Dewan Rakyat unanimously passes amendments to better protect forests

 

PARLIAMENT | The Dewan Rakyat has unanimously passed amendments to better protect forests in the country, through a voice vote today.

The amendments to the National Forestry Act, among others, make it harder to excise permanent forest reserves (PFR).

Under the amended law, state authorities must conduct a public inquiry first.

States are also required to replace excised PFR with a new land of similar size or larger.

Further, state forest parks are now considered PFRs.

While the amendments grant better protections on paper, there are legislative hurdles to cross beyond the Senate passing the bill.

Under the Federal Constitution, all land matters - and by extension forests - are under the full control of state governments, with the exception of the federal territories.

Hence, any laws to regulate such matters will require state governments to make amendments to state laws for them to take effect.

MPs from both sides of the aisle, including Upko president Wilfred Madius Tangau (Pakatan Harapan-Tuaran) and Salim Shariff (BN-Jempol) expressed concern whether the states will carry out such amendments.

However, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Takiyuddin Hassan (above) was confident that this would not be a problem.

This is because, he said, the amendments had been presented and agreed to by the National Land Council first - which is chaired by the prime minister and has all menteri besars and chief ministers as members.

“So I’ll take it that the state governments have no objections to amending their laws,” Takiyuddin said in his winding-up speech at the Dewan Rakyat today.

Financial incentive

Besides making it harder to degazette PFRs, the new law also says that the National Forest Development Fund can now be used to compensate states for any expenses used to manage and carry out sustainable development of such forest reserves.

Takiyuddin argued that this effectively legislates ecological fiscal transfers (EFT).

EFTs were introduced by the Pakatan Harapan government as a means of rewarding states financially for gazetting more forest reserves.

The practice was continued by the Perikatan Nasional and BN governments, with Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob raising EFT incentives to RM100 million this April.

Meanwhile, the new amendments also carry stricter punishments.

For example, the punishment for illegally taking forest produce - such as trees, plants, or even honey - from PFRs can be punished with up to 20 years in jail, or fined up to RM1 million, or both, if the produce is more than 5 square meters in volume.

Illegally taking forest produce amounting to less than 5 square meters can be punished with up to two years imprisonment, or a RM10,000 fine, or both.

The penalty for littering in PRFs was also increased to RM20,000 from RM10,000 previously, with the previous maximum three year jail term retained. - Mkini