A CAUSE FOR ALARM
THE report that 567 plant species out of the 1,600 Peninsular Malaysia plant species assessed in the Malaysia Red List have been classified as threatened should be a cause for alarm.
Malaysia’s tree cover, at 55.3 per cent, obscures the reality of our biodiversity loss. The fact remains that tree cover is not the same as natural forest cover. Most of Malaysia’s tree cover consists of plantations and degraded forest land.
Plantations do not have the same biodiversity value. Intact and biodiverse forests protect watersheds and water quality, are more resistant to fire and drought, regulate climate and weather patterns, and provide habitat for flora and fauna.
Biodiversity ensures food security, as a biodiverse ecosystem will provide genetic resources for a variety of food, including those that are resistant to fungi and diseases that might wipe out cultivated strains of crops.
Keeping forests intact and biodiverse prevents wild species from crossing into human habitation and spreading diseases to domestic animals and humans, and thus protect biosecurity.
Approximately 50,000 to 70,000 plant species are used by humans for traditional and modern medicine worldwide. Biodiversity loss will limit the discovery of potential new medicines and medical treatments.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation reports that only 18.7 per cent of forests in Malaysia are classified as primary forest, the most biologically diverse and carbon-dense ecosystem, and that only 11.6 per cent of the forests in Malaysia are classified as “pristine”.
Malaysia is rapidly losing forested areas to agriculture and development. The requirement that states gazette replacement sites for degazetted reserves does nothing to turn the tide of biodiversity loss.
States are running out of suitable sites to gazette as replacement forest reserves, and further, the gazettement of secondary forests and degraded land cannot be a substitute for the protection of natural and intact forests.
Google’s global forest map reveals that between 2000 and 2012, Malaysia had the world’s highest deforestation rate at 14.4 per cent. Satellite data from the Carnegie Landsat Analysis System-lite platform shows that over 80 per cent of the rainforests in Sabah and Sarawak have been logged.
Between 2000 and 2009, more than 9,000ha of permanent forest reserves were degazetted, threatening watersheds and carbon sequesters, and destroying flora and fauna, including those classified as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List.
The degazettement of the Bikam Permanent Forest Reserve in 2013 caused the extinction of the Keruing Paya, a critically endangered hardwood tree, in Peninsular Malaysia.
The best way to mitigate biodiversity loss is by protecting forests.
Economic benefits of logging and mining are short-lived and can sustain only one to two generations at most. Droughts, floods, soil erosion, landslides and health crises, such as dengue and malaria outbreaks, will cost the state and federal governments more in the long run.
We need to stop relying on commodity crops and extraction-based industries as our primary source of revenue. If we build a knowledge and skills-based economy and stop relying on monoculture crops and extraction-based industries as our primary source of revenue and jobs, we can find better ways to sustain our economy.
We need to rid ourselves of the mentality that the loss of threatened tree species does not affect us, or that it can be rectified through treeplanting campaigns and gazetting degraded land as replacement forest reserves.
Tree-planting campaigns, habitat restoration, the setting up of seed banks and environmental education for the younger generation, all take time to bear results.
And time is a luxury that threatened species do not have. Biodiversity is not merely something that is nice to have, but essential to the survival of humanity and a living planet.
WONG EE LYNN
Petaling Jaya, Selangor