LETTER | Forested land advertised online in Sabah, S'wak alarming

LETTER | In a Rapid Response report published today, RimbaWatch identified nine land listings it has identified on Mudah.my and Facebook Marketplace, which appear to advertise the sale of more than 80,000ha of forested land in Sabah and Sarawak.

The listings are as follows:

1. 54,454ha in Silat, Sarawak near the border with Kalimantan. This encompasses multiple concessions which are allegedly zoned for mixed-use or oil palm. This listing is in close proximity to villages including Long Tikan.

2. 297ha in Tongod, Sabah which appears to be located either within or adjacent to Milian Labau Forest Reserve.

3. 10,926ha on Pulau Banggi, Sabah which is being advertised for agriculture.

4. 14,163ha near Kapit, Sarawak.

5. 1,758ha near Bintulu, Sarawak.

6. 4,627ha in Patah, Sarawak.

7. 323ha of mangrove forest near Sibu, Sarawak.

8. 2,189ha near Lundu, Sarawak.

9. 275ha near Kota Belud, Sabah.

After digitising these maps RimbaWatch conducted a geospatial analysis into the remaining forest cover within such lands on ArcGIS; adopting the EU TMF undisturbed and degraded tropical moist forest dataset as a baseline.

This analysis finds that, in total, 54,629ha of these lands can be classified as “undisturbed forest”, and a further 30,476ha as “degraded forest”.

Together, this encompasses 85,105ha of forest which could be under threat if such sales are successful.

Govt-sanctioned maps on listings

For context, 85,105ha is 12,000ha larger than the size of Singapore. It is three and a half times the size of Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, larger than Penang island, and larger than the entire state of Perlis.

Six of these listings were found on Facebook Marketplace and the remaining three on Mudah.my. The commodity or sector-specific threats are unknown and unspecified in the listings, however, some listings mention the suitability of the land for agriculture.

Further, some maps attached to listings appear to be official surveys conducted by the relevant land offices, and other listings have land titles, official letters, project proposals and other details attached to them.

The 54,454ha listing for Silat overlaps with an area excised from the Gerenai Forest Management Unit (FMU) for conversion to oil palm plantations. It must be noted that, as a whole, the Gerenal FMU, including the excised area, is located within Indigenous traditional territories.

In 2021, a letter sent by the Gerenai Community Rights Action Committee (GCRAC), representing the impacted Indigenous groups, to the Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC) stated that the Gerenai FMU was established without free, prior and informed consent and that no social impact assessment (SIA) or environmental impact assessment (EIA) reports were publicly available.

Based on the above findings, the following recommendations are made:

• The governments of Sabah and Sarawak should investigate these findings, given the presence of government-sanctioned maps and detailed concession information attached to some of the listings. Further, they should prioritise the protection of biodiversity and human rights in their development planning, and ensure that forested lands are managed with these priorities in mind and not sold to private enterprises.

• Plans to trade these lands should be cancelled with the view of maintaining Malaysia’s forest cover to the maximum possible extent.

• Real estate websites, including Facebook Marketplace, should adopt policies to ensure that deforestation is not facilitated by such websites.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.