Abstract
Forest biodiversity is crucial not only in the socio-economic and industrial development of a country but also in maintaining environmental stability including the protection of water resources, and the flora and fauna. Under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), forest biological diversity is a broad term that refers to all the life forms found within forested areas and the ecological roles they perform encompassing not just trees but the multitude of plants, animals and micro-organisms that inhabit forest areas and their associated genetic diversity. Forest management and conservation are continuously evolving to manage and conserve forests effectively and to address the causes of deforestation and biodiversity loss. Sustainable forest management involves activities at levels ranging from genes to ecosystems and forest conservation is becoming ever more complex as conservationists attempt to understand and accommodate the needs and rights of people who live in and around forests. Amongst all kinds of ecosystems, tropical rainforests ecosystem and wetland and mangrove ecosystem, both of which constitute the Malaysian forests, are the most species-rich. For sustainable management of forest biodiversity of its forest biodiversity, Malaysia is in dire need of sufficient laws and policies, which will subsequently be translated into effective administrative measures. This paper highlights the efficacy as well as sufficiency of the existing Malaysian laws and policies in managing forest biodiversity in a sustainable manner by comparatively looking into the requirement of CBD as an international regime for sustainable biodiversity management and conservation.
Highlights
Forests play an important role in the maintenance of climatic and environmental stability, conservation of invaluable biodiversity as well as supply of clean water besides timber for downstream industries (Chan, 2002)
Forest biodiversity generally refers to the variety of life including plants, animals and micro-organisms that live in forest areas, and the ecological roles these life forms play (Environment Canada, 2008)
There found to be three main hindering factors on the existing Malaysian policy and laws to provide for the sustainable management of forest biodiversity
Summary
Forests play an important role in the maintenance of climatic and environmental stability, conservation of invaluable biodiversity as well as supply of clean water besides timber for downstream industries (Chan, 2002). Forests hold the majority of the world’s terrestrial species: tropical, temperate and boreal forests offer a diverse set of habitats for plants, animals and micro-organisms. These biologically rich systems are increasingly threatened, largely as a result of anthropogenic activities (World Bank, 2000). The CBD, adopted during the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and came into force in 1993, establishes an integrated web of obligations on countries to conserve biological diversity, to use components of biodiversity in a sustainable way and to share the benefits arising out of the use of genetic resources.
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