COLUMN ONE : Vanishing Forest Fells Way of Life : In Malaysia, the rate of deforestation from logging is the fastest on Earth. Timber politics rule the area--and overrule those who have lived among the trees for generations.

Pulling his car out of the parking lot of the Sarawak Forest Department, Philip Ngau Jalong nodded at the surrounding buildings and driveways and said, “This was all forest reserve land.”

And they cut the trees down to put up the Forest Department?

He gave an embarrassed laugh--more an involuntary facial grimace than a sound--as he continued, gesturing across the highway, “The golf course too. State reserve.”

That non-laugh is how Ngau Jalong, assistant director of the Forest Department and head of the department’s Protection Division, customarily responds to irony, absurdity, futility. It happens again when he says, “Our official title is conservator of the forest. Mine is conservator of the forest, grade one.”

In fact, the response occurs frequently when the subject is the rain forest, the environment and the logging industry in Sarawak, a Malaysian state in northwestern Borneo, the world’s third-largest island. The ancient and complex rain forest is coming down swiftly here; the rate of destruction from logging is the fastest on Earth.

The Forest Department is housed in the gleaming-white headquarters of the Sarawak Timber Industry Development Corp., an oddly shaped, 20-story structure. It towers across the river from the charming old capital, one of several modern state and federal buildings in a developing spread.

“The tree stump,” Ngau Jalong often calls it. It is the sardonic name given by Kuching residents, because the building is an architect’s rendering of an axed stump.

That the conservators of the forest are operating out of a tree stump is an indicator of the state of affairs here. Sarawak is a place where timber is politics, politics is timber, and timber politics is the way to fortune.

Timber policy here is based on a 1972 report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization that estimated 8.5 million cubic meters of timber could be safely removed a year without destroying the rain forest. A cubic meter is about 423 board feet.

In recent years, however, the actual figures have almost doubled. Projections for timber cut in 1989 were upward of 15.34 million cubic meters (6.49 billion board feet), making Sarawak the source of 35% of the world’s unprocessed tropical timber exports. Of the state’s approximately 32 million acres of land, 22 million are forested, and 90% of that has been licensed out already.

Some predict that with the exception of parks and wildlife preserves, the rain forest will be destroyed by the end of the decade--taking the timber industry along with it.

But phrases like “destruction of the rain forest” can be misleading. No one would mistake Sarawak for the Sahara. It is full of trees and green, and the nasty undergrowth discourages straying from paths or roads. Mangrove swamps abound in the low coastal areas, and nipa palms line the lower banks of the rivers.

Indeed, this is a case where you literally can’t see the forest for the trees; it requires both stepping back and getting inside.

From the river, logged hills--when seen against a distant, undisturbed area with its canopy in place--look scruffy, with gouges and bare spots standing out. Inside the forest it can appear bleak, with empty spaces, injured and dying trees, and vegetation burned away by the equatorial sun. Where once there was jungle, there is now a mess.

Logging, envisioned as a continuing source of revenue, now is described by its critics as a sunset industry, bound to self-destruct--despite the fact that about half the state budget ($1.5 billion Malaysian) derives from forestry revenues. The rush to cut down the forest has little to do with state revenues, needed though they may be.

“It’s the corruption and conflict of interest regarding control of the forest and granting of concessions by politicians that is destroying the forest,” says Chee Yoke Ling, one Malaysian doing battle on the issue. She is secretary of Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth Malaysia), or SAM, an environmental group challenging the government and timber companies and supporting native opposition to logging.

Chee’s assessment is not unique; it is accepted by both adults and schoolchildren, educated town dwellers and upriver tribal people, with a cynicism that seems to have entered the bloodstream.

Even a civil servant like Ngau Jalong will declare matter-of-factly, “Corruption is one of the biggest businesses around.”

Moreover, it is not in loggers’ interests to care about long-term effects of their actions, Ngau Jalong explained. They fear that outside pressure and concern for a disappearing resource will force the government to clamp down. So, ironically, they cut faster and more recklessly.

As Harrison Ngau, who runs the SAM office in Marudi, observed, “The tycoons have permanent-resident status in other countries. They’re only after the money. They don’t care about a sustainable yield.

“In the long run, they’ll just go away when things get bad,” said Ngau, who is no relation to Philip Ngau Jalong. “We natives have no place to go, no money to go. This is our country.”

Meanwhile, environmentalists have sounded the alarm, warning of global warming and a threat even to the survival of human life. The disappearance of numerous species of plants and animals is almost certain. Already there is disruption of the traditional lifestyles and livelihoods of the indigenous people.

With the exception of the nomadic Penans, the indigenous groups, such as the Kayans, Kenyahs, Kelabits and Muruts--collectively known as orang ulu , or upriver forest people--live near the riverbanks in communal longhouses. They practice subsistence farming, growing dry hill rice through shifting cultivation, and hunt. For a few decades they have been raising small cash crops, such as cocoa, coffee and rubber.

In the towns live ethnic Malays and Chinese. Both in British colonial times and now, the Muslim Malays have tended to be the ruling class, dominating the higher ranks of government and elected office. The Chinese dominate business and commerce.

The indigenous people have always considered the rain forest theirs, something to use, care for and draw sustenance from. Tribal law carefully delineated longhouse and family boundaries, which were acknowledged, sometimes on paper, in government policies and terms such as “customary land rights.”

Logging has changed all that. Customary land claims are routinely ignored, violated or rescinded as logging operations destroy farms and fishing and hunting grounds. The state has reclassified some claims, running a fine-print announcement in a government publication not readily available in the jungle. People are likely to learn of their loss when the chain saws and bulldozers come. Compensation is scant and sporadic.

While the fate of the rain forest is a genuine concern, it is the perceived economic injustice that has galvanized many to protest. Orang ulu are not necessarily hard-core environmentalists. In fact, many think if anyone should be making money from timber, they should. Instead, they have profited least and lost most. Cut out of the deal in any meaningful way, they have a difficult choice--watching their traditional habitat and source of sustenance disappear, or taking a laborer’s job, often the best money around, and helping cut it down.

To the intense embarrassment of the state and federal governments, Sarawakians have taken to blockading logging roads and demanding that their rights be recognized. Although scattered protests have been held since the late 1970s, now, aided by SAM in organizing and publicity, they have been gaining worldwide support.

It is a tough time to be a conservator of Sarawak’s rain forest, in charge of protection.

Ngau Jalong’s job is to enforce the ordinances that ensure a sustainable yield in some forest areas for a continual logging industry; that conserve other areas for plants and wildlife, and that permit the lawful use of the forest by indigenous people. Clearly, as the export statistics indicate, something is making timber policy unenforceable, at least in part.

As a Kenyah from the Baram River area, Ngau Jalong is the highest-ranking native in forestry and one of a handful of natives in high government posts, most of which are held by ethnic Malays and Chinese. He has had this job since last March.

He is short, barely 5 feet, and strongly built, a reserved man with an observant, quizzical demeanor who listens well and answers carefully. His smile is seldom broad, but he registers amusement frequently. Wry, sardonic, his manner occasionally is interrupted by spontaneous bursts from an old well of stubborn idealism.

“If only the politicians would let us do our job” is a frequent refrain of his, revealing a mix of patriotism, self-protection and a remaining streak of idealism. He is someone who believes strongly in sustainable yield, selective logging and all of the policies on the books, who is convinced that for economic reasons Sarawak must have a timber industry, and who thinks that the state can pursue conservation and development at the same time.

When he talks about the forest lasting into perpetuity, he can say with a straight face, “At least we foresters like to think so. We’re working on the basis of sustainable yield.”

Then, during the same long conversation after work one night, he will acknowledge, “People say we are following sustainable yield. Yes, of course we are, on the books. But if we follow it at 14, 15 million cubic meters, there will be no sustainable yield. . . . The rate is simply too high. We have got to slow down.”

He took a long drag on his cigarette before trying to describe how he feels in his position.

“Sometimes you feel frustrated, feel some anger. I try to do my best,” he said finally. “Of course, some people feel they’re being let down, but I think by now they realize there’s not much we can do. Initially, they felt there was. They had great faith in us. . . .”

His feelings do not sound much different from the protesters his department has arrested.

“In summation, the long of it and the short of it is participation,” he said firmly. “Equitable participation.”

The long of it and the short of it is that there is no equitable participation.

What had been suspected by Sarawakians for years was confirmed in early 1987 during an acrimonious election campaign between the current chief minister, Abdul Taib Mahmud, and his uncle, Abdul Rahman Yakub, chief minister from 1970 to 1981.

In a sensational fight, the nephew and uncle selectively revealed details of timber politics in the newspapers of their respective political parties.

Taib Mahmud, who is also minister of resource planning over the Forest Department, froze 25 timber concessions, announcing that they were “concentrated in the hands of a few” and that he wanted to prevent the state from being overwhelmed by the “politics of timber.”

“The few” were friends and relatives of his uncle, holding licenses and sitting on boards of the timber companies. Rahman Yakub responded in kind.

Neither opened his files for public scrutiny, or commented on under-the-table payoffs, except obliquely. Rahman Yakub defended his bequest of concessions to politicians, saying he did not want his colleagues “to enter politics and suffer (financially).”

Sarawakians call it the “the Ali Baba system.”

“Yes, Ali Baba,” one Chinese man said cynically. “It’s like Ali Baba. Just rub the lamp and do nothing. Everything will come to you.”

Here Ali Baba is a politician, or his “nominee,” with a logging license. Rather than rub a lamp, he has only to sign his name, granting a contract to a timber company. An initial windfall of under-the-table, or “goodwill,” money will arrive, followed by legal payments based on the tonnage of timber extracted.

“We’re talking world-class sums of money,” one disgusted timber consultant, who has worked in Southeast Asia for 20 years, said recently. “It’s not unheard of to have to pay $50 million to $60 million Malaysian (about $18 million to $22 million U.S.) to get a contract.”

The Ali Baba system tends to proceed along racial lines in this country, where ethnic tensions are a constant. Most license holders are Malays or Melanus, a Muslim indigenous group. Most timber companies are owned by one group of ethnic Chinese, who also control most of the ancillary businesses, such as barge and trucking companies.

There are exceptions. James Wong, an ethnic Chinese, is minister of the environment and tourism. He is also one of the biggest timber tycoons in Sarawak. His Limbang Trading Co. controls more than 250,000 acres--and his interests are thought to extend beyond that.

Both licensee and contractor, Wong was a pioneer in mechanical logging in the 1940s. A few years ago, he became notorious for making a remark at an environmental conference where concerns were voiced about the climatic changes that overlogging might cause:

“We get too much rain in Sarawak. It stops me from playing golf.”

Other than a few orang ulu millionaires, generally politicians who have shares in timber companies, longhouse people have been left out of Sarawak’s gold rush. Their efforts at obtaining licenses have been turned down, they say, with explanations that they know nothing about the logging industry and lack the necessary capital to invest.

Direct compensation from timber company to longhouse for damage to land, trees and hunting is arbitrary and small-scale, and a fund established by the Forest Department in 1986, collected on a per-ton basis from companies, has yet to be utilized, according to Ngau Jalong.

Monthly payments from companies to village headmen are the subject of cynical speculation in the community and have proved divisive. Thus, the biggest timber money the average orang ulu can expect is as a laborer.

How could such a situation go on over the years? How could the public be so successfully kept in the dark?

“There are no conflict-of-interest laws in this country . . . and the public does not have a right to know. If they want to know, they have to search. It’s not apparent. The conditions of the timber licenses are secret,” explained Thayalan Muniandy, a lawyer who represents SAM in a lawsuit on behalf of the natives against the timber companies, licensees and state.

“We do have laws in relation to corruption,” Muniandy said, adding that the suit charges that the method of granting licenses is unconstitutional and environmentally unsound and involves corrupt political practices.

Another charge of SAM’s--one accepted as fact by many in Sarawak--is that state royalties are being lost because timber leaves the country at a declared value less than its true worth. Timber companies have connections in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, where most of the wood goes. It is bought at a fake price, many say, then resold, at which point the Sarawak tycoons catch up with the rest of their profits.

Ngau Jalong is as familiar with the system as anyone else. One night, over a beer in a brightly lighted open market, the talk had turned to corruption.

Scribbling numbers on a napkin, Ngau Jalong sketched out a hypothetical harvest--the going rate for goodwill money and other payoffs--until he concluded that at a declared value of $300 million to $400 million Malaysian, there would still be a $100- to $200-million profit.

Studying his arithmetic, he shrugged and declared the obvious: “It’s worth it.”

Since the late 1970s the orang ulu have been convinced that they are going to lose everything. Not only were they cut out of the gold rush, logging was ruining them, scaring game away, polluting the streams, damaging crops and destroying jungle products.

They began blockading logging roads. But not until 1987, when the nomadic Penans stepped from the obscurity of their prehistoric lives, did the situation become critical.

As the Penans, joined by other orang ulu, brought logging to a halt in the Baram region during a nine-month blockade, SAM brought their plight to the world’s attention. The Penans won sympathy and admiration, while the government was cast as the villain, bullying and cheating gentle people dressed in beads and loincloths who signed petitions with thumbprints.

By late 1987, a tense national atmosphere sparked by racial flare-ups and an upcoming election prompted the government to invoke the Internal Security Act, originally used against Communist guerrillas. Dissidents were declared “threats to the national security” and rounded up. Harrison Ngau, for one, was arrested, detained for two months and placed under house arrest in Marudi for a year and a half.

Private cajoling having come to naught, the Forest Department’s Protection Unit--the same unit now headed by Ngau Jalong--set the legal machinery in motion to arrest the blockaders. Since then, there has been much more of the same. Arrests and detentions are numerous, but few cases go to trial.

Although insiders privately say the Malaysian government deplores the corruption in Sarawak’s timber politics and is furious about the bad publicity, officials publicly say they are following sound policies and the world need not trouble itself. Lately, officials here have begun taking VIP visitors to a showcase longhouse they built for a group of cooperative Penans at Batu Bangan in the Baram area.

Criticism provokes a round of finger pointing from officials, who argue that meddlesome environmentalists and racist Westerners, exploiting the Penans for tourism and anthropology topics, are the real culprits.

But the question of outside interference aside, Sarawak is taking no chances. It has amended its Forest Ordinance to add “90B,” now a household term. The law forbids the obstruction of a logging road, regardless of whether the road is on “customary” lands--in effect making it illegal for orang ulu to defend what they claim as their property.

“When I was first start(ing) out in forestry,” Ngau Jalong said, “I was so idealistic I actually thought every logging camp that was established was going to be a model community, a nucleus of development for the longhouse--employment, electricity, good water, medical care, schools. . . .”

He smiled ruefully at that remote self, but then protested almost pleadingly, “But that’s what the plan says; that’s what the FAO would like it to be.”

One hot Sunday afternoon, while his wife, Kim, a nurse, was on duty at the local hospital, Ngau Jalong relaxed under the ceiling fan in his concrete, semi-detached house. Smoking constantly, occasionally appealing for mercy to his son and daughter, who were playing noisily, he talked about his life and career.

He started out in forestry more than 20 years ago, a boy from a longhouse in the jungle, of the first generation to be educated. He is proud of those roots, and like many of his former schoolmates, descendants of headhunters, he is fully aware of what an awesome transition their generation of orang ulu has made.

When he is tapping his visionary streak he speaks of some of his generation as “Baram intellectuals,” talks of cooperative businesses he’d like to see them form, including, he says smilingly, a sort of Baram think tank.

Some of those Baram intellectuals grew up in longhouses where baskets of heads still hung from a beam on the veranda. Some bear traces of an ancient culture--tattoos, spliced and elongated earlobes now sewn back to normal size, remarkable leg muscles and a sense of balance from childhoods spent running up and down slippery log steps and bridges.

They do not dissociate themselves from that past and will grin at each other when it is mentioned that now they own cars, use credit cards and agonize over care for their children.

Ngau Jalong’s father and grandmother disagree on the year of his birth, but as a student in secondary school he settled on 1949. His village had recently converted to Roman Catholicism from animism, and he was one of the first babies to be baptized.

“In my time you could still survive without (cash),” he recalled. “You needed it to buy kerosene, salt, medicine, clothing. Otherwise, no. Things like outboard motors, engines, radios, generators were not there. Now every family has an engine. All these things need cash.”

His village, Long Banio, now sits across the river from a hub of eight timber camps, all of which haul logs there, where they are rolled into a fenced-off section for storage.

Ngau Jalong did not start school until 1957 because there was no school before that. After fourth grade he went to government boarding schools, studying in English, and made it through the competitive system. That he wound up in forestry was a fluke.

“After secondary school, I wanted to study medicine, but my math wasn’t good,” he said. “There was a scholarship available to study forestry in Aberdeen (Scotland). I got it.”

His early idealism may make him smile now, but he still has confidence in “the plan.” He is a faithful civil servant, believing in the vision and rhetoric that form nations and set policies, wanting only to see them implemented and for everything to go well.

The primary problem, Ngau Jalong believes, is that too much logging is permitted by the politicians. But it is a problem outside his jurisdiction. He disagrees with SAM’s assessment that the big companies ignore the law, either by paying off the forest guard, intimidating him or simply paying a fine they can well afford. Smaller companies and illegal operations are more of a problem, he says.

Working out of a vast, sparsely furnished office, he spends most of his time evaluating complaints. When action is required, he calls his regional officers and tells them to “get a man here, get a man there,” as he puts it.

And he understands the feelings of the orang ulu , asking, “Of course, who doesn’t feel hurt if people make money at the expense of your peace, by taking trees you have taken for generations to be your trees?”

Usually Ngau Jalong talks dispassionately, his irony isolating him from any emotional display, his words alone left to describe what he thinks or feels. The exception is when the talk turns to the nomadic Penans.

“The rest of us have a violent history,” he said, “but the Penans are very peaceful. They never kill people. They were never headhunters. They talk very well. It’s hard to win an argument with them. They do quarrel among themselves, but they don’t beat each other. The most a Penan will do is get his blowpipe and hit a tree rather than a person.”

That the government resents the Penans for turning to SAM makes him impatient, and his low monotone cracked and rose erratically as he discussed it with a visitor.

Where else should they turn? he asked indignantly: “They went to the Forest Department, they went to the police, to the district officer. The civil servants can’t say anything, but they (went) to see the top people in policy matters. If people won’t listen to you, where to go next? At least with SAM they can get a response. They’re willing to help the Penans write letters, to speak on their behalf.”

Although he thinks SAM overestimates the environmental danger of logging, especially if current policies were followed, he nevertheless says of the group, “These people are not our enemies. I see them as people who are trying to do right, fight for people with no voice.”

One night, over a late snack in a Chinese restaurant, Ngau Jalong talked about timber politics with a friend. “Just say I’m an orang ulu and, like Philip, a civil servant,” the friend said, declining to give his name for fear of political reprisal. “There aren’t that many of us, anyway.”

They disagreed about the honesty and efficacy of the Forest Department, with the friend needling Ngau Jalong about bribery and the impossibility of enforcement.

“Are we requiring environmental impact reports yet?” the friend asked. (Malaysia has an environmental impact act, but it is not in force in Sarawak.)

“The state is mum on it,” Ngau Jalong conceded. And, he continued, Sarawak has no reforestation program in operation, unlike elsewhere in Malaysia.

Comparing Sarawak to West Germany, which has one of the most advanced forestry departments in the world, he noted, “In West Germany there is one forester to every 2,400 acres. In Sarawak the ratio is almost 100 times that. We have 9 million hectares (22 million acres) and total manpower of 1,000.”

With that kind of manpower shortage, he said, monitoring is done by occasional spot checks, but more often by an educated reading of statistical data. If the production rate is too high, the department goes in and inspects, he said. A similar system is followed to monitor forest guards’ honesty.

About the lack of a share in logging for the orang ulu, Ngau Jalong’s friend declared: “I resent it. It’s not fair. . . . You want to punch someone, but who to punch?”

“Block it,” Ngau Jalong dryly advised, taking one more drag on his cigarette.

Such sentiments are not rare here, especially among natives. One former classmate of Ngau Jalong, John Trang, a Kelabit from the Baram region, is now an attorney in a law firm in the coastal town of Miri. He is one of several in his firm who represented the Penans arrested during a recent blockade.

As he voiced his disgust with corruption, Trang forecast darkly that the only hope is for the world to know “that we want to save our environment. . . . As for development, at least we should share. . . . The way it is being done--people coming from Kuching and other places and leaving us stumps--it just isn’t fair.”

From the point of view of any Sarawakian outside the Ali Baba system, the situation does seem bleak. But Ngau Jalong, although not that hopeful himself, is ready with a number of practical steps that he thinks would turn this sunset industry that profits a few into a permanent and equitable part of the economy.

Sounding alternately visionary and realistic, he suggested, for example, that “a (logging) moratorium would be a blessing” because it would give the government time to step back and sort out the problems.

To him, there is sufficient forest for logging, for communal rights and for parks and wildlife, for which he would like to see 10% of forested land left untouched. And to grant communal land rights to all of Sarawak’s 2,000 longhouses, he contended, would be “hardly a drop in the bucket.”

His wish list includes several statewide surveys: measuring various peoples’ dependence on the forest; surveying the animal population and their range and habitat requirements; listing plant species; documenting non-timber forest resources.

“Then it would be easier to judge how much damage we would do if an area were to be logged--what precautions need to be taken. It is totally lacking now. If someone asks for a concession, there’s no basis for making the decision,” he said.

On the visionary side, he talked of developing cottage industries based on forest products, such as rattan and resins, predicting that “we in government, in forestry, could take the lead.”

In fact, in 1988 the state began imposing restrictions on log exports as a step toward encouraging downriver wood processing and the development of local industries. But with it--again the bottom line in Sarawak--came more timber politics.

The only people in a position to build sawmills, Ngau Jalong said, are those who own the timber companies. Not only do they have the money, they have the wood, and, he added, “They’ll monopolize the supply. It will not be wise to set up a sawmill plant without a relationship to this group.”

And as for these new industries’ being an opportunity for orang ulu, Ngau Jalong predicted, “Well, we lost logging. Wood processing? I don’t know. . . . The government keeps saying one day natives will participate. But unless there’s a change in government or policy, (such as) imposing conditions for native participation, I see no way.”

Deforestation Malaysia In the Sarawak region of Malaysia, deforestation due to logging is proceeding at the fastest rate in the world. The Forest Department itself is housed in the headquarters of the Sarawak Timber Industry Development Corp. -a 20-story high-rise designed to resemble a tree stump. Timber policy is usually decided in the regional capital of Kuching, not in the forests.