicians, say that Sarawak simply does not need so many
hydro-power dams.
The plan is also attracting
growing opposition from environmentalists and groups representing indigenous
tribes, who say it is an environmental disaster in the making that will enrich
an elite few.
Towering over the US$110
billion (RM336 billion) plan – known as the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable
Energy, or SCORE – is Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud, a 76-year-old patriarch
who wields sweeping policymaking powers after three decades in charge of the
state.
“He runs Sarawak like a private
business for his own benefit,” said Clare Rewcastle-Brown, who runs the
whistleblower website Sarawak Report and is the sister-in-law of former British
prime minister Gordon Brown.
“Taib seems determined to empty
out whatever forests are left, turning the state into a drab industrial
estate.”
Taib says the project will
generate high-skilled jobs and help transform Sarawak, on Malaysia’s side of
Borneo island, into the country’s richest state.
The state chief, who also
serves as the state’s resource planning minister and finance minister, has been
under a Malaysian anti-corruption agency investigation since 2011 but no
charges have been brought. His huge influence in Sarawak makes him a key ally
for the ruling coalition ahead of an election next year that is expected to be
the closest in Malaysia’s history.
Taib denies allegations of
wrongdoing and his office did not respond to repeated Reuters’ interview
requests. The chief minister, whose chauffeured Rolls Royce is a common sight
in Sarawak’s capital, Kuching, has said his family’s wealth is a result of its
business acumen.
“You can see how much progress
Sarawak has made during his time,” Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s former
long-serving prime minister, told Reuters in an interview.
“He wants to develop more power
there but he has been active in selling power… he’s bringing a lot of
industries there.”
Blow to shrinking forest
The wave of dam-building in
Sarawak has brought more scrutiny to links between environmental damage in
Malaysia’s two Borneo island states and global financial institutions.
Global Witness, a British-based
investigative group, has criticised HSBC Bank’s role in funding companies it
said were logging illegally in Sarawak, saying it was against the bank’s
environmental guidelines.
HSBC declined to respond to a
request for comment.
Swiss prosecutors opened a
criminal investigation into UBS in August after the bank was accused of
laundering money from illegal logging in Sabah, another Malaysian state that
borders Sarawak. UBS has said it is cooperating with the prosecutors.
At the heart of the plan for
Sarawak is attracting foreign companies, through cut-price power and low taxes,
to set up energy-intensive industries such as aluminium smelting and steel
production.
The state says it has secured
investments of RM29 billion from companies from various countries including the
United Arab Emirates, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Malaysia. A total of
RM334 billion of investment is expected by 2030.
Stressing its environmental
credentials, the project’s website shows a picture of an indigenous tribesman
against a verdant background of plants and a waterfall.
That is in stark contrast to
environmentalists’ fears that the dams could deliver a final blow to Sarawak’s
forests, which they estimate have shrunk to 5% of land cover. The state says
forest cover is 70%, but activists say it uses a broad definition that includes
rapidly expanding palm-oil plantations.
When Reuters visited the Murum
site in October, dozens of bedraggled villagers from the Penan tribe had been
camped out for three weeks, blocking access to the dam that will flood their
ancestral land in Sarawak’s remote northeastern corner.
“Never mind everything, the
tiredness, the rain, the heat, we must do this,” said 36-year-old grandmother
of nine, Layu Kara, between mouthfuls of the sticky sago palm paste and jungle
fern that made up her first meal for the day.
The villagers, among 1,500
people who will be displaced by the RM4 billion dam, were demanding
compensation for their land. The next major dam in the works, Baram, will
displace 20,000 people, say rights groups.
Chinese companies, some of
which have been involved in other controversial hydroelectric projects, are
building Murum and are in a strong position to bid for others. Sinohydro Corp
completed Bakun and another Chinese company, the Three Gorges Corp, builder of
the giant dam of the same name in China, won the bid to construct the Murum
dam.
Too
much energy?
Critics of the plan question
the strategy of producing an amount of energy that is far in excess of current
demand, pointing at problems in finding buyers for power from the existing
Bakun dam, completed in 2011, that flooded an area the size of Singapore.
State energy company Sarawak
Energy Bhd says it already has buyers for all of Murum’s 944 megawatts (MW) of
energy and a “long queue” of potential customers for future projects.
Sarawak Energy, which is
awarding many of the project’s contracts, says it also plans to sell energy to
peninsular Malaysia and Brunei, as well as to Sabah and Kalimantan, in the
Indonesian part of Borneo.
But it lacks those grid
connections, and a planned undersea cable to the energy-hungry peninsula was
abandoned in 2010.
The Bakun dam is capable of
producing 2,400 MW, well above the state’s current needs of about 1,000 MW. The
project was labelled a “monument to corruption” by the Transparency
International group.
“Sarawak doesn’t need 12 dams.
Bakun alone is enough. We’re not supplying power to the peninsula, to Brunei or
to Kalimantan,” said Baru Bian, an opposition state assembly member.
In a blow to Taib’s plans,
Bakun lost what would have been its biggest customer in March when Australian
mining giant Rio Tinto pulled put of a plan to build a US$2 billion aluminium
smelter, blaming a disagreement over pricing.
Sarawak Energy says the 1,500
villagers displaced by the Murum dam will be suitably resettled and given land
they can cultivate. It hasn’t reached a deal on compensation.
The Penan villagers in the
Murum blockade were prepared to wait, within sight of the forests that have
been crucial for their food and income.
“We’ve never had money in the
bank, now we’re losing the rivers, the trees and our livelihoods,” says 60-year
old village elder Madai Solo.
Source: Reuters
No comments:
Post a Comment