RimbaWatch dismayed by Sarawak's denial over projected forest losses

 

Environmentalist group RimbaWatch has expressed its disappointment after the Sarawak Forestry Department (SFD) denied its projection that the state will lose more forest area based on the study made by Global Forest Watch (GFW).

“RimbaWatch is disappointed with this denial. It does not address our findings that the license for planted forest programme is the biggest driver of past and future deforestation in Sarawak.

“This programme is not mentioned even once in the SFD’s response, which instead makes reference to other aspects of Sarawak forest management which we did not make any statements on in our study, therefore deflecting the subject.

“SFD’s response does not actually debunk any of the 437 future deforestation alerts that we identified in our study. We are trying to assist the government with identifying areas which will be deforested in the future in order to achieve our shared goal of maintaining 50 percent forest cover. Instead, their response is an indication that business as usual will proceed,” said RimbaWatch in a statement today.

Yesterday SFD director Hamden Mohammad in a statement said the projection made by RimbaWatch was “based on the perception of trends on the opening of land for development”

RimbaWatch said it was confused by this statement, which it did not understand.

“Our data on future deforestation is not from GFW. Only our data on past deforestation, which amounts to 349,000ha, is derived from GFW. For future deforestation, we have identified 437 alerts based on desktop research, including SFD maps, to make our findings on future deforestation.

“We do not understand what SFD means by the statement ‘based on the perception of trends on the opening of land for development’. Our data is not based on trends nor is it based on modelling, it is based on hard evidence representing individual and credible threats to forests, such as a license for planted forest zoning as displayed in official SFD maps,” it said.

The environment watchdog added that it seemed illogical for SFD to deny its findings, as the majority of its data on future deforestation in Sarawak is based on the license for planted forest zoning maps published by Sarawak Forestry themselves on their website.

“It is worth noting that the link to this map seems to have been taken down since we last accessed it last week.

“It is also worth noting that Sarawak is by far the least transparent state in Malaysia when it comes to forest resource management. For example, RimbaWatch has been unable to identify a single environmental impact assessment for Sarawak. In contrast, such data is at least partially available for other jurisdictions such as Sabah and Peninsular Malaysia,” said the group.

Committed to planting trees

In its rebuttal, the SFD also said that Sarawak is committed to planting 35 million trees during the duration of the 12th Malaysia Plan (2021-2025).

It also added that based on the Auditor General’s Report 2021 Series 2 on the special audit of forest management, an impact on the environment, activities of ministries/agencies and compliance audits of ministries/state agencies issued on Jan 6 this year has concluded that forests in the state are managed in a sustainable way to provide socio-economic benefits and maintain the environmental sustainability.

“From 2021 till present, Sarawak has successfully planted around 21,091,995 forest trees, and various planting campaigns and programmes have been carried out vigorously with the cooperation of all parties,” it said.

RimbaWatch requested SFD to clarify how many trees were cut down in the same period and provide data on where these trees were planted and whether they include a license for planted forests, which are timber plantations, meaning the trees will be cut down in the future.

“RimbaWatch’s position is that tree planting serves no purpose when the old-growth and natural forest is still being cut down, as is the case in Sarawak.

“There is a very clear disconnect between how civil society defines sustainability and how the forestry authorities do. For us, replacing natural forests with monoculture timber plantations within permanent forest estates is inherently unsustainable, and is a form of deforestation and environmental destruction.

“Authorities often argue that these activities are a form of tree-planting, but this is an example of greenwashing. And because authorities define forest cover using the legal status of the land, they would argue that timber plantations do not result in deforestation as the legal status of the land remains the same, as a permanent forest estate.

“What is occurring on the ground, however, is that natural forest cover is reducing,” said RimbaWatch. - Mkini