Nature Alert: Sarawak to resist pressure from Europe

Monday, 2 February 2009

Sarawak to resist pressure from Europe

Sunday February 1, 2009

Sarawak to resist pressure from Europe

By JACK WONG

KUCHING: Sarawak will not bow to pressure from the Europeans on timber certification, said Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud.

He said European NGOs had their own agenda in pressuring the state to meet their demands on timber certification.

“I myself will not yield to this pressure,” he said at the Sarawak Timber Industry Development Corporation’s anniversary dinner on Friday.

He noted that timber trade with Europe made up only 2% of the state’s total exports.

Taib said Sarawak was negotiating with the Japanese, who were traditional and long-term buyers of logs and timber products, on a timber certification system.

“The Japanese are well informed and know our timber practice very well. They would not be easily hoodwinked by some NGOs.

”The Japanese are strict on the environment on timber certification as the Europeans,” he said, adding that the Koreans and Chinese also knew that Sarawak had been protecting its forest through sustainable management.

He hoped that the Federal Government, especially the Plantation Industries and Commodities Ministry, would understand what the state was doing as the country’s timber exports came mainly from Sarawak.

Taib said 20% of the state’s six million hectares of permanent forest had been converted with fast-growing timber species. This would yield five times more timber than the natural forest.

Second Planning and Resource Management Minister Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hassan said the corporation and other relevant agencies had intensified their enforcement against illegal timber activities.

Awang Tengah, the new corporation chairman, said timber was the state’s third most important revenue earner after petroleum and gas.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/2/1/nation/3170849&sec=nation

Hall of Shame for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Palm Oil Industry.

Nothing can prepare one for the sight of the systematic extermination of orangutans by the government of Indonesia.

Look at the photos and news articles on these pages in the context of a statement the President made to the media on 10th December 2007.

“In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.

“The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests … To save the orangutan we have to save the forest.”

Statements like these are most welcome, but unless backed up by action, such words fall on deaf ears within the Ministry of Forestry....who are busy granting licences to cut down the very forests the President says they should protect!

When you think you are to busy to help, please could you reflect for a moment on .........

The following extract refers to environmental problems in general. I just hope you find it as thought provoking and relevant to orangutans as I have.

"This is such a shocking and unpalatable fact that most people deny it, or they just don't want to think about it. They believe as individuals, they can do little about it, so push it to the back of their minds. But I can't do that.

When something has to be done, we need to do it. It doesn't matter how big the challenge is or how hard the solution; if I know something is wrong, and I am in a position to help, I will do my best to make it right." Duncan Bannatyne, successful British businessman.