Forever Sabah Institute

What kind of effort does it take to electrify a village that’s too remote to connect to the main grid? What are the lives of a community without reliable energy access and the sacrifices they make in terms of living?

These are some of the questions we explored with partners , Sabah Forestry Department and at our recent Valley Immersion to Kampung Dagat, a village in the easternmost regions of Sabah, along the Tabin estuary. Through conversations with the Dagat community, we found inspiration in their stories of resilience, innovation and grit – highlighting what a shift to renewable energy can look like for even the most remote and rural areas of Sabah.

At the same time, we shared climate data that showed significant risk to this coastal region comprising mainly fisherfolk. Learning about rise in sea levels, heat stress, amongst other impacts can negate spirit. Yet, both community elders and youth alike shared aspirations to continue keeping forest and fisher traditions alive, to uplift kampung economy, demonstrating themselves as the root system and sustainability champions we need for a just transition!

In November, we embarked on a 5-day Relational Immersive meant to replenish our individual and collective capacities to deepen connection for community, care and belonging.

On Day 3, co-facilitator Sumitra Pasupathy led us through a Deep Time Walk inviting reflection on humankind’s place within the greater cosmic time, or Gaia’s age of 4.6 billion years old!

We came to understand that humans and human activity appear at the end of the walk – a mere fingernail’s width out of the 2.6 kilometers we walked to symbolise a journey through deep time. We are only a blip on this timeline, yet contributing at large scale to rapid global warming, and our (human) actions interweaving with multiple crises across the world. The practice was sobering, humbling and struck us with a real sense of awe, and longing to belong to the present and radical hope.

Do you think you might feel the same way through a journey with Deep Time?

Source: www.deeptimewalk.org

In this Valley Immersion, we travelled a long 12 hours from West Coast to one of the furthest points in the East Coast of Sabah, landing at Kampung Dagat, a wetlands region subsumed by the State’s Totally Protected Areas (TPA).

Artisanal fisheries, orangutan conservation, solar mini-grid development, community-based tourism, citizen science and sustainable livelihoods all converge in this rich and complex seascape. Here, we spent time with the Dagat community as they shared hopes for the future of co-governance and co-management of their territories of life.

Seated at the border of the Tabin Wildlife Reserve, community members spend time driving boats upriver Sungai Tabin to manually collect water to make ice packs, serving a community need to preserve river and seafood produce without 24-hour electricity. We volunteered in the water collection, then to clear parts of the river plagued by Alien Invasive Species (AIS) plants, and supported the labour of maintaining swiftlet houses – all these to give us a sense of the local initiatives that aim to complement traditional livelihoods tethered to the river, estuary and surrounding jungles.

The Immersion provoked insight about accessibility and privilege, and invited a meditation upon Distance between the East Coast and the West Coast, and the connections herewith – the coastline where land meets water; currents that meet the monsoon and a river that meets the ocean. We reflected: what is life like with a community that listens to the tides and shifting monsoons?

Our first Mountaintop of 2024 was Relational Facilitative Leadership, an upgrade of The Spirit & Practice of Facilitative Leadership – a core, iterative module of learning for us within/ networked with the Forever Sabah Living Ecology.

Facilitation is a core approach through which FS operates, and this Mountaintop introduces us to the principles, values and purpose behind facilitation.

We asked ourselves what it means to build compassionate communities of practice? How would we centre healing in our approaches while grappling with “cultures of crisis”?

At the same time, we explored facilitation methodologies, frameworks and tools to increase relational and facilitative skills and capacities to begin building a scaffolding for responsive and regenerative interventions within systems and sectors through dialogue, embodiment and meditative practices – tuning inward to punctuate purposeful, outward action!

For the second half of August’s Valley Immersion, we joined the Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) team, splitting up into three groups — two going to Tongod and Kinabatangan, and one remaining behind in Telupid.

The CSPO team work closely with smallholders in these palm oil-dense regions to support them in their journey towards certification. The process can be long drawn and even tedious, involving a lot of paperwork, documentation, and adherence to environmental and safety guidelines.

But once certified, these smallholders will be able to sell their produce at a premium price. As we ventured into plantations and got to know the local community, we understood a little bit better the gravity of the work of the CSPO and HEH teams to reconcile between a fragmented landscape, endangered wildlife, and smallholder aspirations.

Linear infrastructure development threatens elephant movement and our forest elders’ search for sustenance. Yet, tending to changing forest landscapes can uplift livelihoods and local economies.

In the first part of our August edition of Valley Immersion, we began in Telupid, engaging with data monitoring efforts of the Human Elephant Harmony (HEH) project and Community Elephant Ranger Team (CERT) to learn the faces and places of elephant kin.

In these parts, elephants are lovingly referred to as Aki. Although we were not fortunate enough to set our sights on one, we did get the opportunity to hear and witness firsthand the complexities that come with the project, and what it truly means to be in harmony.

This will be an exciting and practical opportunity for a multidisciplinary and diligent individual who possesses a keen sense of numbers, and is ready to dive right into an ongoing process. On top of providing financial and budget-related task support, you will co-deliver key on-the-ground learning experiences with diverse project teams located across Sabah and convey these experiences as compelling data. You will work cross-functionally with a team of administrators, bookkeepers, creatives and community organisers to develop engaging materials, alongside effective coordination. This role will require you to be comfortable with Microsoft Office Excel, be adept in English speaking and writing, and fluency in Malay.

If you are detail-oriented, have a unique ability to coordinate across multiple teams, and to narrate numerical data, this may just be the place for you. Send your resume and cover letter to [email protected] by 3rd November 2023 and join us at the edge of transformation!

*Fresh graduates are encouraged to apply!

In August, 学習院大学国際センター/Gakushuin University, International Centre & Forever Sabah Institute (FSI) held a small cultural and community exchange programme with some 20 students and the community members of Projek Padi.

During their visit, the Japanese students were able to engage with community members of the Tenghilan fields. With their hands and feet wet in the mud, students got a sense of the connection between Sabahan culture and paddy as community members shared about their life’s work – of planting sustenance and keeping paddy traditions alive.

In the spirit of reciprocity, Projek padi folks Chiper and Uncle Bilu from Kg Tinuhan travelled deep into the valleys of Ulu Papar, Kg Buayan to share their paddy knowledge with Buayan folks, namely on organic farming, System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and bokashi composting, amongst others. Meanwhile, students engaged in interviews with Chiper, Uncle Bilu and even FSI's Noel, who (unexpectedly!) became the resident kelulut bee expert.

The two-day exchange between Projek Padi & Kg Buayan involved the Gakushuin students in crossing language barriers and active listening as they dove deeper into their discovery of Sabah. For us at FSI, we were able to learn a little about the issues and conflicts surrounding the Ulu Papar region, ancestral lands and community livelihoods.

Co-convened by National University of Singapore (NUS), Department of Geography and Forever Sabah Institute (FSI) this first Community-Based Ecosystem Restoration Conference was envisioned as a core gathering that would bring together restoration practitioners from communities across Sabah in interface and dialogue with academia, government, civil society organisations (CSOs) and students on the subject of ecosystem restoration.

The conference held on 26-27 June in the theme of “Resilience in Restoration” was intentionally designed to move participants through a journey of co-sensing collaborative approaches in creating a more sustainable future, using participatory processes.

A key outcome of the conference was the birth of a “Sabah Restoration Network” (SRN) as participants leaned into a desire for strong foundational support encompassing restoration work, that included a co-visioning and co-management process.

Sabah is home to some of the densest, most biodiverse forests in the world. But in this constantly evolving modern day, forests don't stay forests forever.

Here are some of the faces behind the FMU-5 Community Orangutan Ranger Team (CORT), stewards of the land standing on the line between the natural and modern worlds, carrying with them a deep understanding of the need for co-existence between earth, human, and more-than-human kin.

Armed with the complexities that comes with that, the FMU-5 CORT team are constantly exploring, monitoring, and gathering data to get more acquainted with the life that surrounds them and build ties to sustain them.

DAY 3 - 5
Day 3 of our June edition of Valley Immersion began with a good ol' fashioned gotong-royong. We helped the community to lay bricks and rocks, put up beams, and clear designated areas for the future site of Bangunan Pisompuruan where stories, hardships, and solutions will be co-decided in witness of the land and its kin.

The afternoon was spent indulging in a well-earned lunch and nap, before coming together to reflect on the days prior and share thoughts with the group. Here is where we converge our experiences and harvest insights and ideas, questions and curiousities, challenges and change, to bring the entire programme full circle.

Here, we seek to understand the dynamic of an existence pulled by aspirations of greater livelihood and modernity of the communities living along the edge of manmade forest boundaries. We sink into the cracks between what was, what is, and what will be, and ask ourselves: what does it mean to co-exist?

DAY 1 & 2
In our June edition of Valley Immersion, we trekked into the unique lowland-to-highland region of Kg Penulangon, Ranau, a region shared by humans, apes, birds, and forest kin, to ask: what does it mean to belong to Earth and connect with more-than-human beings as custodians of land and life?

We started our journey exploring the ‘lianas’ of Kg Penulangon’s locus in FMU-5, where communities who live along the forest reserve’s boundaries balance synergy connecting native rights to the land and modernity through conservation, economy, and livelihood. The next couple days had us getting acquainted with the people, projects, and places — trekking up hills and through forests to gather Phenology data, monitor birds, and catch sunsets in between.

Held by the forest and mountain ridges, we joined citizen science efforts to gather data and explore the ecology of apes and birds to help us co-sense into mutual belonging and responsibility toward critical habitats and forest life.