Enforce logging moratorium to curb floods, Selangor govt told

 Environmental group Peka says the state government must stop the destruction of forests if it is serious about reducing flood risk.

Following recent flooding in Selangor, Peka noted that the forestry department had said in 2010 that the state government had imposed a 25-year logging moratorium to preserve forest resources.

PETALING JAYA:

 An environmental group has called on the Selangor government to enforce a 25-year logging moratorium, announced in 2010, if it is serious about tackling floods.

Pertubuhan Pelindung Khazanah Alam (Peka) said the stat e is still relying on costly river widening and deepening initiatives, while refusing to address the root cause of the floods -logging and deforestation.

“Flood mitigation in Malaysia does not begin with concrete. It begins with stopping the destruction of our forests,” Peka president Rajesh Nagarajan said.

In a statement, Rajesh said forests are not a side issue in flood control but the first line of defence because they absorb rain, control runoff, stabilise soil, and protect river systems.

Removing forests causes water to flow faster, build up more quickly, and overwhelm downstream infrastructure, making floods predictable.

He was responding to remarks by Selangor infrastructure and agriculture committee chairman Izham Hashim that the state’s flood problems could take four years to resolve.

Rajesh said the state government’s claim that resolving floods would take four years and require massive public spending is “not a statement of necessity”, but “an admission of misplaced priorities”.

He noted that the forestry department had, in 2010, said the state government had imposed a 25-year logging moratorium to preserve forest resources.

He said Selangor could not continue allowing logging, including in water catchment and environmentally sensitive areas, and then expect the public to bear the cost of dealing with the damage.

Apart from imposing a logging moratorium, Rajesh said, the state government should carry out a state-wide reforestation and ecological restoration programme in degraded forest reserves and catchment areas.

It should also enforce environmental laws against unlawful or excessive land clearing.

“These are not policy options. They are minimum requirements,” Rajesh said.

Until the state government dealst with this contradiction, he said, any four-year flood plan would be “nothing more than an expensive exercise in managing the consequences of its own decisions”. - FMT