Letter To PM from the World Rainforest Movement
30th October 2000

YAB Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad
Perdana Menteri Malaysia
Email : epu@jpm.my

Dear Sir,

I'm writing to you on behalf of the World Rainforest Movement. The WRM is a global network of citizens' groups of North and South involved in efforts to defend the world's rainforests against the forces that destroy them. It works to secure the lands and livelihoods of forest peoples and supports their efforts to defend the forests from commercial logging, dams, mining, plantations, shrimp farms, colonisation and settlement and other projects that threaten them.

We are writing to express our deep concern about the project to be set up in Kalabakan, Tawau, Sabah, East Malaysia between a State-owned company, Lions Group of Malaysia and the China Fuxing Pulp and Paper Industries of China in which they will be developing a US1.1 billion plantation and pulp and paper mill project.

We would like to request the State Government of Sabah and the Federal Government of Malaysia to:

halt all further logging activities

take action against the parties that are responsible for logging the 12 000 ha of forest without an EIA.

undertake a comprehensive EIA for all three aforementioned components of the project

seek extensive and genuine public feedback from the public in relation to the reviewing of the EIA.

review as a whole the project for its overall justification, given the magnitude and scale of its environmental impacts.

Teresa Perez
International Secretariat