Initiatives:
1. Our community has been using the Gompi Guno practice in our
protection and management of resources to ensure the sustainability
of available resources and agriculture in our daily life. Our community
has also been encouraged by village leaders to gazette our own water
catchment in the privately owned land to increase knowledge in land
use management in order to decrease the effects of climate change
and unplanned land clearing.
2. Documentation of traditional knowledge and practices on
management and protection of natural resources to be passed down
to the next generation.
3. For the proposed dam, our community has taken several measures
such as suggesting alternatives including the use of micro-hydro
generators for water supply, rainwater harvesting, improving and
increasing water intake plants at the Papar River and Mandalipau River
as well as decreasing the high non-revenue water (NRW) in Sabah.
Besides that, our community has also erected blockades and held
demonstrations, sent memorandums, held workshops with NGOs, and
met with as well as held dialogues with government agencies to lobby
and, share views and suggestions from the community.
4. The Terian community has also worked with NGOs, academic
institutions and goverment agencies such as Sabah Parks in
conducting bio-cultural and biodiversity research in Ulu Papar to
document the relationship between community life and nature. Tthe
outcome from this research has contributed to the recognition of Ulu
Papar as a World Heritage Site in 2014 ('Sabah’s 350,854ha Crocker
Range has been approved as a biosphere reserve by the International
Coordinating Council for Biosphere Reserve (CRBR), a programme under
UNESCO' - Muguntan Vanar in The Star, 17 June 2014). Our
community's efforts in protecting natural resources based on
traditional knowledge is our main weapon in the struggle to protect
against the construction of the dam so that we can convince the
government to reconsider their decision to build the dam. In line with
this, our community has also tried to document the heritage and
resources that are available as well as promote our community's
management practices in Terian.
16 | T e r i a n D u s u n C o m m u n i t y P r o t o c o l