A coalition of environmental, human rights, and Indigenous groups has called on the EU to designate Malaysia’s Sarawak state as “high risk” under its new anti-deforestation law, the European Union’s Deforestation-Free Products Regulation (EUDR). This comes as the EU prepares to implement the regulation in January 2025, aiming to curb imports linked to deforestation and human rights abuses.
The EUDR will restrict imports of commodities associated with deforestation and require the EU to classify regions by risk levels—low, standard, or high—by the end of 2024. A high-risk classification for Sarawak would significantly increase scrutiny on imports of timber and palm oil from the region, intensifying customs checks and demanding more rigorous due diligence from EU companies.
The Sarawak state government has set an ambitious goal of establishing one million hectares of industrial timber plantations by 2025. To achieve this target, over 400,000 hectares of naturally regenerating forest will need to be cleared, threatening biodiversity and raising environmental degradation concerns. Furthermore, the state’s land laws are perceived as undermining Indigenous peoples’ rights, making it a significant area of concern. Luciana Téllez Chávez, senior environment and human rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, emphasizes, “Sarawak’s current land code imposes insurmountable obstacles for Indigenous communities to gain and maintain title to their ancestral lands while effectively allowing companies to ravage the rainforest.”
Moreover, transparency issues complicate Sarawak’s deforestation crisis. The state government has not released comprehensive data on Indigenous land claims or disclosed where it has issued leases to logging and palm oil companies, making accountability and oversight difficult for civil society groups.
Key recommendations from the coalition include incorporating the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into federal legislation and enacting laws to prevent strategic lawsuits against public participation, often used to silence critics of deforestation practices. The Malaysian government has yet to respond to these proposals.
Malaysian exports of timber and oil products to the EU are substantial, with the EU being the third largest destination of Malaysian palm oil exports, according to the Malaysian Palm Oil Board. This underscores the economic importance of these industries to Malaysia, adding another layer of complexity to the classification decision.