Kota Kinabalu: Environmentalists are concerned that Sabah’s disputed Nature Conservation Agreement (NCA) may fail to fulfil its minimum goal of restoring 50,000 hectares of rainforest within the next two years.
According to environmental experts, the largest area ever recovered in a single year by Yayasan Sabah’s massive Innoprise-FACE Rainforest Rehabilitation Project (INFAPRO) project was just around 2,000 hectares.
Professor David Burslem of the University of Aberdeen and Datuk Dr Glen Reynolds of the South East Asia Rainforest Research Partnership (SEARRP) both said that they are unaware of any tropical effort that has regenerated forest at the rate anticipated by the NCA.
“It would be tough to restore to this level in largely distant places. To secure planting access, it would take around 10 million tree seedlings, intensive site-species matching analyses, and road construction,” they said in a statement, here, Sunday.
They said long-term seedling maintenance and a rigorous post-planting monitoring programme would be required at these remote sites.
Since the mid-1990s, Burslem has been studying carbon recovery rates in logged-over and regenerated rainforests in Sabah, usually in partnership with the Sabah Forestry Department and Yayasan Sabah.
Reynolds, on the other hand, has an Imperial College PhD in forest regeneration. In Sabah and elsewhere, he has led and collaborated numerous climate change, carbon financing, and forest recovery research initiatives.
They said depending on the kind of level of degradation, and the extent of restoration required, tropical forest restoration can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars per hectare.
According to them, if NCA restoration includes increased tree seedling planting in previously logged-over forest, the cost per hectare could exceed RM10,000 in five years.
“The Sabah government would have to repair 50,000 hectares for an estimated RM500 million in order to generate potential carbon sales,” they said.
They said to break even in terms of restoration costs, a carbon price of at least RM60 per tonne would be required, which is far more than current market rates.
“The NCA amounts currently promoted are almost ten times the real market price for this sort of carbon and assume nearly five times the quantity scientifically demonstrated. Many carbon initiatives throughout the world are nowhere near the billions that Sabah has claimed,” they said.
Despite the fact that the NCA may achieve its restoration objectives, Burslem and Reynolds warn that the project will not be certified to any internationally recognised standards.
“The NCA specifies that it will only operate in Sabah’s existing protected areas - which establishment has nothing to do with the NCA,” Reynolds said.
“Given the current criteria to conserve and repair Sabah’s protected forests, the NCA may not be able to demonstrate that it will generate any “extra” and thus marketable carbon.
“Forest-based carbon projects, such as the NCA, must demonstrate additionality, or the ability to store carbon directly through project operations. However, if the NCA is unable to do so, the project will not be certified and no carbon sales would be made,” he said.
The agreement inked in October 2021, will grant Hoch Standard Pte Ltd, a Singaporean company, irrevocable monopolistic rights over up to two million hectares of Sabah land.
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