Borneo Log: The Struggle for Sarawak's Forests - Hardcover

Bevis, William W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0295974168 ISBN 13: 9780295974163

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 1995

Synopsis

After a year as exchange professor at a Tokyo university, William Bevis spent part of the next year traveling in Sarawak, a Malaysian state located on the northern part of the island of Borneo. About the size of New York, it has a population of 1.7 million people living, outside of a few towns, in a world of jungle and brown rivers. There the rainforest is being cut rapidly, local corruption and greed siphon off most of the profit, native rights and land uses are being obliterated, and much of the fine timber is shipped to Japan to become plywood forms for concrete that are thrown away after two uses.

This book is a travel narrative and also a serious environmental study of exploitation of third-world resources. During his stay in Sarawak, the author lived with both native activists and timber camp managers, seeking to understand the motives and actions of Japanese companies, Chinese entrepreneurs, and the native population most affected by the timber trade.

Interspersed with chapters narrating the author’s journey are chapters dealing with the history, economy, and political life of the region. Fascinating profiles of major figures who have influenced the course of events include James Wong, Minister of Environment for Sarawak and owner of one of the largest timber concessions, and Bruno Manser, a Swiss adventurer who was adopted by the nomadic Penan tribe and hunted by the police for organizing opposition to the timber trade.

Borneo Log is not simply a book about environmental politics in a far-away place. The power of the book lies in the author’s extraordinary ability to bring home the related global disasters of the destruction of the world’s rainforests and its indigenous peoples. This is a personal and passionate account of how ordinary men and women are fighting to defend a way of life that is rapidly disappearing along with their country’s resources, and how the problems of their lives echo in our own.

About this title

About the Author:

William W. Bevis is professor of English at the University of Montana.

From Library Journal:

Winner of the 1995 Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction, this work tells of the adverse effects of rain-forest destruction on native populations. Bevis (Ten Tough Trips: Montana Writers and the West, Univ. of Washington Pr., 1990) describes the conditions he saw and the people he met while on sabbatical in Borneo. "This is a book not so much about the native resistance to logging as a series of stories from inside that struggle," he writes. The author is not an environmentalist but rather an English professor at the University of Montana who has a strong interest in protecting the environment. Clear and easy to read, Borneo Log is recommended for public and school libraries.?Amy L. Paster, Pennsylvania State Univ. Lib., University Park
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0295974168
• ISBN 13: 9780295974163
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264