KOTA KINABALU: Sabah might emulate the REDD+ community based forest management project to achieve sustainable and low carbon development statewide.

       Sabah chief conservator of forests, Datuk Frederick Kugan said the REDD+ project, which was an eight-year programme, had successfully seen the restoration of degraded forests among other successful objectives at the selected sites.

       These sites were in Kg Gana, Kota Marudu, Kinabatangan and Kinabalu Ecolinc.

       REDD+ stands for countries' efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and foster conservation; sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

       This eight-year project, titled “Tackling Climate Change through Sustainable Forest Management and Community Development,” was funded by the European Union and implemented in three selected pilot sites across different areas.

       According to Kugan, based on the carbon stock assessment (CSA) conducted by the communities from 2017 to 2021, there were positive indicators that the project could be implemented on a statewide level.

       He said the project was the demonstration of REDD+ activities in the three pilot sites in Sabah and based on its roadmap, full implementation of REDD+ would be through lessons learned from this project.

       "Through the EU REDD+ project, sustainable forest management through the planting of trees in degraded forest areas and controlled forest silviculture were promoted to improve carbon stock of these forest areas and hence, increase the rate of carbon sequestration," he said.

       Kugan noted that the project had also demonstrated how conservation could improve the economy of the local community.

       "Through the various community development activities, they have helped provide sufficient income to the local communities and reduced the dependencies on forest and encroachment.

       "The communities establishing their protected forest areas or ‘Tagal Hutan’ as Community Conserved Areas (CCAs) within the pilot site is one of the indicators of the success of the project in promoting the REDD+ programme in Sabah," he said.

       Kugan said aside from communities, other key stakeholders such as state-owned oil palm company Sawit Kinabalu, have set aside 2,632ha at Sg Pin for conservation.

       To date, he said 1,352.83ha of degraded forest areas had been restored as a result of the project and some 4,205.28 ha of CCAs (by the community and corporate companies) had been established.

       In addition, nearly 500 households have benefited from the project’s various sustainable livelihood activities.

       There had also been an increase in the number of visitors to the communities’ forest-based ecotourism sites, Kugan said.

       Kugan said the successful implementation of this project could form the baseline for a statewide approach toward achieving sustainable and low carbon development in Sabah.

       He said efforts have been initiated by the Sabah Forestry Department that intend to demonstrate that the experience and results from community-based forest management under the project could be replicated on a statewide level.

       "SFD is currently collaborating with UMS to develop the standard operating procedure (SOP) for aboveground forest carbon density (AGCD) mapping for Sabah," he said.

       "The objective is to develop a statewide approach to replicate and scale up the methods tested through the project to the state level," said Kugan.