WATER AND DAMS IN MALAYSIA | Facts and Details

WATER AND SANITATION IN MALAYSIA

Bakun Dam in 2009

Water is a constant source of friction between Singapore and Malaysia. Malaysia has tons while Singapore doesn’t have much as is dependent of Malaysia for its supplies. See Singapore

Drinking water source: urban: 99.1 percent of population (2022 estimate); rural: 90.1 percent of population (2022 estimate); total: 97.2 percent of population (2022 estimate); urban: 0.9 percent of population (2022 estimate); rural: 9.9 percent of population (2022 estimate); total: 2.8 percent of population (2022 estimate). [Source: CIA World Factbook, 2025]

Drinking water
Proportion of population using piped water: 95 percent.
Proportion of population using non-piped improved water sources: 3 percent.
Proportion of population using unimproved drinking water services. 2 percent.
Proportion of population using surface water: 0 percent.
[Source: UNICEF DATA data.unicef.org]

Sanitation facility access: urban: 100 percent of population (2022 estimate); rural: 99.9 percent of population (2022 estimate); total: 100 percent of population (2022 estimate); urban: 0 percent of population (2022 estimate); rural: 0.1 percent of population (2022 estimate); total: 0 percent of population (2022 estimate). [Source: CIA World Factbook, 2025]

Sanitation
Proportion of population using basic sanitation services: 86 percent.
Proportion of population using limited sanitation services: 10 percent.

Proportion of population using unimproved sanitation services or better: 96 percent.
Proportion of population practising open defecation: 4 percent.
[Source: UNICEF DATA data.unicef.org]

Dams and Water Supplies in Malaysia

Dam projects in Sarawak Researchgate

Malaysia relies on a number of dams located across the country to provide flood control, hydroelectric power and an adequate water supply. The Batu, Semberong, Bekok and Macap dams were primarily built for flood control. The Timah Tasoh and Bukit Merah dams were constructed primarily for irrigation. The Kenyir, Bersia, Kenering, Temenggong and Sultan Abu Bakar dams were built to generate hydroelectric power and supply water. [Source: Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Physical Geography, Gale Group, Inc., 2003]

Total renewable water resources: 580 billion cubic meters (2022 estimate). Of this about 76 percent is useded for farming and 13 per cent for industrial activity. [Source: CIA World Factbook]

Total water withdrawal: municipal: 1.342 billion cubic meters (2022 estimate); industrial: 1.641 billion cubic meters (2022 estimate); agricultural: 2.505 billion cubic meters (2022 estimate). In 2005: Freshwater withdrawal (domestic/industrial/agricultural): total: 11.2 cu km/yr (35 percent/43 percent/22 percent) per capita: 414 cu m/yr (2005). [Source: CIA World Factbook]

El Nino brings drought to Malaysia and Indonesia and elsewhere in the western Pacific. A severe drought in the late 1990s caused by El Nino depleted water reserves and left 2 million people without a regular water supply for months. Residents in some places were forced to ration water and middle-class families collected water like the poor and carried buckets to their homes.

Bakun Hydroelectric Project

The Bakun Dam in Sungai Asap in Sarawak, Borneo is one of the world's largest hydroelectric projects. When completed, the $8 billion hydroelectric project will create a $2.3 billion, 205-meter-high dam (the largest dam in Southeast Asia), a reservoir the size of Singapore, and produce 2,400 megawatts of electricity—as much as the Aswan dam in Egypt.

The amount of power produced by the dam far exceeds the need of the two Malaysian states in Borneo. The original proposal called for a massive 670-kilometer undersea cable to be built to carry power from the dam to peninsular Malaysia. When completed the cable will be the largest of its kind ever made. In 1999, the plan for the cable was dropped. Now the government says the population increases and development on Borneo over the coming decades will use up the energy. Maybe some electricity might be sold to Indonesia or Brunei.

Work began on the Bakun Dam project in April, 1995 and finished in 2011. About $2.3 billion had been spent on the project. After the Asian economic crisis in 1997-98, plans for the Bakun dam were put on hold. The government reneged on a $3 billion deal with the Swiss company, ABB Asea Brown Boveri AG, that was making he generators. French and German companies may take over the job.

Relocated Native People and Other Problems with Bakun Hydroelectric Project

It is estimated that 69,000 hectares of rain forest —an area about 1½ times the size of Singapore—and at least 15 major villages will be submerged by the reservoir. Environmentalist and native rights groups say that the dam and reservoir will destroy the habitat for 100 endangered species and threaten a culture already under stress from widespread logging. Critics of this project say that the 670-kilometer electric cable that is supposed to take the energy from to mainland may not work and the money would be spent building energy plant that burn the country's abundant supply of natural gas.

About 10,000 tribal people—mostly Iban—living along the Balui River and on mountain slopes submerged by the reservoir have been relocated to new homes. The people who have been relocated like their new houses but don’t like the location. One woman told AP, “There is no river here. Finding food is difficult. There is no hunting ground, no fishing.” Relocation began in 1998. Their new homes are built to resemble their old ones. They were told they would have pay $13,500 for each new home with some compensation given for their old homes.

Many claim the houses are too expensive and the compensation has either been late in coming or too little to meet their needs. They also complain that the running water and schools promised them have not materialized and the 1.2 plots of land given them for farming didn’t produce enough food. Even those who received compensation found the money ran out quickly and the only source of income open to them was to work on a palm oil plantations for $2.60 a day.

Their new location forced them into a consumer society in which they have to buy food instead of producing it themselves. With their normal activities such as hunting and raising traditional crops taken away from them they have become idle. Alcohol and drug abuse have become more common. One official with the resettlement project told New Strait Times their complaints are unwarranted. “They are just being lazy, because there are jobs everywhere at the plantations.” Some of the Iban have discussed leaving their homes and resettling in the forest but logging and plantation agriculture has left them with few places to go.

Native Villagers Lose Land Rights Suit over Bakun Dam Construction

In September 2011, Malaysia's Federal Court, the highest judicial authority in the country, delivered a unanimous ruling against members of an indigenous tribe who had challenged Sarawak State's seizure of land to build the massive Bakun Dam. The three-judge panel dismissed the villagers' appeal. The tribe members had argued that the Sarawak authorities violated the tribe's constitutional rights by seizing land, occupied by tribal ancestors for generations, to construct the dam. The legal battle reportedly dates back to 1997, when the Sarawak government first began to take over the land. The land seizure was made possible because "[m]any indigenous tribes in Sarawak and elsewhere in Malaysia do not formally own land … where they live, grow crops and hunt," one of the judges said. [Source: Library of Congress, September 12, 2011]

The grounds for dismissal of the appeal adduced by two of the judges, who chose not to address the question of whether the seizure was unconstitutional, were largely technical. They concluded that the issues had not been "raised or properly canvassed before the court." They contended that the plaintiffs should go to arbitration if they are dissatisfied with the amount of compensation they had received for the land; it was not for the court to decide such matters. The third judge, however, gave as his ground for dismissal of the appeal that the state acquisition of the land was constitutional.

According to a spokesperson of the nongovernment organization Friends of the Earth Malaysia, the Court's ruling "left uncertainty over the status of over about 100 other land rights lawsuits filed by other indigenous Malaysians in Sarawak." While officials argue that the dam is needed to meet the rising demand for power, environmentalists have reportedly widely criticized it from the start because of its displacement of thousands of people and flooding of at least a 260-square-mile area. In the view of rights activists, moreover, "while numerous villagers forced out by the Bakun Dam had received monetary compensation, it was not a fair amount for the size and value of the land." (Id.) The Socialist Party of Malaysia viewed the decision as a failure on the part of the judges to uphold the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Indigenous Groups Protest Sarawak Dams

Jeremy Hance of mongabay.com wrote: Over 300 people from local indigenous people protested the ongoing construction of around a dozen mega-dams in the state that threaten to flood traditional lands, force villages to move, and upend lives in the state. The Sarawak hydropower plans are some of the most controversial in the world. To date, environmental impact assessments of the dams have not been published publicly. [Source: Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com, May 22, 2013]

Sarawak is currently planning around a dozen dams to be built over the next decade, although the Malaysian state already produces more power than it uses. Controversial dams include the planned 900-megawatt Murum Dam, which will flood 24,500 hectares of indigenous lands and force the resettlement of seven communities. Construction of the dam was blockaded by Penan people in 2012. Meanwhile, the planned 1,200-megawatt Baram dam will flood 40,000 hectares of primary rainforest and is expected to displace 20,000 people.

Sarawak already produces far more energy than the state uses leading critics to allege that numerous massive dam projects are merely means for corrupt officials to siphon off state funds and collect bribes. "We know the government plans on building a dam in the Baram area. Our ancestral lands will be flooded, and we will lose our land and livelihoods," Johannes from Long San, Baram said. "We have learned from Bakun and Murum dams. The government only think about to make money with the dams but they don’t care about us. We want development but not dams." Sarawak's Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud has been under investigation by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) for alleged timber corruption since 2011. According to the Bruno Manser Fund, Taib is worth $15 billion; the group contends that the Prime Minister has used corruption to enrich himself and his family for decades.

Blockade of Sarawak Dam Project by Native Penan

In 2012, over 300 Penan attempted to blockade roads to the Murum dam construction site in Sarawak.Jeremy Hance of mongabay.com wrote: “Indigenous people have expanded their blockade against the Murum dam, taking over an additional road to prevent construction materials from reaching the dam site. Beginning in September with 200 Penan people, the blockade has boomed to well over 300. Groups now occupy not just the main route to the dam site, but an alternative route that the dam's contractor, the China-located Three Gorges Project Corporation, had begun to use. [Source: Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com, October 8, 2012]

"The major works on the construction of the dam have been paralyzed over the last one week. The drivers have left home and let their cement tankers, lorry trucks and trailers with building materials had been hauled over and park at the road side near the blockade site," the Sarawak Conservation Alliance for Natural Environment (SCANE) said in an update on the blockade. "The access to the construction site of Murum hydroelectric dam project is totally blocked on all directions with the setting-up of second road blockade by the Penans."

The Penan are protesting what they say has been disdainful treatment from the government-owned corporation overseeing the 900 megawatt dam project, Sarawak Energy Berhad (SEB). The dams construction, which will inundate 24,500 hectares of native land, will lead to the involuntary resettlement of seven indigneous communities, who still remain in the dark about many of the details of the resettlement plan. In addition, the tribe alleges that SEB has been intentionally destroying important sacred and historical sites. "We will not remove the blockade or move out of here until our demands are resolved and fulfilled by the government," Labang Paneh, a representative from Long Wat village, said in a statement.

Families, including elderly and children, have set up makeshift camps near the blockade and appear to be in it for the long haul. A government minister spent two days with the Penan investigating the blockade and speaking with them about their grievances. "I went in and I saw the situation from the view of these Penans whose lives are being uprooted and whose future looks so uncertain," Liwan Lagang, Sarawak Assistant Minister for Culture and Heritage, told The Star. "I found out that indeed, they had not been properly consulted and their concerns not addressed by those handling the construction of the project."

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 5: East/Southeast Asia:” edited by Paul Hockings; 1993; New York Times; Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; Smithsonian magazine; Encyclopedia.com; National Geographic; Live Science; Malaysia Tourism websites; Malaysia government websites; UNESCO; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Natural History magazine; Times of London; Library of Congress; The Conversation; The New Yorker; Time; BBC; CNN; Reuters; Associated Press; AFP; Lonely Planet Guides; Google AI; Wikipedia; The Guardian and various websites; books and other publications.

Last updated May 2026