Junior Cycle Geography CYCLONE Government Interventions The Malaysian government introduced policies to reduce the levels of deforestation.
The government launched an education campaign to increase public awareness of the value of tropical rainforests.
Permanent Forest Estates were created where no change of land use is allowed. Local communities were included and involved in forest conservation projects. In 2020, Malaysia was awarded the Gold Medal for the world’s biggest increase in forested area. So far, over 950,000 hectares have been grown in 10 managed forests spread across the islands.
Environmental Impact
Malaysia hopes to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions across the economy by 45%. Keeping at least 50% of the country covered in forest will help them to achieve this.
Social Impact
Approximately 350,000 people work either directly or indirectly in forestry.
Sustainable Exploitation of Forestry in Ireland
Coillte (the Irish word for ‘forest’ or ‘woods’) is an Irish organisation that owns and manages 7% of the land in Ireland. That is roughly 44,000 hectares, or 440 km² of land. It was set up in 1989 and has helped to increase the amount of forests covering Ireland from 1.5% to 11%.
Middle-aged forest
8. Sustainable forestry in Ireland
Old forest
Economic Impact
Malaysia exported US$4.4 billion of timber and timber products from January to October 2020.
Young forest
Coillte makes sure that forestry in Ireland is done in a sustainable way. Figure 8 shows how this is done in stages.
1. Saplings (young trees) are planted.
2. When forests reach a young age (0–15 years), they are used for human activities, such as camping and cycling.
3. Middle-aged forests (15–55 years) are used for cutting down trees. 4. Old-age forests (55+ years) are cut down completely.
During stages 3 and 4, young saplings are planted each time a tree is cut down. 366