page_title: Bakun Dam
section_title: Environmental and social damage
hierarchical_section_title: Bakun Dam / Environmental and social damage
caption_attribution_description: English: Uma Daro is one of the 15 longhouses located in the Sungai Asap resettlement area at Belaga District, Sarawak, Malaysia . The inhabitants of the longhouses were originally displaced natives from the flooded area of Bakun Dam.
context_page_description: The Bakun Dam is an embankment dam located in Sarawak, Malaysia, on the Balui River, a tributary or source of the Rajang River and some sixty kilometres east of Belaga. As part of the project, the second tallest concrete-faced rockfill dam in the world would be built. It is planned to generate 2,400 megawatts of electricity once completed.
  The purpose for the dam was to meet growing demand for electricity. However, most of this demand is said to lie in Peninsular Malaysia and not East Malaysia, where the dam is located. Even in Peninsular Malaysia, however, there is an oversupply of electricity, with Tenaga Nasional Berhad being locked into unfavourable purchasing agreements with Independent Power Producers. The original idea was to have 30% of the generated capacity consumed in East Malaysia and the rest sent to Peninsular Malaysia. This plan envisioned 730 km of overhead HVDC transmission lines in East Malaysia, 670 km of undersea HVDC cable and 300 km of HVDC transmission line in Peninsular Malaysia.
context_section_description: The Bakun dam flooding commenced on 13 October 2010 with a faulty start and will put 700 km² of land underwater – equivalent to the size of Singapore. The rainforest of this part of Southeast Asia has some of the highest rates of plant and animal endemism, species found there and nowhere else on Earth, and this dam has done irreparable ecological damage to that region.
  Construction of the dam required the relocation of more than 9,000 native residents (mainly Kayan/Kenyah) of the indigenous peoples who lived in the area to be flooded. Many Sarawak natives have been relocated to a longhouse settlement named Sungai Asap in Bakun. Most of them were subsistence farmers. Each family was promised 3 acres (1.21 ha) of land but many families still have not been compensated.
  Concerns were raised also about such things as the relocation of people; the amount of virgin tropical rainforest that had to be cut down (230 km²); possible dam collapse issues; increase in diseases with waterborne vectors such as schistosomiasis, opisthorchiasis, malaria, and filariasis; and sediment accumulation shortening the useful lifespan of the dam. A 5-part series of Bakun dam documentaries was filmed by Chou Z Lam. The series highlighted the basic community problems faced by displaced indigenous people such as the lack of land areas for farming and hunting, lack of educational, medical, and transport facilities and also the promises not being kept by the government. This documentary series was later banned from Radio Television Malaysia (RTM) on May 2010, forcing the remaining series to YouTube.
  Transparency International includes Bakun Dam in its 'Monuments of corruption' Global Corruption Report 2005. The mandate to develop the project went to a timber contractor and friend of Sarawak's governor. The provincial government of Sarawak is still looking for customers to consume the power to be generated by the project.
  Launched in February 2012, an international NGO coalition that includes organisations from the US, Norway and Switzerland is showing its solidarity with Malaysian groups who are protesting against the construction of twelve hydroelectric dams in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on Borneo. The NGO coalition supports the Malaysian groups' demand for an immediate halt to the realisation of these dams, which threaten to displace tens of thousands of Sarawak natives and flood hundreds of square miles of Sarawak's precious tropical rainforests.
caption: Uma Daro longhouse is one of the longhouses built in Sungai Asap for the relocation of the natives displaced by the Bakun Dam.
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D7000", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver.1.03", "Image DateTime": "2012:01:12 15:17:06", "Image Artist": "", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "348", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "36200", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "300", "Thumbnail YResolution": "300", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "36328", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8611", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "9", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:01:12 15:17:06", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:01:12 15:17:06", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Fine weather", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "17", "EXIF SubSecTime": "90", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "90", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "90", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4928", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3264", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "36168", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "25", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Hard", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}