Penan Peace Park: A Community Initiative in Managing the Commons

Abstract

"The Penan people of Sarawak, Malaysia began to do farming only about half a century ago. Today, some of them are semi nomadic while all of them depend heavily on forest for sustenance. The concept of tana' pengurip, ie the Penan communal rights to forests for hunting and gathering and customary rights to land, ancestral burial grounds, rivers, etc are of vital important to them as a people of cultural identification. Though native customary rights is enshrined in the national constitution, the state administration continues to deny them by leasing out concessions for logging on the communal forests or commons for the tribe, without their Free, Prior and Informed Consent. Over the last 25 years, the Penans have been wholeheartedly protecting their communal forest with human barricade. To date, they are successful in stopping the logging concessionary from entering their territories. In late 2009, eighteen communities of around two thousand Penans in the upper Baram District decided to manage their communal forest by taking along the conservation concept similar to the Biosphere Reserve. This paper explores the potentials of the Peace Park that initially opens for cultural and natural tourism to further expend for biodiversity prospecting and other economic benefits. The author contends that by applying the peace concept to counter commercial logging that has been destructive both environmentally and socially, the community are in a stronger position to obtain official legal recognition of their commons."