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Pál Máté - M2015016

Sociology

Hohai University

The Bakun Dam Project in Borneo

Criticism of the project 5.

Bakun Dam - Project history

Concerns grew so much that the Prime Minister of Malaysia visited the resettlement area in January 2011, promising to forgive some of the communities’ housing debts and provide further assistance. Several lawsuits have also been filed in local courts in an attempt to uphold indigenous people’s constitutional rights.

Why?

Malaysia

  • First attempt: 1960s and1980s, initial surveys and studies were conducted
  • Second attempt: the plan was revived and given to Ekran Company, who completed EIA in 1995. The project was to cost US$2.4 billion and was originally scheduled for completion in 2003. The entire project was not tendered publicly, and instead was awarded by government contract Ekran has never built a dam before
  • The project was halted in 1997 in the face of the Asian financial crisis.
  • Third attempt: In May 2000 it was revived through a 100% government-owned company, Sarawak Hidro, but the transmission of power to Peninsular Malaysia was not part of the revived project The new civil builder is the Malaysia–China Hydro JV consortium.
  • Bakun Dam came online on 6 August 2011.
  • Prime Minister Mahathir said at the time: "Bakun will not only provide the cheapest source of energy but will also serve as a catalyst to the country's industrialization program."
  • The purpose for the dam was to meet growing demand for electricity. However, most of this demand is said to lie in Peninsular Malaysia and not East Malaysia, where the dam is located;
  • To generate employment and valuable spin-off industries for Sarawak, which were expected to add 3 % to that state's growth per year;
  • To bring the indigenous people "into the mainstream of development" through resettlement;
  • To provide much needed infrastructure to a remote part of Sarawak, which will also become a valuable tourist destination.

Sarawak's Rural Development Minister James Masing said:

"There are some areas we have to refine. The settlement project must be done properly. What was done in Bakun may not be one of the best, we may have been ignorant of some of the issues"

"We want to change them for the better. They have good reason not to trust us, but we are not there to destroy them, we are trying our best to assist them."

Criticism of the project 4.

Criticism of the project 1.

Bakun Dam

Resettlement issues

  • Balan Balang, an elderly chief of the Penan tribe said: "This government is very bad. In the old days people would fight us using machetes or spears. But now they just sign away our lives on pieces of paper. My people never wanted to leave our place. We wanted to die in our place."

  • Over one decade after resettlement, the Indigenous People displaced by the project are still struggling.
  • About 10,000 people were resettled to the town of Asap in 1998.
  • When the communities were resettled, the government told the people they must pay for their own housing, which forced many families into debt.
  • Whereas communities were once able to catch fish in the river, hunt, and gather forest products, they now have no access to forests.
  • Each family was promised 10 acres of farmland but was only provided 3 acres. This has not been enough to sustain a living, especially since much of the land is rocky, sloped, and sandy. Many plots of land are several hours’ journey from the town.
  • As the children of resettled families grow up, there has not been enough land available for them to start their own families. Most of the land surrounding Asap has already been licensed to palm oil and forestry companies. People are accessing the company land to grow crops, which has created tensions.
  • biggest dam in Southeast Asia (2015) 2400 MW
  • orginally estimated US$5.2 billion

Borneo

Malaysia's energy policy has traditionally been based on a four-fuel strategy - gas, oil, hydroelectric and coal. Of these, gas is dominant, with neatly 50% of the country's requirements supplied by gas-fired power plants.

  • The Bakun Dam has been a matter of controversy since it was first proposed in the early 1980s. Apart from the question of its necessity, its financial viability and its environmental costs, questions have been raised from the beginning about its potentially disastrous social impacts as it would flood an area the size of Singapore and some 15 indigenous communities involving more than 1,500 families and nearly 10,000 people would have to be resettled.

  • The project is opposed by many in the indigenous communities of Malaysia, together with the opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP) political party, the Coalition of Concerned NGOs on Bakun - a coalition of over 40 Malaysian NGOs, including the World Wildlife Fund For Nature (WWF) Malaysia and the Environmental Protection Society of Malaysia (EPSM) - and many other NGOs and individuals around the world.

30% more

Balui River

Bakun reservoir

43 million m3

695 km2 =

Singapore

205 m

750 m

  • 3rd largest island in the word (743,330 square kilometres)
  • Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia
  • 50 % of the land is under 150 meters
  • Before sea levels rose at the end of the last Ice Age, Borneo was part of the mainland of Asia
  • highest point is Mount Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia, with an elevation of 4,095 m
  • longest river in Malaysian part is Batang Rejang (563 km)
  • Bakun Dam located on Balui River

8x300 MW

Criticism of the project 3.

Criticism of the project 2.

Borneo - Sarawak

Corruption and Questionable Economics

The dam has also proved to be problematic from an economic perspective. Originally the Sarawak government planned to send 90% of the Bakun Dam’s 2,400 MW of electricity to peninsular Malaysia via undersea cables, but this plan was cancelled due to cost and feasibility concerns. The electricity generated by the dam is not needed within Sarawak, which currently has only 972 MW of demand and is only projected to have 1,500 MW of demand by 2020. The Sarawak government is still looking for ways to sell its excess electricity and is not operating the dam at full capacity.

Corruption has deterred potential buyers of the electricity. In March 2012, the mining giant Rio Tinto cancelled its plans to build a $2 billion aluminum smelter that would have used electricity from the Bakun Dam not long after the Malaysian national government began a corruption investigation into the project.

Some of the key criticisms include:

  • one of the most biodiverse part of the planet
  • amazing wildlife and fauna
  • two UNESCO sites in Malaysian part
  • home to almost 40 different indigenous groups
  • Bakun's electricity would be neither the cheapest nor the cleanest available in the country.

In contrast to popular belief, hydroelectric is not a green technology or a source of renewable energy according to many sources. Although hydroelectric does not involve the burning of fossil fuel (source of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas), hydroelectric is instead a source of other greenhouses gases, primarily methane. Methane is about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing global warming. When huge areas of forest are flooded, this water-logged condition increases the emission of methane gas from decaying vegetation.

The rainforest of this part of Southeast Asia has some of the highest rates of plant and animal endemism, species found there and nowhere else on Earth, and this dam has done irreparable ecological damage to that region.

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