Fadzilah Majid Cooke School of Social Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu DEVELOPMENT WHO IS IT FOR? Community

Sensivities and Needs vis –a -vis the WEF. Case Studies of East Malaysia, southern Thailand and the Philippines

A result of work in the Muslim provinces of Thailand, Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani, and in Lanao Del Sur and Lanao del Norte of Southern Philippines

Asian Public Intellectual Research

Fellowship 2011-12 Research: Malaysian Human Rights

Commission (SUHAKAM) National Inquiry into Customary Land.

Provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat

Within the context of relations with the Centre land has been the metaphor, the symbol and the material conditions that represent the complex interplay of sub national, national and international geopolitics , socio-historical as well as socio-economic factors.

Land (including the forests on them, the minerals underneath them , the rivers that run through them), the sea that surrounds them and the tenure systems that are built on them, should be the start of analysis concerning access to water, energy, food security for purposes of poverty eradication and rights to be treated as humans.

Socially, Land has been the metaphor for the quest for a separate identity against predominantly Buddhist , Christian or Islamic oriented cultures.

BUT LAND TOO IS THE SITE OF MANY INITITATIVES FOR PEACE BOTH

AT THE MACRO AND MICROLEVES.

Regional initiatives for peace at the community level

Via :

1) environmental action in Southern Thailand;

2) genealogy tracing and the formation of clan-based cooperatives for livelihood and education – Mindanao, Phils.

3) Village Land Action Committees (Jawatankuasa Bertindak Tanah) in defence of community livelihood,s Sabah

In Thailand grassroots initiatives found reprieve in environmentalism , i.e. conserving land AND access to it.

Protection of the Saiburi Wetlands has prompted the formation of a coalition of community and academic researchers in a project:

The Research Project for the Development of Peoples Participation to Manage the Saiburi Wetlands ;

past 5 years AND continuing

.

Coalition of Researchers from the Prince of Songkhla University at Pattani (PSU) and Mahidol University, Bangkok and 20 villagers along the Saiburi River from the coast, to the middle and uplands:

Community volunteers : monitor and report on environmental and social change affecting their lives

Academics share information on conservation ;

provide links to other networks of NGOs, government departments as and when required ;

provide general moral and research support that communities need

At meetings held bi monthly the reporting of environmental and social change lead to ONE MAJOR QUESTION :

“What can I or my community (not only the government) do to maintain livelihoods despite having lost access to natural resources”

Some examples from the Upper reaches of the Saiburi River:

Khun A:… 40 years ago there was plentiful fish in Sukhirin. Now the water is dirty. It is difficult to get even 10 fish a day … I have informed the government department, they did not pay attention. …… I was appointed a security guard by the Council that is supposed to protect the hills and wildlife, but the officials themselves are selling the animals. I was sacked. Thank God there is this research network, we try and join.

“The river, the people dId not care … they use electric shock to stun the fish so that they can catch a lot of fish. We took our own initiatives: we introduced our own system, to safeguard fish species, to clear the river off rubbish. The initiatives started before the research project began. After the project began there are many places that the people wanted to protect.”

Draining of wetlands to make way for commercial agriculture (oil

palm):

Loss of rice land, fish habitat and sites for buffaloes to wallow.

Response from a key respondent, a natural scientist and initiator

of the Project : “We never fail them. I have been working with them for more than 10 years. They wanted exposure and education, they wanted ways to make their frustrations known. … They make the decision about what they want to do…Exposure through bimonthly meetings and trips to other

communities including to Malaysia (Trengganu) and Indonesia they saw ow strong they can be if they are united.,, in the 20 villages that we work with there are no bullets or firearms that affect their lives.” [ DISCUSSION? IS ENVIRONMENTALISM A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE FOR CHANELLIING SOCIALNG ENERGY (ANGER ?)

Mining on Maranao Land- Kiwalan, Illigan City

d- n

Tracing of genealogies: BY COMMUNITIES THEMSELVES Provide new ways of thinking about clans and relationships within them:

Maranao of Lanao Del Norte (with spillover of clans into Lanao del Sur).

Maranao clans helped by NGOs to trace genealogies to form formal clan associations

Clan based associations provide membership for forming clan based cooperatives

LOCATION: Poona Piagapo, Lanau del Sur: 2 CLANS

Moriatao Tara (descendants of Tara) and Bae Saradapan (descendants of Bae Saradapan)

1) to buy and sell basic items (especially rice) at members price.

2) to strengthen Islamic teaching and learning

3) To assist during times of hardship including in the settling of ‘rido’ – clan feuds resulting in killings.

A second major cause of rido is disputes over land.

Done by volunteers – can take more than 10 years. For both clans there is now a recorded genealogy for 50,000 members;

Why volunteer ?: “ Where would Maranao be 5 years from now? … We fight over land,.. If we know how closely related we are, and whether we share the same ancestors, we would hesitate from killing one another. We fight over land, inherited, boundaries and against leaders who use fake titles to generate personal wealth”.

+ Spiritual reasons – to strengthen Islamic identity; through Islamic education

By laws of cooperatives emphasize transparent and accountable management through adopted accounting and auditing procedures. Training sessions held for Board of Directors and Management by NGOs and their networks;

Every year of the first Saturday of April will be the assembly of the clan where the President, Treasurer, and Auditor will report about the status of the finances and the status of the cooperative. For every profit of the cooperative, 20% of the total profit will be given to the members. The 30% for every profit will be the standing fund of the cooperative that will be used for the community which will be decided by the Board of Directors. The 50% of every profit will go back to the cooperative so that the capital for the livelihood will expand. The cooperative will give help for other incidents like the rido, weddings, illness, and burials. In terms of the rido, if the member of the cooperative will experience a conflict like this in which is unintentional or accidental, that member is required to pay the offended parties a minimum of 50, 000.00; the member will receive a help from the cooperative in the amount of 50.00 each per member.

Consultation with villagers and Land Action Committees – Kuala Tomani Forest Reserve, Tenom District.

Background to development in Sabah Oil palm is the biggest landuse category in

both areas ;

Additional Development in Sarawak; DAMS In the 1990s Bakun for electricity generation,

for sale to Brunei, Kalimantan and in anticipation of industrial development in the cities, not for rural electrification.

Now 12 more dams on major rivers of Sarawak including the Baram and Rejang Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE)

Opportunities at the frontier: case study oil palm in Sabah:

For IPS as workers, but low wages – local labour prefer to stay on own customary land --- lead to widespread use of migrant labour

For companies – thousands of hectares of land for conversion to oil palm.

Encroachment into lands claimed under customary tenure (not yet titled)

DILEMMA

Torrens system – all land belongs to the State

unless otherwise titled. Titling does provide avenues for recognising

customary tenure, but only partially both in Sabah (Sabah Land Ordinance 1930) and in Sarawak (Sarawak Land Code 1958).

The bulk of land left to fallow in Sabah (under the rotation system of shifting cultivation) are not included in the list of lands as eligible for Titling – viewed as ‘State land’ subject to discretion of the State.

Formed to manage conflicts within communities over landuse change resulting from encroachments – oil palm;

Differences in views – individual , communal ; allow outsiders to develop land or remain independent and develop land as small holders?

Many others – negotiations with government

In Thailand discours es of managing or looking after environmental degradation provides an avenue for expressing anger and frustration and socio-economic marginalisation and los of access to the means of livelihood.

In Mindanao, underlying the Marano intiatives of establishing genealogies and from then, forming clan based cooperatives is a desire for re-acquiring control over economic resources and for restorative justice. (Part of the concern is against their own leadership – ‘moroisation of landlordism).

In Malaysia: Development programmes that have noble

aims of poverty alleviation (via oil palm) but in implementation proved to be non-participatory or at best partially participatory (partial inclusion ) EXAMPLES OF PARTIAL INCLUSION (FOR DISCUSSION??)

Note; small holder oil palm growers doing relatively well.

Communities are experiencing ‘SLOW’ VIOLENCE (Nixon 2011) : can be understood in terms of the delayed but cumulative effects of loss of access to the means of livelihood over time – mining, logging, large scale plantation agriculture on lands claimed as customary; dam construction;.

Oil palm and energy policy has implications for amount of space available for food, and in the short to medium term on water quality and availability

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