Camps International’s Borneo projects are now well established and have been running for over 5 years. Based around the two main themes of Sustainable Social Development and Biodiversity Conservation, they are spread across 5 main locations: Tinangol in northern Sabah near Kudat; Mantanani Island off the west coast; Bongkud near the town of Ranua and Mt Kinabalu; Kipouvo on the outskirts of Kota Kinabalu in the Penampang area; and Batu Puteh in the east of Sabah on the banks of the Kinabatangan River. They also have 2 smaller locations; Luanti situated near Bongkud and Kampong Banjaran Crocker which is 80km south of Kota Kinabalu.
In Borneo they are also adopting permaculture and introducing this to the communities that I – and other teen volunteers –will be able to work with.
Tinangol & Mantanani Background
Tinangol Background
Despite its beauty, northern Sabah is one of the poorest regions in the state; communities survive through subsistence farming and selling their produce at local markets. The region was also one of the first in Sabah to be heavily logged, and the environmental degradation from that is stark and obvious. Land is eroded and the clearance of large forest areas has altered the water table, making the ground less fertile and productive. Locals now have to grow crops that are hardier, and they are denied the ability to fell large and profitable timber. Traditional hunting grounds are also either gone, or hugely depleted of resources, including sources of meat such as wild boar or deer. Some communities by the sea are at least able to fish as an additional source of food and income, but not those inland. They grow coconuts and rice, mango, papaya, bananas and tapioca.
Originally communities in this area lived in one large traditional longhouse usually up to 100ft long. They were made from local timber and bamboo, but nowadays also incorporate zinc roof sheeting. This style of accommodation has a long corridor running the length of the structure. On one side of this corridor is an open space for community gathering, where people sit and talk, care for their children, and prepare food. On the other side are individual family rooms used for sleeping and more cooking. Eating, sleeping and living in very close quarters gives villagers a strong and special community bond. Nowadays, smaller houses for individual families are replacing the longhouses, and the community is more individualistic as a result.
The community of Tinangol lies 140km north of the state capital Kota Kinabalu and 30km from Kudat. The village is home to approximately 100 households. This subsistence Rungus community, predominantly still live in the traditional style longhouses, and is one of the most resolutely cultural of the many peoples that make up the population of Sabah, practising their traditional handicrafts, music and dancing, taking care to pass the knowledge to their kin and happy to introduce strangers to their culture. Life in the community is basic and a large proportion of the populace is below average by Malaysian education standards. Those young people who do achieve in school often have to leave the community to find work in local towns like Kudat, Kota Belud and Kota Kinabalu. Many people still farm rice on small plots of land which are sometimes a few hours’ walk away. During planting and harvesting times, this means long hours spent away from home, often accompanied by members of the extended family. Those from poorer families are supported and assisted by the community as a whole with donations of rice and food where necessary. Many children do not complete school due to the poor facilities, lack of formal early education and the need to accompany their parents out of the village for work.
Mantanani Background
Pulau Mantanani is a group of three isolated islands in the South China Sea, about 15km off the coast of western Sabah towards the northern tip of Borneo. They lie northwest of Kota Belud, about 80km and 1 hour north of Kota Kinabalu. The islands look like paradise with white sand beaches, piles of ancient driftwood, crystal-clear seas and incredible marine life. The inner lagoon is home to juvenile green turtles as well as large reefs and their associated ecosystems. In fact, the reefs represent the most productive shallow water habitats of the northwestern side of Borneo.
Sabah is home to SE Asia’s largest nesting collective of Green and Hawksbill turtles; but sadly the region’s turtle population has been depleted. These amazing creatures are now on the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group’s top ten priority listing for conservation. The long-term harvesting of eggs and adults, and the killing of turtles as by-catch in the expanding trawl fisheries, has left many turtle species endangered or critically endangered. However the population of juvenile turtles present around the Mantanani Islands represents the first-ever documented evidence in SE Asia of foraging turtles. Previously the only data available related to their hatching and laying eggs, without any information from the period in between. The fact that research is able to be carried out on their foraging habits means that Mantanani turtles represent a vital research population in a potentially doomed species. An understanding of the relationships and population dynamics at this key foraging site will be crucial to scientists’ understanding of the larger-scale and longer-term environmental impacts.
Unfortunately, despite the pristine appearance of the islands, there are deep-rooted human environmental problems on Mantanani. Facilities for the people living on the island are poor, and their environmental awareness has been lost. Combined with their remoteness and the lack of availability of education, humans are causing other devastating problems for the surrounding marine ecosystem. The reefs support the fishing habits of the local community, but they are threatened by unsustainable fishery practices including blast and cyanide fishing techniques. In addition, the use of gill nets and reef-gleaning fishing with hookah systems threaten the very livelihood on which the local community depends. As well as over-fishing, the community collects invertebrates, and the over-harvesting of giant clams in particular has led to their near extinction around the islands. Octopus, cockles, hermit crabs, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and others are at risk, and they represent a major part of a fish’s diet at some stage of the food chain.
There are no waste dumping grounds, no incinerators for domestic waste, and no sewage facilities. That means waste is disposed of by dumping it in the ocean. Plastics, styrofoam, metals, glass and all kinds of refuse litter the lagoon waters, and there is little understanding of the impacts of these actions. To compound matters, revenue from natural resources, such as those garnered from tourists rarely reach the community. It is an unfair resource balance sheet that the community wants to address, but they lack the knowledge or capacity to do it. Poor awareness of the impact of these unsustainable practices, together with the marginalised and poor status of the villagers, drive these processes.
The single community of approximately 1,000 villagers on the island is comprised mainly of subsistence fishing families and as such poverty is rife. The primary school on Mantanani holds the dubious honour of being the only Malaysian school to have had a 100% failure rate for primary exams (2006) and whilst there has been some increased interest and support from the state due to this there are still a large number of issues facing the school. Possible reasons for the poor performance at the school have been given as the poverty of the local community and the supposed need for youngsters to work with families rather than attend classes leading to pupils falling behind compared to the national average, lack of infrastructure for basic teaching needs and those extra facilities to help motivate and excite the children (playground, sports facilities etc), and lack of facilities for teachers, especially those from the mainland who stay on the island during school days, leading to a disheartened faculty and teachers often spending time away from the island, which means classes are often cancelled.
Bongkud & Luanti Background
Bongkud Background
Bongkud lies 140km from Kota Kinabalu and 15km from Ranau. It’s about 1,170 metres above sea level, with a pleasant, breezy climate, and picturesque scenery that made it a favourite hill station retreat during colonial times. The Ranau district is inhabited almost entirely by the Dusun ethnic community, its population around 70,500 at the turn of the 21st century. Ranau is the largest producer of highland vegetables in the state of Sabah, exporting them to Sarawak, Brunei and Labuan. Its tea products are exported to the US and the Philippines. The region also used to be the country’s largest producer of copper, until the closure of the Mamut Copper Mine in the late 1990s, due to the escalating production cost and low global prices for copper. Ranau lies on the major highway connecting Kota Kinabalu with Sandakan from east to west Sabah, and is just 20km away from Kinabalu Park, a gateway to Poring Hot Springs and Sabah Tea Garden. The mighty Mount Kinabalu is also in the district of Ranau. The area was significant in the Pacific War during WW2, particularly to the Australians, and is the site of a large war memorial. With its natural beauty, handy location, and varied attractions, Ranau has a lot to offer tourists so during weekends and school holidays, busloads of them arrive from Sarawak and Brunei. The population of this area suffers from a lack of access to water, and has little knowledge about environmental conservation. They are also rapidly losing important aspects of traditional culture, as people leave their towns in search of work and communities become atomised.
Bongkud, a subsistence Dusun community, is quite large, comprising over 2,000 people spread over 2 villages. However the state funding they receive is not enough to sustain such a large populace and there are many extremely poor families. Facilities for the community as a whole are often scarce or over used.
Luanti Background
Luanti Baru is a small village near to Bongkud that has found a fantastic way to benefit from ecotourism by completely protecting a river that runs through the village from any fishing or polluting activities and actively feeding the fish. This has led to some very large, very friendly fish who like nothing more than to suck on the toes of visitors paddling in the river. The village has a large longhouse, making this a perfect location for a bit of acclimatisation/recuperation and trek preparation.
Kampung Banjaran Crocker Background
Kampung Banjaran Crocker lies 80km south of the state capital Kota Kinabalu. The village is home to approximately 18 households with a population of 130 people. These people manage a growing industry of mushroom farms across 10 sites; these farms require irrigation. Kimanis Sabah boasts abundant minerals and the Kimanis Oil and Gas project is one of the largest development projects in the state. However, the Conocophilips, Shell, Petronas joint project has not stimulated regional growth in the indigenous population. Kampung Banjaran Crocker is located in the Kimanis region, high in the Crocker range. Some degree of subsistence farming and trade at local markets occurs. However, the indigenous community of Kampung Banjaran Crocker survive predominantly through wild-caught game and gathering traditional plants for vitamins and medical treatments.
The region was one of the first in Sabah to be heavily logged. The reduction in habitat has impacted the environmental yield and sustainable life cycle of the indigenous people, causing many to be displaced. This is reflected in Malaysia’s high rate of urbanisation. Significantly, the clearance of large forest areas has promoted land erosion, introducing contaminants to traditional sources of potable water, has altered the water table and lost topsoil has restricted regeneration. Much of the remaining forests have been declared national parks and the government is enforcing restrictions on indigenous access. The indigenous peoples face pressures of reduced food security and restricted access to water. Some are turning to non-traditional methods and are planting small crops and mushroom farms. However, these require reliable irrigation.
Kipouvo & Batu Puteh Background
Kipouvo Background
The village of Kipouvo is about 13km from Donggongon Town, in the Ulu Moyog area. It lies on the Moyog River, by the foothills of the Crocker Range National Park, and is a typical Kadazan community of about 450 people. The village is not on the poverty line, but villagers still rely mostly on subsistence farming for feeding their families. Some also tap rubber from small local plantations and sell it to be processed, others work in the civil service, as lorry drivers, teachers or in small contract work. The average monthly income in Kg. Kipouvo ranges from RM200 to RM450, according to PACOS.
The hill slopes are fertile and are planted with pineapples, bananas, and tapioca, vegetables and fruit trees. Kg. Kipouvo also has a number of freshwater ponds where fresh fish are reared for sale and for family consumption. The facilities at the village itself include a primary school, an electricity supply, a gravity water supply, a community preschool, two village sundry shops, a telephone line, a public phone, a traditional medicine garden, and a football field. Villagers live in separate houses, rather than in a longhouse. The village is accessible through a gravel road from the main highway and there is one van operated by one of the villagers, that the other villagers use to commute to town. The nearest clinic is at Donggongon town, and the main hospital in Kota Kinabalu.
Camps International Borneo and PACOS are running a number of projects in Kipouvo, one of which is the Kipouvo Homestay programme. The community derives a source of income from volunteers staying in the village, and the programme also creates jobs for the people who clean, cook, launder and perform traditional dancing for the volunteers. In addition, Kipouvo is able to introduce visitors to its cultural heritage, and the community members gain a broader view of life elsewhere from this cultural exchange. There is not enough meaningful employment in the village, so almost all community members who can leave the village to find work elsewhere are doing so. This is undermining the cohesion of the community, and causing problems for those left behind – many simply can’t leave the village for economic or practical reasons. They include the elderly and women with children. The farming activity in Kg. Kipouvo is affected by the physical geography of this area, which is hilly and has limited flat land.
There is no access to preschool education aside from the sessions that PACOS provides. Before PACOS introduced preschool education, the government exam pass rate for children there was actually zero. There was no reading and writing instruction for children, and only very basic instruction for adults before PACOS arrived. Since 1993, PACOS has been teaching English here, and now with the help of Camps International Borneo volunteers as well, all the community members can read. Additionally, there is little in the way of cultural education in Kipouvo, and nobody is teaching the village’s children about traditional practice and local history. Their knowledge of their cultural heritage is disappearing quickly.
Batu Puteh Background
The greatest concentration of wildlife in Borneo can be found on the east of the island, close to Sandakan, along the lower reaches of Sabah’s biggest and longest river, the Kinabatangan. Wild orangutan, macaques, red and silver leaf monkeys, elephants, dozens of beautiful birds including several species of hornbill, crocodiles, civet cats and otters, can be seen in this region, although the most famous creature of all is undoubtedly the bizarre Proboscis monkey, found only here and nowhere else. Found only in Borneo, the male of this species has a large pendulous nose, fat belly, thick white tail, and a peculiar mixture of colours that makes him look as if he’s wearing grey tights, white underpants and an orange jacket. The Proboscis monkey is large, and has webbed feet that make it a strong swimmer.
This chocolate brown tributary flows from the very heart of North Borneo, and its banks are home to a plethora of animals, insects and communities. For millennia the indigenous sungai (river) people of the Lower Kinabatangan river have been living off the rain forest for food, medicine, household commodities and products for trade. This world changed dramatically from the 1960s, with the advent of mechanised extraction of the forest’s 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 community here has developed a mini eco-tourism project, and as well as developing that project, they are working hard to preserve and regenerate a nearby forest reserve. Along the banks of the river can be seen crocodiles, up to eight species of ape, wild boar, the occasional elephant, and numerous birds and aquatic life. The MESCOT (Model of Ecologically Sustainable Community Tourism) initiative was started in 1996 by a group of about 30 visionary and dedicated individuals from the different villages of Batu Puteh. Its aim is to create an alternative medium of income generation for the people of the area, while protecting the remaining rain forest and traditional cultural heritage. They want to develop an alternative path that respects the environment and also generates a sustainable long-term economic path for income generation. The core activity chosen by the MESCOT group is eco-tourism. They hoped it would be the key to raising income in this poor and remote rural community, would 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 forest fires ravaged the forests surrounding the village. The MESCOT group voluntarily fought these fires and in the aftermath decided it was critical to rehabilitate the degraded wetland forests, wildlife habitats and corridors. At the time, these steps were groundbreaking, as previously little was known about the complex floodplain forest tapestry, and the different rain forest types, of the area.
The mainstay of the eco-tourism project is a lodge, which sits on the edge of a large oxbow lake formed by the former course of the river. The Tungog Lake is of special significance in the Lower Kinabatangan, because it’s one of only three deep clear-water oxbow lakes within the floodplain. The lake is totally disconnected from the main Kinabatangan River channel, and is a natural sanctuary for more than 150 native freshwater fish species, and a host of other rare aquatic dependent birds and wildlife. Major floods in early 2000 had a major impact on the lake, introducing an exotic weed to the Kinabatangan called Salvinia molesta. Within two years this noxious floating fern had totally engulfed the surface of the Tungog Lake, which stretches for some 1.5km in length. Locals immediately noticed the disappearance of the rare diving water bird, the Oriental Darter, and the three native otter species. Research suggested that the Tungog Lake was doomed to suffocate under the ferocity of the Salvinia blanketing, which was decaying and filling up the lake, starving the clear waters of oxygen. With the help of external funding the community has worked extremely hard to control the Salvinia problem. Today, with constant physical effort, they are managing to keep it at bay.
The project work at Batu Puteh centres on efforts to regenerate the surrounding forest. Although in some areas the forest is dense and healthy, in other areas due to flooding, poor soil and some human impacts, the forest has degenerated and allowed secondary growth of smaller plants. These plants have restricted larger trees from taking root and so the programme aims to help these trees to reclaim the area. They achieve this through firstly clearing selected areas of secondary growth, and then planting native species of saplings. These saplings must be grown from locally collected seeds, transplanted and nurtured in a nursery, prior to being transported manually into the forest. The clearing, nursery work, planting and subsequent care of the saplings is very labour-intensive work, particularly in the hot and sweaty conditions of the Borneo jungle. Volunteers may help with all aspects of tree replanting and learning about the local ethnobotany.
Permaculture Background
In recent years, local farming practices have changed to more intensive single crop yields making farmers very dependent on a single crop rotation. Many families are seeing a subsistence living of their own land as not as profitable as selling that land to palm oil companies or strictly sticking to one large single crop harvest and using the cash to buy food rather than grow their own. Unfortunately lump sums for land bought from palm oil companies never comes close to the full worth of hereditary family land and is often spent very quickly on non-essential luxuries, leaving the family without a source of food or income.
Permaculture is an approach to designing human systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies. It’s essentially a model for living sustainably, by using observation and lessons from nature. In permaculture, practitioners learn from the working systems of nature to plan to fix the damaged landscapes of human agricultural and urban systems. This thinking applies to the design of a kitchen tool as easily to the redesign of a farm. The intent is that, by rapidly training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals can design their own environments and build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements. These kinds of settlements are those that reduce society’s reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution, which are fundamentally and systematically destroying Earth’s ecosystems.
Permaculture as a systematic method was developed by the Australians during the 1970s, and the name is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture, as well as permanent culture. Permaculture has now developed from its Australian origins into an international movement. This practice of permaculture is aimed at poverty alleviation through education and training, and ties in with Camps International’s aims within the majority of the communities in which they work. Through observation of natural, balanced systems, communities can learn to create a sustainable, productive human habitat. Revegetation and environmental education are the first steps toward this environmental reconciliation. Permaculture is a broad-based and holistic approach that has many applications to all aspects of life. At the heart of permaculture design and practice is a fundamental set of ‘core values’ or ethics that remain constant. Whatever a person’s situation, whether they’re creating systems for town planning or trade, whether the land they care for is only a window-box or an entire forest, these ethics are summarised as:
Earthcare – recognising that Earth is the source of all life, that Earth is our valuable home, and that we are a part of Earth, not apart from it.
Peoplecare – supporting and helping each other to change to ways of living that do not harm ourselves or the planet, and to develop healthy societies.
Fairshare – placing limits on consumption, ensuring that Earth’s limited resources are used in ways that are equitable and wise.
Camps International intends to establish permaculture practices at each of its camps, and hopefully the practice may spread to other areas of Sabah. It’s badly needed for both reducing poverty, and for bringing back ecology awareness, improving quality of life now, and for generations to come.
I look forward to joining as a volunteer for 4 weeks in the summer of 2021 to try to help make a difference. I’ve set up a sponsorship link to ask if you’ll donate or help me raise funds to go towards materials that are needed to help these projects move forward; at least 38% of all Camps International trips require building materials to be raised by volunteers by fundraising activities and sponsorship. I will be undertaking various fundraising endeavours to raise monies for these items to help the communities that I’ll be visiting in Borneo. Please join me in helping to make a difference. Thank you.