The Borneo Project was established in 1991 to assist diverse tribal groups on the Southeast Asian island of Borneo in their struggles for human rights, rainforest protection and sustainable community development. Partner organizations and communities in Borneo initiate and direct core programs while a  ten-person volunteer Advisory Board mobilize resources in the U.S. and educate international audiences about the rainforests and peoples of Borneo.

The overall goal of the Borneo Project and its partners is to secure protection for Borneo's forests and ensure community rights to manage development in ancestral territories. Our current programs are focused on legal aid, community mapping, and indigenous preschools. Past programs supported reforestation, community mapping and legal aid, rural economic development, renewable energy projects, and U.S.-based advocacy.

Accomplishments & Key Victories

The Borneo Project has had gradual and sustained success in its fourteen-year existence. Since 1995, its trainings have enabled over 100 communities to map areas of ancestral land claims and win legal cases and negotiations. Villagers trained in mapping have become key staff at local environmental and human rights organizations. Our work has supported legal aid, mapping for land rights, indigenous-led reforestation, watershed restoration, and sustainable energy and micro-enterprise. We have also assisted in the formation of small-scale economic cooperatives to promote women's income opportunities and preserve traditional handicraft skills.

Our work has strengthened community efforts and secured protection for tens of thousands of acres of rainforest. Accomplishments include:

• Years of organizing and legal strategizing by the Kayan village of Uma Bawang successfully exempted community land from a large-scale plantation project. Uma Bawang's nursery of over 30,000 replanted native tree species has revitalized the land and led to successful negotiations to protect community forests from logging concessions. Their efforts have earned international acclaim from the United Nations and others and generated interest from neighboring communities in replicating the successful model.
  

• In 2001, the Iban community of Rumah Nor won a landmark court case against a plantation company. Mapping conducted by Project trainees was principal evidence in presenting land claims and securing rights to the community forest and stopping bulldozers in their tracks. Sarawak's highest court issued an unprecedented ruling that overturned laws that limited native land rights to cleared and cultivated areas. The ruling gives communities legal footing to assert their rights to land and self-determination and has the potential to protect between five and seven million acres of Borneo rainforest.

• In 2004, the Penan community of Long Sayan won an important legal settlement, where the logging company admitted wrongdoing for the arrest and abuse of four community elders. In Long Lunyim, where the Borneo Project has sponsored participatory ethnobotanical research in the community's forest, local men were accused by the logging company of threatening their operations. In 2004, these charges were dropped thanks to successful legal defense.

In 2004, nine Penan, Kayan, and Iban villages came together to establish the Indigenous Forests Restoration Initiative. The villages share skills and strategies in reforestation of timber trees, coffee, pepper, rattans, medicinal plants, fruit trees, and vegetable gardening. Nine new nurseries have been constructed and are well on their way to rejuvenating degraded rainforests.


The Borneo Project is a project of the Earth Island Institute (EII)