KUALA LUMPUR: The Sahabat Alam Malaysia environmental group today called on the government to develop an official, user-friendly website to publish data on forests and conservation areas.
Sahabat Alam Malaysia senior research and media officer Shamila Ariffin said this would improve transparency and the health and quality of forests and conservation areas.
She said the Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change Ministry, helmed by minister Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, should re-release the master list of protected areas in Malaysia that was launched by the then water, land and natural resources ministry in 2019.
"This publication, a result of more than two decades of labour among various government agencies and non-governmental organisations, was supposed to provide the most comprehensive and authoritative official data on our conservation areas, both terrestrial and marine.
"It was temporarily released in 2019, then inexplicably withdrawn. The minister needs to target a new date for this and a commitment that the publication will be updated annually," she told the New Straits Times.
Shamila said there was a need to develop policies and laws in consultation with indigenous communities, civil society organisations and regions to fully protect indigenous customary territories from deforestation and destructive activities and legally recognise the role of community-based forestry management.
"The failure to halt deforestation and install policies and laws to ensure that the protection of the indigenous customary land rights and forests is well-integrated are indications that in the last four decades, we have failed to manage our forests sustainably.
"Until today, we still do not have effective policies and laws in place to adequately integrate the rights of indigenous and local communities in our forestry management.
"For decades, a large bulk of logging, monoculture plantation and other destructive activities causing deforestation have been taking place in our indigenous customary territories. But without community, there can never be sustainability."
She said the country's timber harvesting rates between the 1980s and 1990s were too high.
"Many forestry experts had warned us of the impending depletion of our natural timber resources since the 1980s. Subsequently, beginning in the 1990s, monoculture plantation licences, mostly for the cultivation of timber and oil palm trees, began to be issued in these logged-over forests."
Shamila said there was a need to expedite the process to access international climate funds that would provide resources for states to protect their forests.
Yesterday, environmental group RimbaWatch said Malaysia had earmarked 2.3 million hectares of forest for deforestation, an area larger than Perak, Penang and Melaka combined and 100 times the size of Kuala Lumpur.
The group said this could see the nation's forest cover fall to less than 50 per cent.
It said Malaysia's forest cover could decrease to 15,636,737ha, or 47 per cent of the total land area.
This number is below the government's promise of maintaining 50 per cent forest cover.
Environmentalist Anthony Tan Kee Huat said the answer to stopping deforestation was to stop corruption.
Tan, a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Malaysia on the Sustainable Development Goals and Petaling Jaya Green City Task Force, said laws related to forestry must be strictly enforced, without fear or favour.
"The ministry must ensure real participation through open engagement with all stakeholders at the government level, be it federal, state, district or local authorities, as well as the private sector, researchers, civil society organisations and citizens, especially the Orang Asli.
"Find out what each group can bring to the table and not just an eyewash of selected participants to fulfil requirements."
He said forestry personnel must be increased by including more Orang Asli as forestry officers to monitor activities in forests.