Malaysia is presently prone to shedding 16 per cent of its remaining forest cowl as a result of concessions for timber and palm oil plantations, amongst different developments, based on new evaluation by environmental watchdog Rimbawatch.
The organisation’s State of Malaysian Rainforests 2024 report, revealed immediately, up to date knowledge from a 12 months in the past utilizing a strengthened methodology. The realm prone to deforestation was discovered to have elevated from 2.3 million hectares in 2023 to three.2 million hectares this 12 months.
“If this deforestation happens, Malaysia’s forest cowl will drop under 50 per cent of our landmass, thereby constituting a failure of Malaysia’s dedication to keep up 50 per cent forest cowl,” Rimbawatch mentioned in a press assertion.
The general 3.2 million hectares prone to deforestation is almost equal to the dimensions of Pahang, Peninsular Malaysia’s largest state. Pahang is among the many high states the place concessions overlap with pure forests, after Sarawak, Sabah and Kelantan, Rimbawatch co-founder and director Adam Farhan informed Eco-Enterprise. Sarawak recorded a whopping 68.2 per cent of timber plantations in intact forests, extra the 4 instances that of the following highest state, Sabah (16.1 per cent).
Of all of the concession varieties, monoculture timber plantations had been discovered to be the first risk to Malaysian forests. Three quarters of the at-risk forests are positioned in timber plantation concessions, whereas different threats embody the degazettement of forest reserves, hydropower tasks and palm oil plantations.
“Timber plantations discuss with programmes supported by Malaysia’s forestry authorities to extend provide of timber. These plantations … contain the clearance of pure forests in forest reserves and their conversion to monoculture plantations, normally for rubberwood or acacia,” mentioned Rimbawatch.
Whereas such plantations have been promoted by state authorities as a approach to “restore” degraded forests, the information confirmed that solely 38 per cent of forests in timber plantation concessions are degraded, with the bulk categorized as “undisturbed forests”. Rimbawatch used ArcGIS to analyse the information, measuring the European Union’s Tropical Moist Forest cowl knowledge set, a device used to assist the EU Deforestation Regulation, towards Malaysia’s concession boundaries.
Worryingly, the watchdog mentioned that as a result of official definitions of forest cowl which might be based mostly solely on legally gazetted areas akin to forest reserves, a lot of the deforestation might go unreported. “Official knowledge stays untransparent,” Rimbawatch mentioned, declaring that Malaysia doesn’t publish geospatial knowledge of its official forest cowl statistics and that timber concession maps are outdated.
Not solely will the clearance of Malaysian forests jeopardise its forest cowl commitments, it additionally threatens the nation’s biodiversity and ecological capabilities, in addition to its dedication to attaining net-zero greenhouse fuel emissions by 2050. The clearance of two.4 million hectares of timber plantations alone would launch 368 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the environment, equal to a 12 months’s price of emissions from the UK, Rimbawatch mentioned.
“Rimbawatch makes an pressing name based mostly on these findings for a direct finish to all conversions in forest reserves for timber plantations,” it added.
Rimbawatch’s new report comes simply weeks after it launched a brand new device to trace deforestation in Malaysia. Dubbed the “Forest Tracker”, it permits customers to trace previous and projected deforestation in Malaysia, with completely different land-use layers, together with oil palm, timber plantations, mining, infrastructure and different commodities.
In keeping with Rimbawatch, the Forest Tracker is the one complete database for Malaysian forest concessions, overlaying all deforestation-risk sectors, and can be the one publicly out there collated dataset on Indigenous conventional territories throughout the nation. The information signifies that some lands claimed by Indigenous communities additionally overlap with recognized concessions.
“As the federal government continues to cover knowledge associated to environmental influence assessments, the situation of oil palm plantations, forest reserves, forest cowl and others; we hope that by publishing this map we’re, as a citizen-led initiative, fulfilling the precise of the general public to info,” Adam had mentioned.
Rimbawatch has been vocal about Malaysian authorities’ lack of transparency in the direction of official forestry and land use knowledge, together with the continued unavailability of full environmental influence evaluation studies.
