J. Kathirithamby-Wells, 2005, Nature and Nation: Forests and Development in Peninsular Malaysia.

J. Kathirithamby-Wells, 2005, Nature and Nation: Forests and Development in Peninsular Malaysia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 487 pp.

Borneo deserves a book of this high caliber, one that interweaves a documented history of forestry with the history of local people, political and economic upheavals, and the maturation of ecology in the twentieth century. Interestingly, the recognition of plant zonation and secondary forest succession in ecology was based on studies in the Dulit area of Sarawak in the 1930s. Forestry is an integral part of ecology.

History is too often overlooked in the causal analysis of forest practices. Essentially, Nature and Nation provides a guide to understanding the past and the present in Borneo, given that parallel events have unfolded in West Malaysia and in Borneo. Not the least, both once had extensive rainforests. Both have experienced the same El Nino drought-flood-cholera cycles. Both also had pre-colonial trade networks, colonial interference, forest-dependent indigenous populations, wars, and cash crop booms and busts. Interactions also occurred, such as during the gutta-percha boom of the 1890s when Dayaks fanned out into Kelantan and Terengganu to collect and sell the latex (p. 70). However, Borneo was spared the environmental chaos caused by tin mining which once dominated the peninsula.

The book begins with the Malayan forest situation when European exploration started in the eighteenth century. It continues with commoditization of forests in the nineteenth century and state appropriation of forests in the twentieth century. The arbitrary actions of colonial policymakers, foresters, and big-game hunters are meticulously documented. To protect rubber and other monoculture plantations or sawah in Malaya, the British destroyed natural landscapes, thereby eliminating most of the "nuisance" animals such as elephants, tigers, and seladang. Moreover, timber sales were a "cash cow" for the British. Now we see the commoditization sequel in Borneo and elsewhere in Southeast Asia with corrupt officialdom (pp. 377-80) and the cancerous growth of chemically-polluting oil palm plantations. As the author points out (p. 286), "State sponsorship of mega-plantation development ... crippled initiative and independence. Improved incomes ... were bought at the cost of self-determination, which alone can breed sound practices of land use." The best hope today for healthy air, water, and forests is not government, but the emergence of a vigilant civil society (p. 408).

Early imperialism was followed by the rise of evolutionary concepts and conservation views that challenged flawed development policies, especially after 1945. The book highlights the leadership of both local and international non-governmental organizations in conservation over many decades (Chapters 9 and 10). This history leads us to consider the incompatibility between the politicized term "natural resources" and the post-colonial idea of the global heritage of nature, discussed in the last segment of the book (Part VI). That incompatibility became obvious when environmental destruction in the Endau-Rompin wildlife reserve occurred in the 1970s, caused by timber politics (discussed on pp. 320-26)--destruction which has been echoed in Kalimantan wildlife areas and elsewhere in Borneo. The incompatibility became global news in 1987 when Ipoh's monazite refinery protest in Perak and the Penan blockades in Sarawak led to a crackdown on environmentalists in Malaysia (pp. 367-69). Although the blockade gave rise to some European bans on tropical timber, rainforests are still being logged out, despite official rhetoric of so-called sustainable development. The local flora and fauna, including the orangutan and its human relatives, are still the losers. National prestige, let alone the common good, also suffers.

In Malaya, Theodore Hubback forced through faunal protection policies that belatedly culminated in the creation of an immense national park (Taman Negara), although this move lagged behind events in parts of the Dutch Indies. Unfortunately, Borneo with its far larger area than West Malaysia has comparatively little land dedicated to national parks. Why is this the case?

Many fateful decisions have been made about the environment with little awareness of their consequences. Reading the author's analysis of the Kenyir dam's impact on the environment (pp. 328-29), it is easy to envision headlines about the Bakun dam region in Sarawak. Not only did Kenyir inundate over 36,000 hectares of forest, including part of Taman Negara, but it provided construction roads for stealthy logging and hunting. Then a seasonal flood marooned and killed some 800,000 mammals (floating carcasses). Elephants that survived the flood moved into farm fields. A government oil-palm estate was damaged. The impoundment deprived lowland sawah of irrigation water. The river mouth silted up, damaging coastal shipping. Fish stocks declined, and river water had to be treated to be potable in Kuala Berang.

Throughout the book's exhaustive chronicle of 220 years of use and misuse of the rainforest, we are confronted with the tensions between management decisions, local livelihoods, and scientific knowledge. The power of Darwinism in the nineteenth century to put humans inside the evolutionary process has not yet totally overcome the Western conceit of man's dominance over nature, but Darwinism did raise significant moral questions in imperialistic centers that are now at the heart of the contested value of nature for future generations of local people versus the interests of capitalism, including the tourist industry. While many writers have emphasized the current misuse of nature, this book shows how the past in Southeast Asia has largely foreshadowed current and future problems. To take one example, the Japanese occupation had devastating direct and indirect effects on Malayan forests (Chapter 8). This raises the following question: To what extent was there a similar effect in Borneo? More generally, is forest fragmentation already past the point of no return in terms of massive species extinction?

Political elites in the region today try to project a good image through their wealth-oriented five-year plans, especially in boasting about "green cover" (p. 347), but these myopic plans have merely supplanted, if not exceeded, British imperialism and wars in destroying tropical forests in Asia (as discussed particularly in Chapter 9). The Borneo grandchildren of today will suffer from the rapacity of rainforest politics; no one can lead a fulfilling life inside shopping malls on a desolate "Easter Island." (A. S. Baer, Department of Zoology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA)