Paper short abstract:

I demonstrate how indigenous people in Sabah, East Malaysia, have drawn upon their indigenous cultural heritage, ascribing to traditional knowledge, to cope with the global concerns of climate change and unsustainable development.

Paper long abstract:

Based on the case studies of two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Sabah, East Malaysia, namely, Partners of Community Organisations, Sabah (PACOS) Trust and Community-led Environmental Awareness for our River (CLEAR), I explore how indigenous people have drawn upon their cultural heritage, ascribing to traditional knowledge, to cope with concerns of climate change and unsustainable development, and to assert their native customary rights to traditional lands, territories and resources. In the face of widespread resource extraction and dam construction projects in Sabah, leading to environmental pollution, loss of biodiversity, and the displacement of indigenous people from their traditional territories, the indigenous people have turned to their traditional knowledge to adapt to the challenges they face. Drawing on their indigenous worldview of maintaining harmony between the natural and human worlds, these NGOs have initiated programmes aimed at rehabilitating their lands and resources, such as cleaning up rivers, planting fruit trees and vegetables, and implementing the tagal, a native community-based resource management system to impose a temporary ban on resource extraction using customary laws to allow resources to grow in quantity and diversity, and promote the values of sustainable harvesting. Through these examples, I demonstrate how indigenous cultural heritage can serve as enablers influencing the adaptive ability of indigenous people to climate change and the loss of biodiversity. I show how this constitutes a form of legacy creation, a process by which the local experts, or insiders who create the traditional knowledge, partake in its restoration, can create alternative futures for the people.