UNE PhD Innovation student Asril Phdi’s project hopes to improve the Malaysian Forestry Law in the East Coast States of Peninsular Malaysia under supervision of Professor Paul Martin and Dr. Sharl Marimuthu from UNE, and industrial co-supervisors from Malaysia, Professor Zuhairah Ariff and Professor Wan Izatul.
Literature suggest that the problem of deforestation in Peninsular Malaysia has caused notable loss of tropical forest that leads to the loss of forest-based biodiversity. From a legal context, Malaysia has enacted forestry laws which are administered and enforced by the authorities. Despite implementation of the laws and pressure from the public, deforestation continues to exists. It is expected that the problem can be mitigated with improvement of the laws either at the instrument or at the institutional level. In order for such improvement to occur, there must be an evaluation of the current laws.
The aim of this Innovation project is to evaluate the legal instruments relevant to the context of Malaysian forestry and create improvement recommendations. The legal instruments and the implementation (institutional) will be evaluated based on the IUCN Framework for Assessing and Improving Law for Sustainability.
In achieving the aim, the flow of the research will be in the following stages:
- Conduct initial scoping of forest governance issue;
- Specify the legal principle and identify sources and indicators;
- Evaluate implementation of the principle using the framework;
- Reporting of the evaluation;
- Develop recommendations for improvement; and
- Obtaining feedback of the recommendations from stakeholders.
Currently, the research is being conducted in Malaysia and will focus on stakeholder engagement as a form of data collection and Innovation project implementation. Due to the nature of this research, the stakeholders shall consist of forestry departments from the east coast states of Peninsular Malaysia, namely Kelantan, Pahang and Terengganu. Once the engagement is completed, he will return to Australia for the preparation of the Innovation portfolio that is to be submitted at the end of 48 months of the program.