On Sunday 1st february I, as Chairman WWF Malaysia paid a visit to the office of Kedah state Exco to discuss the old issue of logs vs water. Some years ago, the Kedah government had wanted to selectively log the area. The former Menteri Besar YAB Dato' Seri Syed Syed Zain Syed Razak had wanted to do some logging in the Ulu Muda Forest Reserves. The talks of the day then was helicopter logging. The EIA was carried out but the Federal government disagreed with the idea of logging in the watershed areas bordering Thailand. Incidently, these watershed areas collected rain water and flow them into the four dams that feed the MADA agricultural areas and also into the river that passed across Seberang Prai. The NGO's were against the logging simply because of the negative impact on the watershed areas.
The idea died for a few years until the new government took over in March 2009, when the new Menteri Besar, YAB Dato' Seri Ustaz Azizan brought back the old idea hoping for $100 million compensation from the Federal government. Though the idea is sound but the Federal government wouldn't want to set a precedence to be followed by other state governments, especially Pahang.
Our arguments is simply if you logged the area, negative impact will befall the watershed areas and the state government will earn some revenue. But we argue if the state government keep the watershed intact, the state government will earn more money via MADA's compensation and also the industries of Penang compensation for using the Kedah water.+
No comments:
Post a Comment