Malaysia air quality 'unhealthy' as haze obscures skies

Terra Daily via AFP: Air quality around Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur and on Borneo island was "unhealthy" on Tuesday, with one town reaching "very unhealthy" levels as haze -- mostly from forest fires in Indonesia -- obscured skies. Kuala Lumpur residents wore face masks as protection from the choking smog, while visibility was low.

Nine out of some 50 measuring stations recorded air pollutant index readings above 100, which signify "unhealthy" air quality. Readings in Sibu town in Sarawak state on Borneo breached 200 -- designated as "very unhealthy" -- on Monday, but recovered slightly Tuesday.

A reading of above 300 signifies "hazardous" air. In Indonesia, the National Disaster Management Agency deployed a chopper to conduct water bombing to West Kalimantan on Borneo to tame 268 so-called hotspots detected in the province as haze also shrouded skies there and on Sumatra island....

Haze in Kuala Lumpur, shot by Krisjohn, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Borneo deforested 30 percent over past 40 years

Terra Daily: Forest cover in Borneo may have declined by up to 30% over the past 40 years, according to a study published July 16, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by David Gaveau from the Center for International Forestry Research, Indonesia, and colleagues.

The native forests of Borneo have been increasingly impacted by logging, fire, and conversion to plantations since the early 1970s. Borneo lacks island-wide forest clearance and logging documentation, making forest conservation planning difficult, especially for selectively logged forests that have high conservation potential but are vulnerable to being converted to plantations.

To better understand long-term forest cover and logging patterns, the researchers in this study analyzed LANDSAT satellite images from 1973 to 2010...

A deforested landscape in Borneo, from the Tropenmuseum

80 percent of Malaysian Borneo degraded by logging

Terra Daily via SPX: A study published in the July 17, issue of the journal PLOS ONE found that more than 80% of tropical forests in Malaysian Borneo have been heavily impacted by logging.

The Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak were already thought to be global hotspots of forest loss and degradation due to timber and oil palm industries, but the rates and patterns of change have remained poorly measured by conventional field or satellite approaches. A research team from the University of Tasmania, University of Papua New Guinea, and the Carnegie Institution for Science documented the full extent of logging in this region.

The team used the Carnegie Landsat Analysis System-lite (CLASlite) to reveal the vast and previously unmapped extent of heavily logged forest. CLASlite's high-resolution satellite imaging uncovered logging roads in Brunei and in the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo.

CLASlite, developed by Carnegie's Greg Asner and team, has the unique ability to convert satellite images of seemingly dense tropical forest cover into highly detailed maps of deforestation and forest degradation. The user-friendly monitoring system has been made available to hundreds of governments, nongovernmental organizations, and academic institutions for use in mapping tropical forests.

Analysis of satellite imagery collected from 1990 and 2009 over Malaysian Borneo showed approximately 226,000 miles (364,000 km) of roads constructed throughout the forests of this region.

Nearly 80% of the land surface of Sabah and Sarawak was impacted by previously undocumented, high-impact logging or clearing operations. This finding contrasted strongly with neighboring Brunei, where 54% of the land area maintained intact unlogged forest....

Logging in Batottan in British North Borneo in 1926. Shot by Lieutenant (j.g.) Leonard Johnson

'The Sumatran rainforest will mostly disappear within 20 years'

John Vidal in the globaldevelopment blog in the Guardian (UK): The end is in sight for the great forests of Sumatra and Borneo and the animals and people who depend on them. Thirty years ago the world's third- and sixth-largest islands were full of tigers, elephants, rhinos, orangutan and exotic birds and plants but in a frenzy of development they have been trashed in a single generation by global agribusiness and pulp and paper industries.

Their plantations supply Britain and the world with toilet paper, biofuels and vegetable oil to make everyday foods such as margarine, cream cheese and chocolate, but distraught scientists and environmental groups this week warn that one of the 21st century's greatest ecological disasters is rapidly unfolding.

Official figures show more than half of Indonesia's rainforest, the third-largest swath in the world, has been felled in a few years and permission has been granted to convert up to 70% of what remains into palm or acacia plantations. The government last week renewed a moratorium on the felling of rainforest, but nearly a million hectares are still being cut each year and the last pristine areas, in provinces such as Ache and Papua, are now prime targets for giant logging, palm and mining companies.

The toll on wildlife across an area nearly the size of Europe is vast, say scientists who warn that many of Indonesia's species could be extinct in the wild within 20-30 years. Orangutan numbers are in precipitous decline, only 250-400 tigers remain and fewer than 100 rhino are left in the forests, said the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Millions of hectares are nominally protected, but the forest is fragmented, national parks are surrounded by plantations, illegal loggers work with impunity and corruption is rife in government....

A 1915 shot of a bridge in the Sumatran forest, from the Tropenmuseum Collection, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

In Malaysia's election, a focus on rainforest graft

Niluksi Koswanage in AlertNet via Reuters: The island of Borneo may be all that stands between Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and an unprecedented election defeat within weeks for his ruling coalition. Borneo's two Malaysian states -- Sabah and Sarawak -- have been a bastion of votes for the National Front coalition headed by Najib's party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).

The two states, among Malaysia's poorest despite vast natural resources, kept the National Front in power in 2008 even as a groundswell of support for the opposition deprived the government of its iron-clad two-thirds parliamentary majority.

That could start to change. Allegations of corruption in recent months have dogged the chief ministers of both Sabah and Sarawak, long-time rulers who hold vast sway over some of the world's largest tracts of tropical forests.

The National Front is favoured to win the election expected on April 27 after Najib dissolved parliament on Wednesday. But it could be the closest his ruling coalition has faced in its 56-year rule. Corruption scandals threaten to undermine one of Najib's central messages -- that he is making Southeast Asia's third-largest economy more transparent and competitive.

Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman, who is also the state's top UMNO official, has been under scrutiny the past year after whistleblower website Sarawak Report published documents from the Hong Kong and Malaysian anti-corruption agencies.

The two agencies started investigating Musa in late 2008. The probe was based on a tip-off that the chief minister was extracting money from businessmen seeking timber concessions and funnelling it to UBS bank accounts in Hong Kong and Singapore, sources close to the investigations said. They declined to say who gave the tip-off....

Climate change and deforestation in the Heart of Borneo could be a deadly combination

Eco-Business: The release of a new report: ‘Assessing the Impact of Climate Change in Borneo’, reveals that the Heart of Borneo (HoB) will face increasing detrimental effects from climate change in the years to come. WWF projections indicate that if the island of Borneo continues at its current rate of natural capital loss through deforestation, it will be severely affected by climate change through the increased risk of floods and forest fires, human health impacts, changes in agricultural yields and damages to infrastructure.

Sea level rise is also projected to cause widespread damage to population centers, causing considerable economic damage and costs to local governments, communities and businesses. In addition, with two degrees of warming, Borneo’s rich biodiversity in marine, reptile and amphibian species will be severely affected, and potentially devastated by any warming beyond this level by 2050.

This report follows the release on June 5, World Environment Day, of the joint WWF and Asian Development Bank (ADB) report: Ecological Footprint and Investment in Natural Capital in Asia and the Pacific, which warned of dwindling natural capital in the Asian-Pacific region and the dire pressure that was placing on remaining eco-system services.

WWF Heart of Borneo’s Initiative leader, Adam Tomasek said the climate change report’s predictions, coupled with dwindling natural capital reserves through continued deforestation, were cause for alarm for governments, industry and communities alike....

Logging in Borneo, around 1926. Shot from NOAA

Indonesia picks Borneo for forest preservation scheme

Terra Daily via AFP: Indonesia has chosen its Borneo island to conduct a pilot project aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, as part of a deal with Norway, an official said Thursday. Norway agreed in May to contribute up to a billion dollars to help preserve Indonesia's forests, in part through a two-year moratorium on the clearing of natural forests and peatlands from 2011.

"Central Kalimantan (Borneo) is a province with large forest cover and peat land and has faced a real threat of deforestation," the country's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) head Kuntoro Mangkusubroto said in a statement.

Mangkusubroto said the provincial authorities are expected to manage the project properly, ensure its transparency, tackle any corruption and enforce the law against illegal loggers…

A huge log being placed on a railroad car at Batottan, British North Borneo, in 1926, shot by Lieutenant (j.g.) Leonard Johnson; United States Coast and Geodetic Survey