According to Nik Nazmi, Malaysia is among 25 developing countries with high forest cover and low deforestation activities.
Still green: Malaysia’s forest cover remains at a little over 50% of its land area. — Photos: Filepic/The Star
The news of wild elephant herds encroaching on settlements or monkeys coming into conflict with humans tends to grab attention but it’s what happens deep in the jungle that needs the attention of rangers. Since 2019, the Federal Government has employed another tried-and-tested mechanism to do this: fund transfers to incentivise states to protect their forests.
“How the EFT funds are to be spent is also prescribed, and it has to be on areas related to conservation, enforcement, or public awareness – it must all be related to forest conservation. It’s not like it [the money] just goes into the account and it gets spent on roads or for other things. It has to be specific and related to forests,” he says.
This may call for additional efforts to set up robust indicators related to environmental quality such as carbon emissions along with air and water quality measurements.Malaysia’s forest cover in 2020 stood close to 55% – or 18.05 million hectares – of the country’s total land area. From this, about 10.68 million hectares have been designated as permanent forest reserves.
All this reporting requires rigorous methodology, which is where Malaysia turns to those satellite images for aerial monitoring, while on-the-ground monitoring is also conducted. On his ministry’s part, the latest data on national forest cover will be released in the near future following the conclusion of the National Biodiversity Council meeting in March.
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