Review of 1992 forestry policy timely

IT is a well-known fact that Malaysia has committed to the international community that it would maintain 50% of its land area (330,712km2 or 33 million hectares) as forest cover, which means natural forests coverage would be kept at 16.5 million hectares. This is understood to include areas that are designated as managed production forests with logging activities carried out under a system known as sustainable forest management (SFM).

This bold pledge was first made at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992 and reaffirmed consistently at many subsequent sustainability-related global events including the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development or Rio+20, the 20-year follow-up to the 1992 Earth Summit.