THE Sarawak government aims to achieve one million hectares by 2025 for totally protected areas (TPAs).
Deputy Premier Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan said currently, 874,000 hectares have been gazetted.
“Additionally, Sarawak has gazetted 1.2 million hectares of marine areas as TPA, bringing the total TPAs in Sarawak to 2.1 million hectares.
“Sarawak is also implementing an initiative known as the Heart of Borneo (HoB) project, which spans 2.7 million hectares from Lawas to Tanjong Datu.
“This initiative represents a transboundary conservation collaboration between Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, and Indonesia since February 2007,” he said.
Awang Tengah, who is also Minister of Natural Resources and Urban Development, said this in his ministerial winding-up speech today.
Besides, he added that to strengthen conservation efforts for Ramsar Sites, Kuching Wetland National Park, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Sarawak Forestry Corporation and Mubadala Energy, Abu Dhabi, related to Nature-based Solution (NbS) and potential blue carbon initiative was signed on Nov 6.
In line with the Land Use Policy, the state government has so far gazetted an area of 4.0 million hectares as permanent forest reserves out of a target of 6 million hectares.
“This year, a new permanent forest reserve, the Mujong Pila protected forest, covering 32,812 hectares, has been gazetted,” he said.
