The Community Dialogue was held successfully on 24 June 2003 in Beaufort, Sabah. This is the second of a series of community interaction and consultation sessions organised by the UNDP/GEF Peat Swamp Forest Project. A total of 69 community leaders and key stakeholders of the Beaufort and Kuala Penyu Districts attended the full-day interactive awareness-raising activity. Jointly organized by the Sabah Forestry Department and the community leaders themselves, it presented a forum for active exchange of experience and perceptions on the importance of conservation efforts to manage the peat swamp forest of the Klias Peninsula.
The Dialoge was conducted with the following objectives; namely
1. To foster an understanding, awareness and cooperation amongst the local communities in the values of protection and conservation of the peat swamp forests in the Klias Peninsula; and
2.To explore further options for the enhancement of the local community perceptions in peat swamp forest resources conservation and wise-use management.
I participated in this Dialogue to meet with the respectable elders and those who have interests in managing the peat swamp forests of the Klias Peninsula. During the brief encounters with the participants, I managed to immerse in a very educational journey together with the learned elders that explored into the dark underside of the intricate, inter-locking web of what constitutes an unexplored social dimension -- an anxiety of societal progress and growth.
I look forward to re-acquaintances with the leaders of these local communities, whom I made a dare-devil promise of meeting them in their respective villages to exchange ideas, share experience and discuss future options for managing the vital resources of the Klias Peninsula peat swamp forests. Truly, the event was an electrifying and an educational one. |
