Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article provides a concise overview of the history of environmental change in Borneo since 1970, with particular attention to human institutions, actors, and choices, and to the reasons for those choices. It is a political narrative, with an eye for vested interests and for the forces resisting environmental change as well as those driving it. The article deals with the whole of Borneo, including Indonesian Kalimantan, the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah, and the sultanate of Brunei, highlighting parallels and contrasts between their trajectories. In the late twentieth century the appearance of large international markets for tropical timber and palm oil changed the ecological fate of Borneo, leading to an almost uniquely rapid process of environmental destruction. In the early twenty-first century a combination of incipient timber and land exhaustion, stagnating palm oil prices (2010–20), and an internationalisation and monetisation of conservation efforts has slowed down the rate of deforestation. But the close involvement of Indonesian and East Malaysian political elites in extractive industries makes it unlikely that a reversal is imminent. Even if some ecosystem restoration can now be envisaged, the fact that this is most likely to take place under the stewardship of big business raises uncomfortable ethical questions.
Authors: David Henley, David Gaveau, Erik Meijaard
Institution: Leiden University
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W7214898286