Kitingan says scrapping carbon trade deal will hinder Sabah's economic recovery

KOTA KINABALU: Following fresh criticism against the carbon trade deal known as the Nature Conservation Agreement (NCA), Sabah's Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Seri Dr Jeffrey Kitingan says cancelling it would mean discarding "months of hard work".

He repeated his stand that the agreement is solely for the purpose of forest conservation and allowing Singapore-based company Hoch Standard Pte Ltd to trade the idle carbon and realise the monetary values of carbon through science.

"The company will find bidders who will offer the best price for Sabah," he said.

Kitingan said the Gabungan Rakyat Sabah-led state government was doing everything it could to develop the state and rebuild the economy amid the difficult time brought on by the pandemic.

"Cancelling the agreement will put us back months of hard work and delay our plans for Sabah. We don't want to run Sabah the way the previous governments did," he said.

"How can we expect different results if we keep using the same strategy that has been proven to be ineffective?" he asked.

Kitingan said this after Parti Warisan criticised the NCA, which was allegedly approved without public consultation.

Warisan president Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal, a former Sabah chief minister, said on Thursday (Feb 3) that fresh claims had surfaced about the NCA which showed that the explanation given by the state government through Kitingan was inadequate.

Shafie's comments came on the heels of an Al-Jazeera online report on the NCA titled "Very hush-hush: Borneo's $80bil carbon deal strokes controversy" on Wednesday (Feb 2).

Shafie said several points in the article contradicted Kitingan's explanation on the NCA last year, including the terms of agreement and the third-party company engaged to oversee the deal.

He added that Hoch Standard has no carbon trade experience and that it would be a shame if the 100-year deal results in a national scandal.

Warisan, he said, was not against efforts to preserve the country's natural resources or carbon credit deals but these must be done through the proper channels and involve reliable partners.

The NCA pushed by Kitingan would first see some 600,000ha of Sabah's totally protected areas used to market carbon and other natural capital by the Singapore-based private company.

According to Kitingan, the terms of the NCA have yet to be finalised. The details of the agreement were never made public despite calls for them to be released.

This NCA was set to be in force for 100 years, if approved.

Details of the deal were first highlighted by an environmental portal, Mongabay, last year.