Rainforest Tribunal
After decades of deforestation, the Indigenous Peoples of Sarawak (Malaysia) take stock and ask: Our forest is gone - where is the money?
For three decades, the Malaysian state of Sarawak in northern Borneo was the world's largest exporter of tropical timber. One of the oldest primeval forests on earth was cut down ruthlessly in the name of development and progress. Today, the primeval jungle has disappeared except for a few relics; almost the entire lowland rainforest has been replaced by oil palm plantations. Billions have been earned from logging and the export of tropical timber, but the Indigenous communities in the interior of Sarawak remain poor and face an uncertain future.
It is time to take stock and ask: Who has benefited from deforestation? Who has suffered? And where has all the money gone for which the valuable tropical timber was felled and exported all over the world?
The Rainforest Tribunal is a political theatre with a chair, investigators, witness hearings and a high-profile jury. It serves to review real events and place them in a larger context.
