The past five decades of land-use change in Borneo mark an unprecedented, vivid example of land exploitation to induce economic development. Borneo, the world's third-largest island located in Southeast Asia (Figure 1.1), was endowed with one of the oldest rainforests in the world. However, since the 1970s the island has experienced rampant timber extraction on a massive scale; a huge amount of valuable tropical wood was logged and exported, either as raw logs or plywood, resulting in millions of hectares of deforestation and forest degradation. In total, about 20 million ha of old-growth forests were destroyed from 1973 to 2018, largely due to human activities (CIFOR 2020).

In the 1980s, the cultivation of oil palm, a lucrative cash crop grown mainly for export, was introduced throughout the island. By 2018, about 22 million tonnes of the world's vegetable oils (12 per cent) came from the island, compared to 5 million tonnes in 2000 (FAOSTAT 2021). The widespread logging and replacement of forests with oil palm and other crops has resulted in serious degradation of peatland (mainly in Central Kalimantan, Sarawak and West Kalimantan) and greatly escalated the risk of fires, especially during periodic long droughts (Santika, Budiharta, et al. 2020). Repeated peat and forest fires have led not only to enormous carbon stock loss but also transboundary haze that has exerted detrimental health impacts over the entire region (Zhang and Savage 2019).

While land-based developments over the past five decades have substantially reduced poverty, these achievements have been secured at the expense of the environment. Such exploitative activities have generated quick revenues for Malaysia and Indonesia, but peoples’ livelihoods have also been threatened, from immediate local health risks to long-term global climate change (Santika, Wilson, Budiharta, Kusworo, et al. 2019; Santika, Wilson, Budiharta, Law, et al. 2019). There is also evidence that the newly generated wealth has been mostly concentrated in the hands of a small group of elites, creating huge wealth gaps among the people. Communities continuing to seek traditional livelihoods (planting dry rice in swiddens, creating rubber, rattan, or mixed fruit gardens, engaging in small-scale mining, hunting, fishing, or collecting forest products), as well as those working as day labourers on plantations, have found themselves victimized or “left behind” in the wave of development.