Abstract
This study was conducted to examine the compatibility between the Sarawak Forest Ordinance and Bidayuh Native Customary Laws in Sarawak and to gather the community members’ opinions on the compatibility of these laws. This study was carried out using two research methods, viz. a literature review and a survey among the Bidayuh community in Bau, Sarawak. The documents reviewed were the Forest Ordinance Chapter 126 (1958) and the Adat Bidayuh Order, 1994. There are several notable differences between the two laws in terms of, forest ownership, losing of rights to forest or inheritance, and the management of forest. A list of statements with six interval scales was presented and a majority of Bidayuh community members neither disagreed nor agreed with the statement, (1) Forest Ordinance respects the Bumiputera people’s rights (37.5 %; SD = 1.259) and (2) Forest Ordinance protects the Bumiputera people’s rights (37.5 %; SD = 1.281). The community members are also not sure about the consistency between these two laws (28.1 %; SD = 1.182). These results indicated the need for the State to respect the natives’ rights toward the forest land and its resources, recognize the Bidayuh Native Customary Laws and for the native people to learn about the constitutional provisions. Further studies are needed because the knowledge of Native Customary Law itself cannot guarantee the natives’ future in terms of economic, social and environmental aspects and there is also a need to review the current laws to achieve the objective to protect and preserve the natives’ rights.
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Notes
A sultanate is a country that is ruled by a sultan or the period during which a sultan rules.
Interior Area Land—The unsurveyed land, not falling under any of the other four categories (Mixed Zone Land, Native Area Land, Native Customary Land and Reserved Land).
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the cooperation of the Kampung Bobak community members during data collection phase. The authors also would like to thank Bau District Office and Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) for permitting us to conduct this study in Bau, Sarawak. We would like to acknowledge the comments made by the anonymous reviewers that greatly improved the quality of this paper. This study was supported under the Rufford Small Grants for Nature Conservation by The Rufford Foundation with the Reference Number of 13988-1.
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Nelson, J., Muhammed, N. & Rashid, R.A. An Empirical Study on Compatibility of Sarawak Forest Ordinance and Bidayuh Native Customary Laws in Forest Management. Small-scale Forestry 15, 135–148 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-015-9313-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-015-9313-y