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Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, sat back and smiled at
the assembled Western journalists. ‘You don’t like to see the Penan change
their life and come out of the jungle,’ he said. ‘But they have a right
to development. Maybe they don’t know what development means, but they have
to be exposed to it in towns and suburbs. Then they can decide if they want
to go back to the jungle or not.’

Neither of the two representatives on the Prime Minister’s delegation
from the Penan community – hunter-gatherers from the forests of Sarawak
– were there to back up his philosophy of development. But it set off, in
the last afternoon of press briefings, the first outright confrontation
between a national delegation and the press.

‘How long do the Penan have to live in cities before you let them back
home?’ asked one irate reporter. ‘What if their forests have been chopped
down while they were away?’ demanded a German.

The Prime Minister denied the claims of outside scientists that logging
companies in Sarawak, which are major suppliers of unprocessed logs in the
international market, will have destroyed the state’s natural forests by
the end of the decade. ‘There is no clear felling. Only seven trees are
taken from every hectare. Most of our country is still covered in trees.’

Again, uproar. ‘I flew over your country a few weeks ago. It bears no
relation to your description,’ said an American, as the Prime Minister smiled
on.

Malaysia was the fiercest opponent in Rio of a strong statement of forest
principles that would have included a commitment to a future legally binding
forest convention. The attitudes of its delegates brought highly undiplomatic
condemnations from a number of Western negotiators.

‘We don’t at this time think there should be a convention,’ said the
Prime Minister. When might be a good time? ‘The day the North replants its
forests.’ For the moment, ‘a convention would only be fair if we could also
tell the North that they could not have this or that factory’.