Prevent and Stop Genocide

The Batu Puteh community has developed a creative solution to the loss of access to traditional resources resulting from the creation of Sabah's Supu Forest Reserve and Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary. Since 2000, the NGO they created - MESCOT  (Model Ecologically Sustainable Tourism) - has operated a series of successful ecotourism ventures including a home-stay program, boat and guide service, and handicraft production scheme. Their efforts have also restored over 50 hectares of forest in important freshwater swamps.



For a millennia the indigenous ”Sungai” people of the Lower
Kinabatangan river have been living off the rainforest for food, medicine,
household commodities and products of trade. This world changed
dramatically from the 1960's onwards, with the advent of mechanised
extraction of the forests timber resources. The ensuing rapid reduction
of traditional forest resources forced many local people into a spiralling
trap of dependence on timber as the only remaining viable source of
trade. With the final conversion of large tracts of lowland forests of the
Lower Kinabatangan throughout the 1980s into permanent agricultural
crops, many local people were then forced to poach timber and other
forest products to eek out an existence.

The MESCOT Initiative was started in 1996 by a group of about 30
visionary and dedicated individuals from the different villages of Batu
Puteh to create an alternative medium of income generation for the
people of the area, while in the process of protecting the last remaining
vestige of rainforest and traditional indigenous cultural heritage.

The key objectives of the MESCOT Initiative was to develop an
alternative path of co-existence with the remaining rainforest resources
and generate a sustainable long-term economic path for income
generation for the indigenous local people of the area. The core and
catalyst activity chosen by the MESCOT group was Eco-Tourism. It was
hoped that this activity would be the key to raising income in this poor
and remote rural community, increase the economic value of a depleted
forest resource, and, in the process, raise funds to support the
protection and restoration of the last remaining wetland forests and
wildlife of the area.

MESCOT’s scope was broadened in 1998 when drought induced forest
fires ravaged parts of the remaining natural forests surrounding the
village. The MESCOT group voluntarily engaged to fight these fires and
in the aftermath decided it critical to rehabilitate the degraded wetland
forests and critical wildlife habitats and corridors. At the time, these
steps were ground-breaking, as previously little was known about the
complex floodplain forest tapestry and the different rainforest types of
the area. With the support of kind global citizens the forest restoration
work has since developed to be a core activity of MESCOT driving the
future of the village run co-operative set up to manage these activities.

The Key Outcomes of the MESCOT Initiative to date include:

• The Batu Puteh Community Eco-Tourism Cooperative (KOPEL
  Bhd.) which combines the village ecotourism associations such
  as:
  

• The Miso Walai Homestay Program
  
• The Wayon Tokou Nature Guide Association
  
• The Mayo do Talud Boat Service
  
• Tulun Tokou Handicrafts
  
• The MESCOT Culture Group
  

Along side the immediate and direct Conservation Interventions of:

• Wetland Forest Rehabilitation, and
  
• Wetland Lake Rehabilitation.
  

All of the MESCOT Initiatives now fall under the umbrella of the Batu
Puteh Community Eco-Tourism Co-operative (KOPEL), and MESCOT
continues its ten year long effort now under the name:
KOPEL-MESCOT.
MESCOT in many respects has evolved into a larger entity called
KOPEL. Even so, the spirit of MESCOT is so very much alive that many
members of the Batu Puteh community prefer to go by the name
MESCOT, because of the impact and empowerment that MESCOT has
embodied.

The spirit of empowerment, opportunity, and future hope has already
inspired a generation of youth within the four villages of Batu Puteh and
hopes to continue to be a guide to the long-term conservation and
economic development of the Lower Kinabatangan.