Bakun Dam threatens Sarawak people, rainforest &&




12 February 1997

By Amanda Radcliffe
Last
October, the Bakun Dam project contracts were signed in Malaysia
between the Swedish-Swiss Asia Brown Boveri (ABB) consortium and Ekran
Berhad. The US$5.5 billion Bakun Dam, masterminded by the timber tycoon
and executive chairman of Ekran, Ting Pek Khiing, threatens to flood
700 square kilometres and would stand at a height of 204 metres, nearly
twice the height of Egypt's Aswan dam. Steeped in
controversy since it was first conceived in 1980, the dam has been the
focus of escalating opposition. The project has been described by
Jerome Rousseau, a French-Canadian anthropologist who has been working
with the affected people for over 20 years, as a "monument of greed,
arrogance and selfishness". Criticism of the project and calls for its abandonment have
come from 250 NGOs from 30 countries, including 40 within Malaysia, 35
members of the European Union parliament and a prominent Malaysian
parliamentary opposition member. The project was conceived in the expectation that there
would be significant economic growth up to the year 2010. Malaysia,
Indonesia, Burma and Laos all have hydro-power reserves with massive
potential for development. Initial plans to use international financing were dropped in
1993 in favour of a corporate backer. The contract was won by Ting Pek
Khiing, a local Sarawakian and close business colleague of Malaysian
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad. Investment capital is to come from a consortium of companies
in which Ting's Ekran and the state government will provide 51%. The
use of state employees' pension funds as a source of finance has also
come under fire. By avoiding development bank support, the Bakun
consortium also bypasses the need to meet environmental and
resettlement requirements. Ting has been busy positioning Ekran to reap maximum gains
from the project; four of Ekran's associated companies have won the
lion's share of subcontracts worth RM$4.5 billion, 35%-40% of the total
energy procurement and the construction contract for the dam. Thus Ting stands to gain through three avenues: as
contractor, shareholder and through timber proceeds from the 80,000
hectares to be flooded (2% of Sarawak's remaining tropical forest)
which Ting estimates to be worth at least RM$1.2 billion. Ekran has already spent over $40 million on preliminary work
which is subcontracted to South Korea's Dong-Ah Construction and
Industrial Co, the same company that built the Songsu bridge over the
Han River in central Seoul which collapsed killing 32 people in 1994. ABB's involvement in the project makes a mockery of its leading role in the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
ABB
has ignored the Malaysian High Court's decision that the consortium
comply with environmental guidelines and not abuse the rights of the
affected indigenous people. It has also been accused of using outdated
technology banned in Sweden because of detrimental environmental and
social impacts. Furthermore, ABB has a controversial history of involvement
in the Malaysian power industry, with the sale in 1990 of seven gas
turbines valued at $500 million for $1 billion each. The main construction company for Bakun is from the
Oderbrecht group, which built the Itaipu and Xingu dams in Brazil. Both
went over budget, by 488% and 100% respectively. The first legal attack on the project came when three local
tribesmen from the affected region brought a civil action against
Ekran. In its July 19 ruling, the High Court found that the national
government had violated the National Environmental Quality Act by
transferring responsibility for approving the environmental impact
assessment (EIA) to the state authorities in Sarawak (a shareholder in
the project). The court ruled that Ekran had to comply with the national
act before it could build the dam. But when the civil action was
subsequently dropped, Ekran was allowed to continue work, pending an
appeal, but not until after Ting threatened to sue the three plaintiffs
for estimated losses of almost $4 million for each day the project was
stalled. The appeal has been set for February 17."It's no big deal",
said a source in Ekran. "The EIAs ... will be approved if the
government wants the project to go ahead." Logging of 80,000 hectares
of tropical rainforest to be submerged is well under way. The World Bank (whose record on such projects is fairly
insensitive) estimates that an average of 9% of appraised costs would
need to be spent on resettlement. However, the highest figure quoted for the cost of
resettlement so far is RM$300 million -- a mere 2.2% of the total cost
of the project. In addition to this sum, the more than 9000 indigenous
people affected are to receive "20,000 hectares to be converted into
estates where the affected families would be relocated and given
employment", said the chief minister. These "estates" continue to be the target of much criticism,
as they have often meant increased poverty and a significant loss of
economic self-sufficiency for those who enter them as labourers. A Bakun Trust Fund is supposed to provide the approximately
30,000 affected residents of the Belaga district, regardless of where
they currently reside, with education and training. The fund, which
currently contains RM$15 million, averages out to RM$500 or
approximately A$260 per person -- hardly a generous sum. Huge anomalies also remain in the compensation agreements
for the Bakun project. The Sarawak Museum continues to negotiate the
future of graveyards which will be flooded. Another issue yet to be
resolved is the effect of the 665 km overland cable that will link the
dam to the coast, which will pass through protected native lands,
pepper and rubber estates and five forest areas, and near to 15
long-house communities. A few stand to gain a great deal through the dam project.
Mahathir's personal interest in the project is clear from the six
visits he has already made to the site. With murmurings that his
15-year career as the country's leader is approaching its end, the
project at least provides Mahathir with a monument of adequate
proportions to remind the nation and the west of his role in Malaysia's
development. But for thousands of people whose lives are being affected
and a huge tract of tropical rainforest with extensive biodiversity and
marine life, the future may not be so rosy. Indeed, to the 40-strong
coalition of Malaysian NGOs the Bakun project is "socially destructive,
environmentally disastrous and economically misconceived".
[Amanda Radcliffe is from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Newcastle.]

Malaysia:
conflict caused by Bakun dam continues in Sarawak
The Bakun Hydroelectric Dam Project has aroused widespread
concern among environmental and social NGOs and indigenous peoples' organizations in
Sarawak, which have been opposing this megaproject considered unnecessary -since the
present and future energy demand of the country are adequately covered with the
electricity produced nowadays- and negative from an environmental and social point of view
because one third of Sarawak's remaining primary forest lie in the area to be affected by
the dam, thus forcing the migration of indigenous peoples from the catchment area. In May
1997 the Coalition of Concerned NGOs on Bakun (Gabungan) urged ABB, the main contractor
involved in the project, to definitively abandon the project (see WRM Bulletin 2). In
February 1998 the Bakun Region People's Committee (BRPC) urges the State government and
the Bakun Resettlement Committee (BRC) to shelve the resettlement of the Bakun residents
which is tentatively set for July that year (see WRM Bulletin 9).
In spite of these severe objections and the reduction of the
scale of the originally planned dam, the project's implementation went on and the
denounced problems persist. On June 10^th Gabungan delivered the following press
statement on this conflictive issue:
"On Reviving the Bakun Project
The announcement by the Prime Minister (June that the
Bakun dam will be scaled down to around 500 MW capacity, raises some vital questions:
1. With a downsized dam, why does the Sarawak government
still want to resettle 10,000 indigenous peoples?
Initially, the Bakun dam was supposed to have a capacity of
2,400 MW and the size of the flooded area required the displacement of 10,000 indigenous
peoples in 15 long houses. Now that the dam has been downsized, why should the same number
of people be displaced? One would have thought that, if the Sarawak Government had
followed the recommendations of its consultants in the Bakun Hydroelectric Project, the
resettlement would have been put off as long as possible until just before the reservoir
is flooded. Furthermore, now that the dam has been scaled down, that there is no longer a
need to displace that many people.
What has been happening, from the study by the Fact Finding
Mission sent by the Coalition of Concerned NGOs, is that the Sarawak authorities are
rushing the resettlement. They want "Operation Exodus" to be completed by August
1999. Apart from the reason above, the Asap Resettlement Scheme is a gigantic failure in
planning, the most serious problems being:
- There are no employment opportunities in Asap. The one oil
palm company has just planted their seedlings, so the people will have to wait five years
before the trees mature for harvesting. This is assuming plantation wage labour is
suitable for the Bakun indigenous people, who have thrived on swidden farming, forest
products in their traditional long house communities for centuries. The land they have
been given (3 acres) is not what they had been promised (3 hectares) and certainly not
enough to work on by each household, never mind their future generations.
- The house units at the Asap Resettlement Scheme -small,
cheap wood, shoddy work and priced at RM52,000- would be considered daylight robbery by
West Malaysians. Despite the fact that this is the biggest resettlement scheme of
indigenous peoples, the scandal is that it has still not been given a Certificate of
Fitness by the Kapit Majlis. The reason given is that there are defects in the design of
the houses and facilities around the long houses there.
The full report of the Fact Finding Mission to Bakun will be
released by the end of June 1999 and submitted to the federal and state governments.
2. Dams cannot be considered renewable
Hydroelectric dams, together with nuclear and coal-fired
power stations cannot be considered "renewable". The world-wide experience with
hydroelectric dams have shown that they are environmentally destructive and have a fixed
life, after which they need to be decommissioned at great cost. That is why the World Bank
does not finance hydroelectric dams anymore. Our hydroelectric dams in the Cameron
Highlands are a poor advertisement. The Chenderoh Dam has had to be upgraded and new
machines installed.
3. Alternatives to the Bakum Dam
Like the response to our water crisis, we have yet to see the
Government implement energy saving measures and ensuring our power stations operate at
full efficiency. Other countries which have done this have managed to reduce the
consumption of fuel oils and the cost of generation almost a decade after the
mid-seventies by energy saving alone! Our own Energy Minister has said that the industrial
sector can save up to RM685 million in energy cost a year if it implements energy-saving
measures.
We have pointed out that the country has to have an
energy-needs inventory, not just electricity consumption projections. This means the
collection of reliable data on types of energy produceable and the varying amounts used in
the country, both domestic and industrial; optimising the match between energy sources and
uses to avoid wastage, and tapping more renewable sources.
The country has not been given a total picture of our
options. For example, we have been told that the Bakun project will be saving on
consumption of our own gas supply, but the public has not been informed that we have been
wantonly selling gas to Japan and other countries anyway all these years!
If we need hydroelectric dams at all, these should be very
small dams built in situ to supply power to long houses and local industries without the
need to displace any indigenous peoples.
4. Why do we want toxic and energy-hungry industries such as
aluminium smelters?
The earliest justification for the Bakun dam during the
Eighties was the need for energy to fuel an aluminium smelter in Bintulu. Aluminium
smelting is one industry that the developed countries want to dump on gullible people like
us because it is environmentally toxic and consumes voracious amounts of energy. It is
unbelievable that after all these years, when we are supposed to be more environmentally
conscious and wary of foreign countries dumping their toxic industries on South countries,
the aluminium smelter is again proposed! Who will gain from this investment?
5. The right of information.
The Government must be transparent about the cost of the
project, the tenders for the contracts, etc. Furthermore, the public has the right to know
why Ekran Berhad and Bakun Hydroelectric Corporation will receive a scandalous RM 950
million for compensation. So far we have not been able to gauge such specific information.
The Bakun dam project has been wrapped in controversy from the beginning because of
secrecy over these details. We hope that this will change for the Malaysian people are
entitled to information which affect their lives and taxes.
Released by:
Dr. Kua Kia Soong
On behalf of Coalition of Concerned NGOs on Bakun"
Source: WRM's bulletin Nº
24, June 1999