Reducing Forest Degradation and Emissions through Sustainable Forest Management(SFM) in Peninsular Malaysia
Samsudin Musa (Head of Climate Change Program, Forest Research Institute Malaysia)

There is now a global recognition of the valuable service provided by forests and these services areboth for rich and poor countries.

We recognize all these values of forests; forests store andsequester carbon, they conserve the diversity of life, they protect soil and water resources, andsources of useful products, drugs and food. These are values when forest are conserved andmanaged well.
There is also a global recognition that the emissions from the loss and degradation of forests,
particularly tropical forests, so while these forests provide useful services, when they are not
managed properly they emit carbon and it becomes a problem.

Incentives such as REDD+

ensures that forests are protected and managed to enhance their sequestration potential and carbon
storage.
Previously we had mechanisms such as CDM33 which only provides incentives for new andadditional forests (A&R), and we know many of the tropical countries were not involved in thisCDM because of its stringent rules and regulations and now we have REDD+ which allows
developing countries to receive some payments for the value of the existing forests, so it is a very
exciting mechanism that we are all engaged in.

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Clean Development Mechanism: http://cdmrulebook.org/970

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Malaysia is interested in REDD+ because forestry is a very important economic sector in Malaysia.
We have got about 19.5 million hectares of forests, which is about almost 58% to 60% of ourcountry, and forestry is a very important economic sector and because of that REDD+ is importantto us. REDD+, of course, is a voluntary scheme and the modalities are still being negotiated.
REDD+ can take a few forms; one is they are reducing deforestation rates which is fairly easy.

Itis easier to monitor deforestation rates, but forest degradation, are also occurring in permanent
production forest, which is a bit more difficult. Then there is strengthening of Sustainable Forest
Management (SFM), strengthening of conservation, and enhancing carbon stocks. These are themany areas that REDD can take its form.

Malaysia’s involvement in REDD: Malaysia is not part of the REDD+ partnership34 countries, so
we consider ourselves still new in this area compared to our neighbors. Almost all the other
ASEAN countries are in REDD+ partnership countries and have bilateral projects alreadyunderway, with external funding and technical assistance. Malaysia has started implementing
REDD+ projects. We are developing our national strategy in our Ministry of Natural Resourcesand Environment.

We are also involved in developing a monitoring system for REDD, which is a

project we are collaborating with the FFPRI Japan; we are thankful for that. I understand there are34

A global platform for organizing action in order to enable effective, transparent and coordinated fastaction on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing
countries: http://reddpluspartnership.org/en/29

also some other projects together with Japan which is going to be underway. Now, this ITTO35
Project that I am going to present today is the third project which is going to start very soon.
Implementing a REDD+ Project in Malaysia is important to me, because it enhances awareness inREDD+. It enhances readiness to implement REDD projects. It enhances capacity, learning bydoing.

We know that REDD+ implementation goes through certain phases. There is the readiness phaseand the implementation phase and the full scale REDD Project.

We are particularly at thereadiness and the implementation phase of policies and measures.
Now we are going through our National REDD Readiness Phase where we are going to develop ournational strategy and this will involve all these aspects. Then, we would like to go into the next
phase which is the implantation of REDD+ policies and here we are going to develop our MRV.
We are in the development scale right now. I think, hopefully, by the end of the year we will have
our National REDD Strategy in place, and we will have some components of MRV in place as well.
In order to develop our national strategy, we look at the national circumstances and we are going todevelop national baselines for deforestation and degradation. There is also the issue of MRV andinstitutional arrangements as well as sustainable financing. We would like to look at this projectthat we are implementing and is complementing these activities that are already ongoing in35

The International Tropical Timber Organization: http://www.itto.int/30

Malaysia.

This project is an ITTO-funded project.
Institute, which I am representing.

The executing agency will be the Forest Research

There are also many collaborating agencies such as ourMinistry, the Forestry Department Peninsular Malaysia, and the State Forestry Department where
this project is going to be implemented. It is going to be implemented at the sub-national level.
This is our first sub-national project that is going to be implemented.

Its approximate starting dateis February. We have signed the agreement already so it is about to start. We are going to have astakeholder consultation soon and get our inception report out. ITTO is giving us about almost
US $600,000 to do this. There is also funding from the government of Malaysia which is about
US $238,000.
The project is focusing on the sub-national and state level. It allows us to assess if an FMU36
will be able to gain from the REDD+ mechanism. Most of our projects, all of our forestland isbasically owned by the states.

We have very few forest areas owned by individuals, so it is very

important to get the states engaged into REDD+. For them to become engaged, they would like toknow how REDD+ is going to benefit them. There is already interest by private companies toexplore if states are interested to sell their carbon stocks through avoided deforestation. There arealready people who are approaching the state governments to find out if they are interested inselling the carbon.
Malaysia is investing quite a bit on Sustainable Forest Management to reduce forest degradation.
Then, we would like to find out what more can we get out of REDD+.

These are the questions

normally raised by the states. They have already informed us that they have already invested
quite a bit to implement Sustainable Forest Management practices and how much more should they
invest for REDD, and will there be any additional incentives.

Improving our forest management

is a key area to reduce degradation and subsequently reduce carbon emission.

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Forest Management Units

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The general objective of this project is to utilize Sustainable Forest Management as a mitigation
tool in combating climate change. We recognize that deforestation rate in Malaysia is quitestabilized, so the main emissions we accounted are from our degradation and we would like to lookat how much this is.

Specific objective is to improve knowledge on reduction of forest

degradation and enhance payments for ecosystem services. In addition to carbon, we also look at
the other ecosystem services and how payments can be made for them.
These are some of the outputs of this project. The first output is the national forest degradation
estimated. We like to estimate how much degradation there is so that we are going to have anassessment of forest degradation drivers by undertaking stakeholder consultations. We are going
to develop tools and guidelines to account, monitor, and report forest degradation, so this might bea bit straightforward for some countries, but for Malaysia, we reckon that most of our degradation
will be occurring in production forest.

Since we are working on a 30-year cycle, there is thequestion whether there is actually degradation or not in terms of carbon stocks37. We recognize
there are many forms of degradation. There might be changes in species composition, there might
be changes in the structure of the forests, but when it comes to total carbon stocks we would like tofind out how much degradation there is.

37The quantity of carbon contained in a “pool”, meaning a reservoir or system which has the capacity toaccumulate or release carbon.

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As the second output, we would like to have forest degradation reduced at the forest management
unit, so we would like to find out what are the things that we can do to further reduce degradation.
Assessment will be made using remote sensing and ground inventories and we would like to findout if we can implement methods for reducing forest degradation. Some of these might include
changing our harvesting system that right now we are using the ground-based crawler tractor
system, whether it is worth investing in a system we call “Log Fisher” which is a system available
in Malaysia where we reduce the number of skid trails so that the machines will have to carry out
long-distance skidding.
That will definitely reduce the number of skid trails and definitely increase the forest cover if you
are able to implement it. The question is how much it is going to cost and whether it is going tobe worth investing in it. There is reduced impact logging system, of course. Malaysia is already
implementing reduced impact logging system, and we know that reduced impact logging system
has got many components. Maybe there are other sub-components in reduced impact logging
system which we can improve further.
There is also the maximum volume control which we had recently implemented.

We areimplementing a cutting limit approach in managing our production forest, but we are also
implementing a maximum volume control where there is a certain volume limit of removing trees
from our production forest, so that will reduce the total amount of timber being removed. There isalso, additional improvements such as the protection of fruit trees within the production forest, sothese will also enhance carbon stocks within and we would like to see how much that has been
conducted.

Our third output will be the incentives for carbon and ecosystems services established. Here wewould like to assess cost and benefits of improving forest management, how much is it going tocost to implement all those components that we would like to improve. We would also like todevelop a scheme for payment under REDD. This is the payment for ecosystem service on top ofbenefits gained by enhancing carbon stock. There are also co-benefits of enhancing biodiversity,protection of soil and water resources and we would like to develop a scheme of payment for that
as well.
Our last output will be capacity of major stakeholders and communities where relevant is33

strengthened. This is mainly capacity building and developing awareness programs among policy
makers, particularly at the state level, so probably it will be conducted through workshops andconsultations. Develop capacity for REDD+ and carbon accounting. We would like to develop
our carbon accounting approach. We would also like to enhance our cross sharing of experienceand knowledge with other REDD projects within the region. We have heard already from Papua
New Guinea and we recognize in the ASEAN country, Indonesia and Cambodia are already quiteadvanced in that and we would like to learn from their experience in conducting REDD projects.

Implementation approaches, there are major players. We have several players that are going tohelp us implement this project. We are going to establish a Project Steering Committee, which isthe governing body to ensure project implemented accordingly based on national circumstances
because we are going to take a multi-sectoral approach. We need this Project Steering Committee
members involving the various sectors. We also have the Technical Working Group where we
address technical aspects.
The project site we selected was the State of Pahang. It is the biggest state in Peninsula Malaysia.
We chose this state because forestry is a very important economic sector. Within the state, it has
got Orang Asli or the original people there as well our local communities. There are many issues
there. We think that such a project implemented in Pahang will be useful. Also, there arevarious forest types in Pahang. There is the inland forest, and the peat swamp forest, and themangroves forest, so this will represent all the various forest types.

Initial efforts have alreadybeen conducted to communicate with the State Forestry Department where the project will beinitiated and so far the state has been very positive in accepting this project.

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This is the Project Steering Committee organization.

Some concerns about this project raised by some of the stakeholders are that the core issues are still
remaining that could influence participation in REDD by the state. SFM in Malaysia, we arealready implementing SFM and there is the issue of additionality here.

If we are already

implementing a lot of the components, what more should we implement.

In including Forest

conservation aspect under REDD there is also the issue of meeting additionality criteria, how is thisgoing to be addressed. Negotiating may take the path of AR CDM38 and these are concerns bymany of our stakeholders that the rules and regulations might be too difficult to implement andtransaction costs may be too high, at the same time the value of carbon will be low, so making
REDD also is becoming very unattractive.
Some concerns: Addressing safeguards. This is also a concern that safeguards becomes a list ofprescriptive requirements. Right now, it is supposed to be at the level of providing information,
but as the negotiation proceeds, we notice that more and more requirements are being included
under safeguards. MRV: How elaborate is it going to be?

Because it influences our transaction

cost. Validation: Already there is going to be a third party evaluation process or review process.
Success of REDD depends on transaction costs and price of carbon and as I indicated for the state
to implement REDD+ projects, how much are they going to gain?

That is a key question inensuring success of REDD. We would like to see REDD being successful, but there are some38

Afforestation and Reforestation Clean Development Mechanism

35issues that we are concerned. On the REDD+, there is a need to balance between environmental
integrity and practicality.

I think that a lot of the issues of trying to put in difficult or elaborate

requirements are because of concerns for environmental integrity. But I think it needs to bebalanced with the practicality because if it becomes too difficult then it becomes too difficult toimplement and then it might not be successful.

In conclusion, we are already excited about the project. It provides opportunities to enhance thevalue of forests at the state level.

It promotes the Sustainable Forest Management and supports

Malaysia’s commitment under the Convention. Of course, REDD is voluntary. We would like tothink that it is going to benefit the state, but we are informing the state that if it is not beneficial
then there is no need to be involved in the REDD.
Usually non-timber values, when we try to present projects, in addition to timber values there arealso non-timber values and a lot of the time these non-timber values are difficult to assess in termsof monetary value, because we say we will enhance carbon stocks, we will enhance water resources,
but the state does not see the money coming in.

The question normally asked is, “Where is themoney?” Under REDD, we think there is real monetary gain which we can gain, and the states
will be interested.
Project’s success depends on the involvement of key stakeholders that is the Forestry Department
as well as the State. Project implementation does not require mandatory changes to current statepolicies. We do not think that there is going to be mandatory changes to state policies and forest
management practices, but there are going to be refinement in the practices.

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