In 1989 and 1990, the governments of Sarwak and Malaysia invited the International Trop- ical Timber Organization (ITTO) to send a group of observers to Sarawak to visit the tim- berlands, assess forestry practices, and present some recommendations. The ITTO, whose
CASE STUDY
member governments were exporters and consumers of tropical forest products, worked with both environmental groups and trade associations. Its purpose was “to strike a balance between utilization and conservation of tropical forest resources through enhanced benefi ts to promote sustainable management of such forests.” 35
The mission released its report to the ITTO in May 1990. Its central recommendation was that the timber harvest in Sarawak be reduced to 9.2 million cubic meters per year: 6.3 million cubic meters per year from the PFE, and another 2.9 million from the statelands that apparently were not needed for conversion to agriculture or plantations. 36 The mission based this recommendation on its own calculation of the sustainable annual yield from the PFE and the stateland forests in Sarawak, after excluding the parts of the forest that it thought were too steep to be logged in an environmentally acceptable manner. According to foresters in the Sarawak government, harvests in the state in 1990 totaled about 18 million cubic meters, or nearly twice the total that the ITTO recommended. About one- third of this total came from land clearing on the statelands, and the rest from the PFE. The Sarawak government stated formally that it “accepts in principle the rec- ommendations in the ITTO Mission Report and will implement the recommendations based on available resources and with the assistance and cooperation of the international community.” 37
Controversy persisted after the ITTO report was released. One of the mission’s main rec- ommendations was that “the staff of the Forest Department must be comprehensively strength- ened.” 38 A year and a half after the mission’s completion, however, practically no new foresters had been hired. The Sarawak government needed permission from the federal government to increase its employment; offi cials in the Forest Department said they were anxious to hire at least 400 people, but that offi cials in Kuala Lumpur were sitting on the necessary paperwork.
Federal offi cials countered that responsibility for the hiring really rested in the Sarawak capital of Kuching. Meanwhile, harvests continued at a rate well above the ITTO recommendations.
Other Measures
Many observers, including the ITTO mission, suggested that the Sarawak and Malaysia govern- ments increase the size of their Totally Protected Areas (national parks and wildlife preserves).
Sarawak had agreed to quadruple the acreage of those areas. This meant management headaches in the short run, as people were displaced from areas where they had traditionally used the for- est, and could also mean forgone revenues in the long term. In response, some westerners sug- gested that, since the Sarawak rain forests were in eff ect a globally valuable asset, the inhabitants of Borneo should somehow be compensated for maintaining them in a pristine state.
A Western Timber Ban?
Less- patient environmentalists suggested that Western nations ban imports of forest products from Malaysia until the government reformed its forest policies. 39 In response, Malaysians pointed out that most of the furniture they exported to the United States and Europe originated
CASE STUDY
in West Malaysia, while all of the log exports came from East Malaysia. Further, Malaysia’s biggest log customers were in the Far East. It seemed unlikely that they would join any sort of boycott of Malaysian wood.
Many Malaysians saw behind the proposed timber trade restrictions the sinister hand of the Western softwood timber producers. Government offi cials and industry leaders alike spoke of alliances between the Western environmental groups and the companies that produce lumber and plywood in North America and Scandinavia. “They are worried that they will lose mar- ket share to tropical timber, so they fund the environmental groups to engage in anti- tropical hardwood campaigns,” said one offi cial. And Prime Minister Mahathir’s own speechwriters had written in the draft of the address he was to give before the United Nations in Septem- ber 1991 that “the idea that the tropical forests can be saved only by boycotting tropical timber smacks more of economic arm- twisting than a real desire to save the forests. . . . This is a ploy to keep us poor.” 40
NOTE S
1. London Rainforest Movement and Singaporean and Malaysian British Association, “Sarawak: The Dispos- able Forest” (London, 1991).
2. Fong Chan Onn, The Malaysian Economic Challenge in the 1990s (Singapore: Longman, 1989), pp. 98, 159, 203, 177–178.
3. Mohamed Ariff , The Malaysian Economy: Pacifi c Connections (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 10.
4. Keith Colquhoun, “Malaysia: The Struggle for Survival,” The Economist , January 31, 1987, Survey, p. 9.
5. Raj Kumar, The Forest Resources of Malaysia (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 38–39.
6. Ministry of Primary Industries Malaysia, “Profi le: Malaysia’s Primary Commodities” (Kuala Lumpur, 1990), pp. 117–119, 223ff .; Bank Negara Malaysia, “Annual Report 1990” (Kuala Lumpur), pp. 211-212.
7. Ai Leng Choo and Nayan Chandra, “Prime Minister of Malaysia Criticizes Western Model for Economic Growth,” The Wall Street Journal , September 30, 1991, p. A5B.
8. Government of Malaysia, “The Second Outline Perspective Plan” (Kuala Lumpur, 1990), p. 80.
9. World Bank, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), Chapter 6.
10. Ariff , pp. 164–165.
11. Ariff , p. 16.
12. Colquhoun, p. 13.
13. Ian Buruma, God’s Dust (London: Vintage, 1991), pp. 113–114.
14. Margaret Scott, “Where the Quota Is King,” The New York Times , November 17, 1991, VI, p. 63.
15. Malaysia, “The Second Outline Perspective Plan,” p. 8.
16. Lucian Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard, 1985), p. 262.
17. Pye, p. 262.
18. Malaysia, “Second Outline Perspective Plan,” pp. 45, 7–21.
19. Quoted by Scott, p. 67.
20. Colquhoun, p. 8.
21. Ariff , p.8.
CASE STUDY
22. Andrew Cowley, “Asia’s Emerging Economies,” The Economist , November 16, 1991, Survey p. 17.
23. Ministry of Primary Industries Malaysia, “Forestry in Malaysia” (n.d.), p. 6.
24. Ministry of Primary Industries Malaysia, “Statistics on Commodities” (1991), pp. 156–157.
25. In “The dwindling forest beyond Long San,” The Economist (August 18, 1990, pp. 23ff .) reported that roy- alties in Sarawak were just 2% of the timber’s value. In 1990, the Sarawak government took in 520 million Malay- sian ringgits (M$) in timber tax revenues, according to government budget documents; that year, log exports from the state were worth about M$2,800 million. Various premiums totalled M$52 million in 1990.
26. “The dwindling forest beyond Long San,” The Economist (August 18, 1990), p. 23.
27. Ministry of Primary Industries Malaysia, “Profi le: Malaysia’s Primary Commodities,” p. 1.
28. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future [also known as “the Brundt- land report”; hereinafter cited as “WCED”] (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1987), p. 151.
29. WCED, p. 150.
30. WCED, p. 156.
31. See “Global Climate Change” and Supplements (HBS Case Nos. 391-180 through 391-188).
32. See “Sarawak: The Disposable Forest.”
33. Sarawak Forest Department, “Forestry in Sarawak” (Kuching, 1991), p. 8; see also Ministry of Primary Industries Malaysia, “Profi le: Malaysia’s Primary Commodities,” p. l38.
34. Singaporean and Malaysian British Association, “Attempts to Protect Land End in Severe Jail Terms,”
Press release, 1991.
35. International Tropical Timber Organization, Report submitted to the International Tropical Timber Council by Mission Established Pursuant to Resolution I (VI), “The Promotion of Sustainable Forest Manage- ment: A Case Study in Sarawak, Malaysia” (May 1990) [hereinafter “ITTO Mission Report.”], p. 1.
36. ITTO Mission Report, pp. 34, 71.
37. “Statements by the State Government of Sarawak Malaysia on the ITTO Mission Report” (n.d.).
38. ITTO Mission Report, p. 71.
39. ITTO Mission Report, pp. 5-6. The ITTO Mission did not support these proposals.
40. Malaysia Embassy to the United Nations, “Statement by H.E. Data’ Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, United Nations General Assembly, New York, 24 September 1991.”
CASE STUDY
ALLENTOWN MATERIALS