Conservation for Profit

DESPITE an abundance of lush rainforests, life-giving rivers and biologically diverse mangrove swamps and coral reefs, protecting Malaysia’s natural bounty has often been an uphill battle. In balancing the need to sacrifice some of nature’s riches for the sake of progress and making sure those precious resources don’t go the way of the dodo, it’s often been the pro-conservation argument – and the timber-rich rainforest – that gets cut down and bulldozed out of the way. But the proposal by Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid that state governments take over logging activities represents a radical approach to conservation – and one which merits close attention. Logging is a state jurisdiction offering a lucrative and much-needed source of revenue. But the current practice of awarding timber concessions to private companies allows the state only a fraction of the timber revenue. Taking over would remove the middleman, allowing states a bigger cut, and this greater efficiency could in turn help open the door to better forest management.

But the proposal isn’t flawless. A sudden transfer of all logging operations to state governments could create space for abuse. Strict enforcement of no-go logging areas such as water catchments and clear, common rules of operations in all states – all of which would require federal government oversight – would have to be considered before the idea can take off. But instead of the usual hard-sell conservation pitch, seeking to appeal to the conscience by asking short-term profit to be sacrificed for less tangible pay-offs in environmental preservation, the minister’s idea offers a possible win-win solution for both conservation and development.

Forestry Department deputy director-general Datuk Dahlan Taha has even gone on to suggest that the government step in to buy private land for preservation as forests. Certainly, the episode of the 3,100ha Paya Indah Wetlands in Dengkil, Selangor, built by the government for RM75 million and managed by a foundation, only to be closed down in deplorable condition two years ago, holds useful lessons on whether such valuable environmental resources should be left to anyone but the government to manage in the first place. With the coral reefs along the Straits of Malacca alone valued at a whopping RM2.2 billion in economic terms of tourism, fishing and research, it could well be that ascribing such monetary value to our forests and rivers would provide the most compelling impetus to better management and conservation of our precious natural resources.

(c) 2007 New Straits Times. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.