Addressing forestry governance in Malaysia

2022 has been a momentous year in many ways. Little known to many, an important milestone was reached in the middle of the year – Malaysia fulfilled its voluntary pledge of maintaining “at least 50% of its landmass as forest and tree cover” for a good 30 years.

Actually, the pledge, which was made at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, was nothing more than convenient bywords in official speeches and statements, so much so that it was merely mentioned in the Prime Minister’s foreword to the review of the National Forestry Policy 2021 instead of being incorporated in it.

Whether it will continue to be honoured in years to come is a big question mark.

I would venture to say that we are now at a crossroads. The new government needs to take a serious look at the pledge again to consider whether the target is still realistic, given the conflicting policies on land use. Can we afford to abandon or lower the target in the face of climate change and biodiversity protection?

Going into the 15th General Election, both Pakatan Harapan and Barisan Nasional incorporated forest cover in their respective manifestos, with the latter even aiming to increase the forested area to 60%! But given that forest matters are under state jurisdiction, any target can be ignored when it comes to the crunch.

We know that forest cover in the peninsula has fallen below 50%, which was unavoidable given its larger population and rate of industrialisation. This means that Sabah and Sarawak would be required to maintain a higher than 50% target to augment the shortfall in order to keep the pledge. Therefore, a burden-sharing mechanism is urgently needed not only between the three regions but also among the states in the peninsula.

Recognising that maintaining the forest requires money, Pakatan’s manifesto boldly pledged to increase funding “for forest financing up to at least RM1bil to state governments” via the instrument of Ecological Fiscal Transfer (EFT). It’s unclear how the figure was worked out, especially given that the size and quality of forests in states vary.

EFT was introduced by the Pakatan government in the 2019 budget with an allocation of RM60mil to induce states to increase their Totally Protected Areas/Protected Areas (national/state parks, wildlife and bird sanctuaries). There was no allocation for 2020, but the amount was increased to RM70mil in Budget 2021.

It has to be pointed out that payment to individual states does not go towards forest management because EFT is largely used as compensation for loss of revenue from resource extraction activities or maintaining water catchments.

Since forests function as carbon sinks in the fight against climate change, and are also an important sector of the country’s climate action plan from 2021 to 2030, Malaysia would benefit from seriously implementing the National REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) strategy.

REDD+ provides financial incentives to developing countries that have proved through rigorous UN-backed technical evaluation that they have halted deforestation during a period of time.

The Pakatan government missed the chance during its first round in power. After nearly 10 months of deliberation between the then Environment, Science, Technology and Climate Change Ministry and the Water, Land and Natural Resources Ministry, the REDD+ unit was parked under the latter, and the implementation of the national response strategies to climate change was put on the back burner.

Hopefully, the new administration will adopt a comprehensive view of the forest-biodiversity-water nexus as this is instrumental in fulfilling Action Plan Number 22 and 23 of the Pakatan manifesto.

HILARY CHIEW

Selangor

(The writer is an independent environmental researcher.)