Forest Management - Educate MBs And CMs First.
The Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities plans to establish 375,000 hectares of forest plantation over the next 15 years, its minister Datuk Peter Chin Fah Kui said. He said to jump start the programme, the Ministry of Finance has allocated RM200 million to develop an initial 36,000ha forest plantation for the period 2006-2008.
"The whole programme is estimated to cost RM2.2 billion and as such, we may need to resort to issuing bonds to fund it," he said. Chin said the ministry would be organising missions to Mexico, Peru and Venezuela by end of this month to study the modus operandi in managing forest plantations and rehabilitation of degraded forests.
Chin said the industry must be mindful of the various challenges and difficulties ahead and must reconcile to the fact that the era of cheap and abundant timber resources were over. "For the long-term viability of the timber industry, there is a need to develop forest plantations on a much bigger scale as we can no longer rely on timber from the natural forests to sustain the industry.
He also advised industry members to refrain from promoting rubberwood as "Malaysian oak". Recently, the Timber Research and Development Association of UK has expressed concern about the use of the term which it said violated the UK Trading or Advertising standards or even be against the Trade Description Act of UK.
Obviously Peter Chin knows what he is talking about. While sending delegations to various countries to learn about forest management is ok, perhaps he and his senior officials should conduct tuition classes for Mentris Besar and Chief Ministers on the advantages of not sanctioning the rape of the forests that fortunately still remain. What is the point of sending experts to learn from elsewhere when these culprits are giving the green signal for the felling of virgin jungles, forests and any greenery that can bring some extra cash into their coffers and causing environmental havoc on a large scale.
'Leaders' like Khir Toyo and his fellow MBs and CMs should be strictly admonished if they still insist on destroying nature in the name of 'progress'. Until this is done, no amount of forest management techniques are going to be very useful.
"The whole programme is estimated to cost RM2.2 billion and as such, we may need to resort to issuing bonds to fund it," he said. Chin said the ministry would be organising missions to Mexico, Peru and Venezuela by end of this month to study the modus operandi in managing forest plantations and rehabilitation of degraded forests.
Chin said the industry must be mindful of the various challenges and difficulties ahead and must reconcile to the fact that the era of cheap and abundant timber resources were over. "For the long-term viability of the timber industry, there is a need to develop forest plantations on a much bigger scale as we can no longer rely on timber from the natural forests to sustain the industry.
He also advised industry members to refrain from promoting rubberwood as "Malaysian oak". Recently, the Timber Research and Development Association of UK has expressed concern about the use of the term which it said violated the UK Trading or Advertising standards or even be against the Trade Description Act of UK.
Obviously Peter Chin knows what he is talking about. While sending delegations to various countries to learn about forest management is ok, perhaps he and his senior officials should conduct tuition classes for Mentris Besar and Chief Ministers on the advantages of not sanctioning the rape of the forests that fortunately still remain. What is the point of sending experts to learn from elsewhere when these culprits are giving the green signal for the felling of virgin jungles, forests and any greenery that can bring some extra cash into their coffers and causing environmental havoc on a large scale.
'Leaders' like Khir Toyo and his fellow MBs and CMs should be strictly admonished if they still insist on destroying nature in the name of 'progress'. Until this is done, no amount of forest management techniques are going to be very useful.
posted by The Malaysian. at 7/16/2006 03:01:00 PM
3 Comments:
Agree fully with you here. It's clear that manysee forests as a mre source of income and don't recognise it as a heritage to preserve. Read my own post here http://ok-lah.blogspot.com/2006/01/getting-hot.html
Maybe its time from them to contact the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for advice on forest management. Unless they are just here for the money and not expertise in forest management.
Hey what a great site keep up the work its excellent.
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