Sarawak's tropical paradise all but lost

By RICHARD LLOYD PARRY

BAKUN - From the river bank, and even with the mess of access roads and adminstration buildings that have sprung up around, it is still possible to look with wonder on the land around the Bakun Rapids.

Above, plump clouds sweep across a deep blue sky; below, the coffee brown waters of the Rajang, Malaysia's longest river, churn over the rocks. Beneath the cover of the tropical trees is one of the richest concentrations of animals, birds, and insects in the world.

In this corner of the Malaysian state of Sarawak are 800 individual species of trees and plants and 300 different fish, plants and animals, 43 of them rare or endangered: pythons and sun bears, hornbills and drongoes, bats and mantises. Only one species is lacking from the land upstream of Bakun - man.

Until a few years ago, this jungle was the home to almost 10,000 people, the indigenous people of Borneo, collectively known as the Dayaks, whose ancestors have lived here longer than anyone knows. But quite soon, probably within the next five years, their home will have disappeared forever.

The gurgling rapids will be overwhelmed by a vast hydro-electric dam, 650 feet tall. And a vast area of jungle - 70,000 hectares, an area larger than the country of Singapore - will be flooded to create Borneo's largest lake.

The notorious Bakun Dam project - twice started, twice suspended - is on again, and with it a bitter and unresolved controversy.

To the government of Malaysia and its prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, the Bakun Dam will be one of the jewels of its ambitious program of economic development, a triumph of engineering that would bring cheap electricity to all parts of Malaysia.

But from the beginning, it has been a troubled undertaking. Construction of the dam was twice put on hold because of economic troubles, most recently in 1997. Its critics have accused the government of corruption in the award of construction contracts, and of extravagant and uneconomic overspending. The government seems to acknowledge this itself: when the resumption of the project was announced in February this year, it was less ambitious, costing 9 billion ringgit (£1.55 billion) rather than the original 15 billion ringgit (£2.6 billion).

There are concerns about the effect of the dam on the surrounding area, especially on fish and wildlife downstream. But the greatest anger has been over the treatment of the original inhabitants of Bakun, who have been forcibly evicted from their homes, relocated and, in many ways, abandoned. "A gaping hole has been blown in their social fabric," concluded one report by a group of Malaysian NGOs. "Their culture and their future is in serious jeopardy. Despite the many, many warnings, this represents a gigantic failure of planning."

The village of Long Jawe, where Elie Lawing and his family live, is three years old and inhabited by a few hundred of the Dayaks known as the Kenyah people. At first glance, their new home looks decent enough - an arrangement of four long houses built in an open patch of cleared jungle.

In the traditional style, each family has an apartment which opens onto a long communal verandah. But this is a village designed by a committee, a crude attempt at doing for the Kenyah what they have been doing for themselves for centuries.

After the Bakun Dam was first announced eight years ago, government officials visited the old village of Long Jawe and told Mr Elie he had to leave. "There was no choice," he says. "They told us, 'Either you take this, or you go to hell.'" For old Mr Elie, his wife, three daughters and five grandchildren, life has never been the same again.

It is strange to hear it from people who are used to living in a jungle, but the biggest problem with the new Long Jawe is that it is in the middle of nowhere. The old village was in a virgin forest, by a river which served as a bath, a source of food, and a means of transport. The nearest town with its school and market, was half an hour away by boat. But from the new village, the only way of getting around is to take an expensive ride in the jeeps which a few villagers bought with their compensation money. "When we lived beside the river and the forest, there was so much food," says Mr Elie. "Fish, deer, wild boar. Here there's nothing - the only thing that comes down the river is the logs that the companies have chopped down."

In their former home the Kenyah's back garden was a forest, where they could plant rice, and gather jungle fruit and rattan which the women would dye and weave into beautiful baskets. Here the family has a mere three acres, inconveniently far from the longhouse. But the biggest problem is the building itself.

Dayak longhouses are feats of carpentry and engineering, their design perfected by centuries of experiment and experience. But rather than consulting the people who would live there, the Malaysian government inexplicably commissioned a British company, Bucknalls of Birmingham, to build the long houses. "I believe that in England, people do not live in long houses," Mr Elie says dryly. "So why was an English company asked to build a long house for us? We know how to choose and cut wood, and this wood is the worst quality."

On the walls hang shields, swords, and the brightly coloured head dresses of beads and hornbill which the Kenyah wear on their festival days.

But the walls themselves are plywood, already stained by rain. The stairs leading up to the long house have rotted to pieces, the sewage pipes leak.

To add to the insult, each of the families is being asked to pay 52,000 ringgit (£9,000) for their apartments, far more than most of them have received in compensation.

For the first time in their lives, Mr Elie's family have to pay a water bill - ironically, given the dam's purpose, the electricity here costs far more than before. The switch to a cash economy has forced families apart, as sons and husbands leave home to find work in the small towns and palm oil plantations. Mr Elie's wife, Pujie Apoi, still weaves, but there is no rattan to be found. Instead she uses threads of lurid plastic.

The designs are the same, her fingers are as quick, but all the beauty and the authenticity of the baskets and papooses has drained out of them.

- INDEPENDENT