Sustainable Social Services: Human and Nature in Harmony

Borneo is famous among nature lovers for its rainforest. Its rainforest is the largest forested land-area in Asia. The island's forested landscapes are adorned with marvelous green mountains and valleys, and interlaced with windy rivers. Borneo's rainforest also has always generated a lot of international interest, especially in respect of its continuous destruction and other conservation-related threats. Large lands particularly in the sub-urban and interior area of Borneo are idle lands. Most of the time, the natives occupied these lands with agricultural activities. Sabah is one of the states in Malaysia well known for its nature's beauty. In fact one of the native tribes in Sabah creatively used their lands to generate extra earnings while most deforest their lands for oil palm plantation purposes. The Dusun, one of the tribes in Sabah, work in harmony with the nature. Other than utilizing their lands for agricultural purposes but at some point, the lands are left unattended. The Dusun had used their lands for social services initiatives that pay them off. They run varies ecological-friendly recreational programs and activities on a hundred acre naturally beautiful riverside idle land in a rural area near Kota Kinabalu, the capital city of Sabah. This provides source of extra income for its host community. By partnering with a venture, the local community had converted their idle lands into a privately owned natural park. The partnership had created legal groups and ventures to sustain the land and areas surrounding it. Natural resource conservation, sustainable tourism and development of society were among the approaches employed by the partnership to manage their social services initiatives. Thus, this paper focuses on the usage of idle land by the host community for social services purposes. The initiatives for sustainable social services adopted by the Dusun will be further discussed in this paper.