Let’s put the forest, wildlife back first: Kok
Published on: Sunday, March 31, 2019
By: Kan Yaw Chong
LAHAD DATU: Planting trees, putting our forests and wildlife back and no more oil palm expansion will be measures to counter the anti-palm oil lobby and to help the “Love My Palm Oil” (Sayangi Sawitku) campaign succeed, said Minister of Primary Industries Teresa Kok.
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Speaking at the launch of the 1 Million Trees Planting Project at Pin Supu Forest Reserve, here, Saturday, she said:
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“The main accusations against oil palm plantations are deforestation and killing of wildlife and biodiversity. So let us address these accusations before we go to push and before we lobby for more palm oil to be sold in Europe.
“Before we criticise all these anti palm oil campaigners, we still have to ask whether we do everything correct?
“Are all these accusations correct, is there anything we can do for our palm oil and anything else we can do for Malaysia?“ Kok said in a stirring speech which highlighted the need to raise Malaysian awareness and pride on the raft of social economic, health, nutritive, food and non-food benefits of palm oil on the one hand and taking serious actions to correct the industry’s weaknesses on the other.
“We want to start telling a good story about Malaysia, that the Malaysian people love our nature, we love our palm oil, we love our wild animals – these are going to be the good stories that we want to tell to whoever import our palm oil,” Kok said of the new approach to turn world opinion around.
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She thanked Datuk Shafie Apdal for being the first Chief Minister to pledge support when she briefed Menteri Besars and Chief Minister last year about the challenges faced by the palm oil industry.
“I said actually it is high time for us not to expand the planting of oil palm trees and expand oil palm plantations to the extent that we encroach into forestry areas. He was the first who issued statement and gave support.
“Actually Shafie’s statement came when I went to Europe to meet with European Commissioners and top guns in Brussels, including the Trade Minister of Switzerland because the Swiss Parliament had passed a resolution to ban palm oil last year.
‘ So we know Shafie is really committed and we also know that after the new Sabah Government was formed no matter how much the wood industry protested he believed we should not export logs in that manner but develop the downstream industry in Sabah so that it will bring more income to the people in Sabah.”
She this was why when the “Love My Palm Oil” campaign was launched last week, “we wanted to plant one million trees in Sabah because we can see the Sabah State Government is very open to new ideas and the first state which came out and said no more expansion of oil palm plantations in Sabah”.
She said plantations like Sawit Kinabalu need not worry about expanding land use as they have come out with a new species giving better yields.
“Use the new seedlings and don’t expand more land,” asserted Kok who noted European tourists love visiting Sabah because its rich wildlife and high biodiversity.
“Some European ambassadors advised us that when we promote tourism, we should promote our forests because ecotourism has become more and more popular,” she said.
“If you want to attract more tourists from developed countries like the European Union to come to visit Malaysia, we need to project the forests and also the wildlife and tell that we are doing a lot of good agricultural practices through Government implementation of the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil certification.”
Kok said people asked why go through this very troublesome process. “We want to show the world that Malaysia produces sustainable palm oil and that’s why we are very serious in implementing MSPO Certification which will protect all the wildlife.
“The palm oil we are going to produce in Malaysia is going to be a 5-star oil. When I say we want to plant one million trees it is not like some politicians who make announcement and after that we don’t know what is happening.”
“I am serious, I am coming here next year again, I want to see how many trees have been planted, we are going to monitor, we have nowadays various technology like drones and so on we are going to monitor to see it’s done. We cannot come from Putrajaya, I need to depend on the industry players. Some of you might ask where are you going to get the money?”
The first batch of seed funding comes from the Ministry. The rest she would tap into the financial potentials of Malaysian industries and Malaysians.
“Especially those who work in the timber sector, that’s why KC Lau is here (head of the Timber Association of Malaysia), some contributions from them. After that I am going to talk to the oil palm people. We are going to raise funds.
“We are going to work out a mechanism where our fellow Malaysians can contribute to planting trees, starting with one million trees in Sabah. I want to see other conservation efforts by the Sabah Government and other industry players who have planted hundreds of thousands of trees in the surrounding areas” she said.
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