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1st November, 2009
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah wants to be at the forefront on the success of the Heart Of Borneo (HoB) concept.
State Forestry Department Director, Datuk Sam Mannan explained that the HoB is mainly about sustainable forest management, good governance, and good environmental management.
He was responding to reporters during the HoB exposition held at 1Borneo yesterday. “We are small in comparison with the rest so we cannot compete in the basis of size, but we want to compete in the basis of governance, quality products and high value. Quality – that is what we have,” he said. HoB is an initiative of three countries – Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia, to sustain about 250 sq km of area situated at the heart of the Borneo Isle.
“We want to use the HoB as our brand name because it is something which is recognized internationally and is something that is highly regarded,” he said. Sam added that the State has garnered a lot of positive response from foreigners who attended the Regional Forum on enhancing forest ecosystem connectivity and corridors within the HoB held recently. “We had a few ambassadors and high commissioners here during the HoB forum recently – Among those who attended were the Singapore High Commissioner to Brunei, British High Commissioner to Brunei, the European Union (EU) ambassador to Malaysia and the Netherlands Ambassador to Malaysia. They were very impressed,” he said on Friday.
Also among the attendees were representatives from the WWF-Indonesia, WWF-International, UNDP and Asian Development Bank, he added.
“They are happy we are taking all the right steps and decisions to move forward,” he said. He added that the State still needs to fix the problem that has been created as a consequence of bad management in the past. “But all that is behind us,” he said. Sam also said that he is happy with the response and help the State is getting. The State Government through his department has already signed two Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) which were important for the conservation of the State’s environment.
One of the MOUs is on the restoration of the Northern Ulu Segama, while the other is on the restoration of current reserves that has been damaged over the past 30 to 40 years by a palm oil company. “We can see that oil palm money is going back for responsible investment into the restoration of the environment which we want,” he said.
He added that as the department with the technical capability on forest management and restoration will give them all our help and we expect to have more such collaborative programs in time to come.
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