A few months after returning from the Amazon, Jeffrey joined a small group — that included ethnobotanist and author, Dr. Wade Davis — on a fact-finding expedition in the jungles of Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. His role on the team was that of a photographer. They searched for and met with the Penan indigenous tribe, one of the world's last forest-dwelling nomadic peoples (brought to international attention by the work of Bruno Manser). Interviews with the Penan revealed their exceptional knowledge and intimacy with the rainforest and riverine environments. More than just a source of food and medicine, the forests and rivers were integral to their cultural and spiritual beliefs. At the time, the rainforest homeland of the Penan, Kelabit, and other tribes in Sarawak was experiencing the world's fastest rate of deforestation. The landscape was being completely transformed by epic-scale industrial logging, which in turn was destroying the culture and way of life of the peaceful indigenous tribes. In effect, the tribal societies were being colonized by the foreign power of Malaysia and, more specifically, one Malaysian family.
In 2011, leaked US embassy cables revealed that the US government viewed Chief Minister Taib Mahmud (Sarawak's then reigning strongman for thirty-three years) to be "highly corrupt" and that he and his family "were widely thought to have extracted a percentage from most major commercial contracts – including those for logging – awarded in the state (Sarawak)". In 2012, the Swiss charity, Bruno Manser Fonds, released a report, The Taib Timber Mafia, that estimated Taib Mahmud had amassed at least 15 billion US dollars, although he only had a modest government salary during his three-decade tenure as Chief Minister. Clearly his wealth came from liquidating the rainforests — and doing so against the will of the people who have depended upon those forests for thousands of years. In 2012, The Economist magazine reported that ninety percent of Sarawak's primary rainforest had been logged. Palm oil plantations and large dams have followed the logging. Visit Sarawak Report to learn more about the ongoing vast political corruption and human rights tragedies in Sarawak.
Stacks of dead trees, waiting to be shipped to Asian markets, formed an unbroken wall that stretched for tens of kilometers on both sides of the river; the ancient homeland of the Penan about to become disposable chopsticks and concrete forms in Japan.
“Working to protect our threatened planet can sometimes be emotionally overwhelming, even heartbreaking, but it’s important to remember that there are millions of us on the same journey. We have each other.”
After returning from his visit to Borneo, Jeffrey participated in three years of campaign activity (in conjunction with his efforts coordinating the EYA) to help Sarawak's indigenous peoples secure at least part of their homeland from the chainsaws and bulldozers. He was significantly naïve as to what the tribal peoples were up against. Central to his activities was helping to organize and escort Penan and Kelabit tribesmen on three tours across North America. They gave presentations at public events, appeared on television talk shows, and gained a meeting with the Secretary-General of United Nations in New York City — gathering significant attention and support for their cause to the utter dismay of the Malaysian oligarchy. Two of the three tribal delegates had never been in an urbanized environment prior to the first tour and they provided many comical and insightful observations on North American culture (for instance, they were astonished to see that there were thousands of homeless people on the streets of New York. When they figured out that the high rise office towers were empty at night, they proposed an idea to help the homeless people: have them spend the night in the empty offices).
When the tribesman returned to Sarawak, the authorities arrested the leader of the three and placed him in jail in solitary confinement on trumped-up charges. Meanwhile, the deforestation continued unabated. Jeffrey and his campaigner allies from Western developed nations blundered in applying the same tactics they used at home to the campaign in Sarawak. They failed to understand that the vast political corruption in Sarawak made protecting its rainforests and supporting the rights of its tribal inhabitants almost impossible. The Chief Minister and his family were grasping the opportunity before them to become multi-billionaires from illegal logging and other industrialization schemes. There were no institutions in Sarawak or Malaysia (e.g. a free press or proper governance structures) in place to stop them. Who cares what some small foreign human rights groups say, or a bit of bad press in Europe and the USA, if you're becoming a billionaire many times over? Furthermore, indigenous people blocking the bulldozers with their bodies (as happened frequently) is also not enough to stop such a force of greed.
Jeffrey realized that the quest to protect the ancient homeland and cultural bedrock of the indigenous people was lost, and along with it a tremendous biological wealth of the rainforest. This great blow came at the same time that Jeffrey endured a wrenching breakup with a woman he considered the love of his life. He was grief stricken and withdrew from human rights and environmental campaigning entirely for a year. Although just 25 years old, he was already a nine-year veteran of activism, and was disillusioned, heartbroken, and exhausted.
