THE accursed plundering of Malaysia's natural and fiscal wealth has an infinite prologue, but with no known epilogue.
If it isn't enough pilfering government coffers or funnelling away money for dubious projects, the perennial gorging of natural resources is still a go-to favourite, especially in states rich with rainforests.
Industrial age logging is by no means an archaic economy despite the availability of quality non-wood substitutes. As long as timber is legally manufactured and easily available, it is still a lucrative industry, notwithstanding its vicious cycle of greed and environmental catastrophe.
Discerning home and furniture builders and interior designers' preference for quality timber and wood to enhance aesthetics are reasons why 2.3 million hectares of rainforest are geared for deforestation. Alarmed environmental group
RimbaWatch said the extraction of trees could be equal to Perak, Penang and Melaka combined and 100 times the size of Kuala Lumpur.
The deforestation will leave Malaysia with only 47 per cent of forest cover, below the international commitment of maintaining it at 50 per cent. Less industrial states need revenue for development and the surefire solution is logging, you say?
Logging also enriches the monopoly of a powerful few and the people responsible for state land management. At the same time, corporate farmers are illegally tapping water resources to tend the land, further aggravating the soil that is already worsened by carpet logging. The Federal Constitution stipulates that land, water and natural resources, like religion, are absolute state primacy. With no federal authority to stop these tree-cutting monsters, the ravening sustains: no amount of appeal to state governments' instincts of self-preservation works as long as they are poisoned by greed.
However, if the Anwar administration is serious enough to curb the rampant deforestation, they could enforce a logging moratorium or execute a particular constitutional provision: proclaim an emergency on states where deforestation is a vulgarity and deploy the army to safeguard the plots from rampaging loggers.
Of course, this is punitive action of the last resort, but we can positively state that the last resort has been breached, with little or no recourse to protect our nation's precious natural resources.
But, there might be a pricey alternative: compensate states directly for the privilege of not logging away their future. Compensation though will not be in retail prices, but enough to persuade state governments to halt the tree-felling lunacy. Besides, in one fell swoop, direct compensation can stem the scourge of kickbacks, while allowing the rainforests, and its vast indigenous inhabitants, the chance to breathe, reproduce and flourish.
Anything less may mean that the federal government is just as instrumental in destroying the environment, by dearth of political will and death of imagination.