This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on May 2 - 8, 2016.

Three weeks before the Sarawak legislative assembly was dissolved to pave the way for the 11th state election, the news broke that Tan Sri Adenan Satem’s administration had revoked the gazettement of land earmarked for the Baram Dam.

The announcement brought great relief to the indigenous peoples who would have been uprooted by the massive project covering an area 1.5 times the size of Kuala Lumpur, and was hailed as a victory for their five-year battle for survival.

For the 20,000 people in 26 villages that would have had to make way for the dam, the project was nothing short of a calamity.

At the height of the campaign to stop the Baram Dam, Save Rivers chairman Peter Kallang wrote on a community blog: “For us who are the directly and adversely affected parties, no one can blame us in thinking that this is a calculated, intentional and purposeful manoeuvre to wipe out our races.”

The villagers were so vehemently against the development that they mounted a blockade for an unprecedented 29 months against the mega-dam, which was expected to produce 1,200mw of electricity, which would add one third more to the current capacity in Sarawak.

At 3,600mw, the current installed capacity is hugely in excess of demand, which stands at around 1,700mw to 1,800mw, according to a Financial Times report in August last year. To utilise the spare capacity, the state has signed up a string of smelting companies at its Samalaju Industrial Park, offering cheap power as an incentive to draw energy-intensive industries. But demand is expected to surge over the next decade, and the long-term plan is to expand installed capacity to 12,000mw by 2035.

In the process, Sarawak’s indigenous peoples can expect more episodes that will mimic their experience with the Baram development.

The stand-off between the authorities and the indigenous peoples highlights the problems of a top-down development approach that does not meet the needs of the local communities that are asked to make way for a larger economic agenda.

It is a cruel irony that developing large dams almost never translates into access to electricity for the affected or upland river communities, the Earth Island Journal points out. It is simply too expensive to step down power generated from large-scale electricity projects for rural or semi-urban communities.

For example, villages that were displaced for the construction of the Batang Ai and Bakun dams do not have access to this energy, the US-based journal notes. They are powered by polluting diesel generators managed by a subsidiary of Sarawak Energy Bhd.

Yet, research on energy options for Sarawak conducted by the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL) at the University of California in Berkeley shows that small-scale, community-based energy systems cost less, empower rural communities and do not result in the widespread destruction of rainforests.

At Lepo Gah Tanjung Tepalit, which is one of the 26 villages in the Baram Dam area, villagers are installing a micro-hydro system and solar power system that will address their energy needs through clean, renewable technology, the journal reports.

The bitter experience of villagers who had been resettled in Sungai Asap to make way for the Bakun Dam in 1998 stands as an important lesson for the people in the Baram area.

More than 15 years later, these families are still struggling to make a living and Sungai Asap has been declared a resettlement disaster, says the journal.

“The 10 acres of farmland per family that the communities were promised turned out to be three acres of often rocky, infertile and sloping land located a half day’s journey away from their new homes. Meanwhile, the dam has polluted the Balui River, poisoning their water source and killing the fish they depended on for food and income.

“The resettlement site is surrounded by oil palm plantations and the people no longer have access to their former hunting grounds … Life before resettlement had been isolated, to be sure, but the Bakun communities were able to farm, fish, hunt and feed their families, and make a living. Their quality of life has dramatically declined,” the journal states.

All around the world, there is a long history of conflict between proponents of rapid development and self-sufficient local communities that stand in the way. The struggle may be coming to a head in current times as the scale of resource depletion pushes more affected communities to the brink, forcing them to defend their living spaces or die trying.

Since the 1980s, attempts have been made to improve outcomes by seeking a participatory approach to development, but the results may be mixed unless imbalances in the underlying power relationships are effectively addressed.

While participatory development implies that projects are “determined by actual needs, grounded in local realities and shaped by those who will be impacted by them”, as British researcher Anna Colom writes in the Guardian, there are many constraints that can prevent local actors from playing a meaningful part in the process.

Among other things, a question that may arise is, “Can those needing assistance be in the principal driver’s seat?” Also, a major critique is that development practitioners are almost never passive facilitators. They own the tools, choose the topics and ultimately shape and direct the processes.

Locally, ample evidence exists of non-transparent, top-down decision making in the management of the public consultation process. In the Bakun Dam project, for example, when the environmental impact assessment report was initially released in March 1995, the document was only available in three towns in Sarawak.

Interested persons were given an hour to browse through the 318-page report. No photocopying was allowed, but copies could be bought at RM150 each. Following protests by environmentalists, two copies were made available for viewing in Kuala Lumpur, but crucial appendices were missing from the document.

For participatory development to be meaningful, therefore, power relations must be fundamentally relooked. This involves being ready to examine our assumptions about what kind of development is appropriate for the people in whose name change is being brought about.

That willingness may make the difference between having the indigenous peoples as guardians of our forests for posterity or turning them into squatters on their own land.

R B Bhattacharjee is associate editor at The Edge Malaysia

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