Borneo Log: The Struggle for Sarawak’s Forests
Borneo Log: The Struggle for Sarawak’s Forests – Review
This is a story written in diary format by the author who after a year as an exchange professor at Tokyo University finished portion of the next year settling with local activists arguing the resistance to Japanese logging, and Japanese timber camp managers, on Borneo,the third major island on earth which lies entirely north of the Indonesian archipelago in the South China Sea. This is a poignant travel narrative as well as a serious ecological report of the management of third world resources. The real paradox of the tale of Borneo’s rapdily vanishing rainforest, and the regional corruption and greed which siphon off most of the profits, while native rights and land uses are completely obliterated, (sounds like America in the early 19th century!) is that most of the timber shipped to Japan is commonly used to feed Japan’s general acceptance of American habits: buy it, use it, throw it away, buy another! Much of the wood is being widely used to make shoddy furniture and plywood forms for concrete that are thrown away after several uses. Unlike America’s own trees on extensive land masses,Japan has little to support such habits. This is really another story which is symptomatic of first world countries management of third world resources – and the hypocrisy of the United States’ condemnation of such practices.