MARCH 8 — “Breaking News: Study shows that SACF is Legally STILL a Permanent Forest Reserve”, shouted the headline from the Shah Alam Community Forest Society (SACFS), a group of Setia Alam residents striving tirelessly to preserve what developers (with the help of creative writing by property publications) billed as “the nearby 3,000-acre Bukit Cherakah Forest Reserve.” (sic)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ShahAlamCommunityForest/permalink/2164300740366697/
For several years already, it has been patently clear to residents and observers alike that Majlis Perbandaran Shah Alam (MBSA) treats BCFR as non-existent across their entire Section U10.
Their local plan depicts cemetery, school, housing developments, and a major arterial road collectively obliterating this block of forest including its peak Bukit Pasir (ca. 240m above sea level). A spot best known to hikers as the Peak Garden viewpoint — its vista marred by development land clearing laid out across a wide sweeping arc.
As to why an entire hill should be obliterated (instead of judiciously building along lower contours), that begs another question. Bukit Pasir peak was already recognised in British survey maps of the original (and gigantic) BCFR of 1909, aeons before Shah Alam’s birth.
In proper urban planning philosophy, such matters are not taken lightly. While it may be slightly below the 300m ASL criteria that “counts for more” on hill/slope development guidelines, so too do other Klang Valley green lungs capped by not-particularly-tall peaks (eg. Bukit Kiara 270m, and Bukit Permatang Resam a.k.a. Unity Peak of Kota Damansara Community Forest 210m) — both afforded a high level of recognition and protection for 400 and 800 acres respectively.
Why not for Bukit Pasir and the Shah Alam Community Forest? What did that “breaking news” actually mean for SACF?
Let’s take a broader look at our country’s land/natural resources protection scenario. A few perspectives to consider:
(i) The Main Range-connected Permanently Reserved Forests (PRFs) making up today’s Taman Warisan Negeri Selangor were all gazetted before Independence. So too were major “coastal” PRFs which (due to human settlement and economic activity) were already discontiguous from the Main Range at the turn of the twentieth century, among them BCFR — also HS Kuala Langat Utara which has been much in the news lately for the wrong reasons.
(ii) Malaysia has a National Parks Act (1980) but our largest, the Taman Negara was already created in the 1930s as King George V National Park. At the prodding of the British, three state councils (Pahang, Kelantan, Terengganu) with their respective Sultans’ assent enacted legislation creating contiguous Protected Areas spanning the tri-state boundary.
(iii) The first Malay Reservation Enactment was promulgated by the British for the four Federated Malay States(FMS) in 1913, and following revision in 1933 is still current law for Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Pahang and Perak.
The Klang Valley’s largest and most valuable Malay Reserve development landbank is the Sg Penchala MRA, gazetted in 1916. Its inherent agrarian/rural traits pose significant development challenges, yet present the best opportunities for preserving pockets of cultural heritage and traditional kampung settings within a dense metropolis sorely needing to be “balanced” by greener/lower-density special character areas.
(iv) Of the recognised Orang Asli reserves (settlements) in Selangor, ca.two-thirds were “Sakai Reservations”, colonial edicts which survive to this day as sole claim to legitimacy/ tenure.
Sakai Reservation might well have been fit-for-purpose for its day and age, but are our post-independence Orang Asli reservations doing any better at serving indigenous people’s needs in the modern era? We will revisit that in a bit.
Let us now examine the natural resource protection frameworks the British bequeathed us, and the question of how well (or badly) we as an independent nation managed our inheritance.
Conservation is not preservation
When we talk of resource protection, now as in colonial times, it is not about preservation (i.e. leaving untouched and “unharmed”). Conservation is the right term for exploitation of resources to benefit the nation at large, while ensuring that “fair share” is left over for future generations.
Certainly colonial paradigms differed greatly from that of our newly-independent nation in 1957, which again is like chalk and cheese compared to our modern day.
The British enacted these protections with the intention of sustainably reaping the profits of colonization, wishing for the sun to never set on the Empire, and for their descendants to continue reaping the same.
Yet despite this our inherited resource protections retain many basic characteristics which are relevant to this day.
As the root of it, in my opinion, is equity — the principle that “any right or liability should as far as possible be equalised among all interested parties” (so said Wikipedia!).
A principle already in British laws before they set foot on our shores, and applied to “keeping the peace” as a key enabler towards reaping the spoils of Empire.
Disregarding that “reaping the spoils” bit, the core principles still seem relevant today for all full-fledged Malaysian citizens, equal before the law, whose livelihood and well being depend on the sustainability of our natural resources.
What lessons should such realisations bring for us? Post-Independence we moved towards “federalising” our resource protection laws (to the extent our Constitution allows).
The advent of the National Forestry Council and National Forest Policy fully two decades post-Merdeka was, by any measure, quite belated and it was not until 1984 that a National Forestry Act was passed — an indicator of State-Federal tensions around timber revenue and the particular coffers it feeds.
Could our country have done this better and got us to a better place now in resource protection? Most definitely so, had the focus been more altruistic and less political; more inclusive and less communal. And there is still time (but not much) to get ourselves back onto the right track.
Law and institutional reform for national resource protection
The “right track” must be technocratic, never political, and informed by hard and real data of what has gone on before.
Our SACF legal team, in investigating the legal status of BCFR under land/forestry laws, found the Petaling District and Land Office (PDT) personnel “kind and helpful” — most heartening!
But is that good enough considering that open, transparent data is key to the scientific analysis and policy work that must surely inform where we go with future legislation, regulation and administration of our natural resources?
It is exactly Institutions such as PDT Petaling that must professionally and apolitically carry the torch for spot-on administration and data integrity. I sighted a Pekeliling (government circular) requiring each PDT to maintain up-to-date registers of land gazettes — starting from the inception dates of a long list of land-related resource legislations.
Had that been thoroughly implemented, I daresay the SACF team might have concluded their finding in one visit to PDT!
And had there been a clear and transparent public record of remnant PRF boundaries at the moment/s when it mattered most, it is quite plausible that the State and local governments would have been compelled to be “less cowboy” in developing Shah Alam.
Equity, sustainability and the Federal Constitution
Principles of equity applied to natural resource management in modern contexts of environmental awareness, climate action, etc naturally leads to a multi-generational concept of sustainability — well enshrined today as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Really if we think about it, terms like “SDGs” are a branding exercise — their underlying concepts and values have been with us all along, waiting to be re-embraced by a modern society which is planning its cities, extracting wealth from its natural resources, and endeavouring not to leave anyone behind in what should be a Malaysia for all.
A case in point on the latter is how poorly Orang Asli land rights fared in spite of the Aboriginal People’s Act-APA(1954). My layman readings led me to believe that in intent and spirit it is on par with the Malay Reservation laws, i.e. not precluding the OA from individual ownership, via Group Settlement scheme (ala FELDA) or otherwise.
However, some recent (but long overdue) OA settlement gazettes inexplicably did not invoke the APA, denying any prospect of ownership. I’m referring specifically to the use of National Land Code Section 62’s “reservation of land for public purpose.”
Why is the creation of OA settlement generalized as “public purpose” when there is very specific law for doing this? Can someone explain, especially the Attorney General?
The AG, the Department of Orang Asli Development (JAKOA) and the PDT are all Institutions. They are not unique among the many government agencies who, to put it bluntly, seem to have the power to frustrate the best-intentioned legislation at every turn.
Law reforms can never succeed without strong and independent Institutions. Realistically speaking such reform could never be made to happen specifically and singularly for our area of natural resource protection.
Only something “cataclysmic”, definitely political in nature, triggering pervasive changes across all spheres of public life, could possibly achieve this.
Yet for Malaysians who value nature, the environment, fairness towards indigenous peoples, etc, it is impossible to sit idly by and not agitate for some small wins at least.
And meanwhile pray for the emergence of a “Green Party” promising in their Election Manifesto to reform our environmental and natural resource protections — preferably with very specific statements on how they plan to do it.
And perhaps even promise to tackle that biggest elephant in the room, the Ninth Schedule of the Federal Constitution, and amend it to provide a real and effective Federal check and balance on States’ powers over land, forests, water, and other natural resources.
* Peter Leong is a committee member of both the Friends of Bukit Kiara (FoBK), and the Kota Damansara Community Forest Society, registered NGOs dedicated to the conservation of the eponymously named green lungs.
**This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
