Water, Land and Natural Resources Minister Dr Xavier Jayakumar noted that all state governments wanted compensation but “whether we will be able to give them the compensation is a different question”.
“Yesterday, we discussed that there are other ways for the federal government to look into compensation as far as the state governments are concerned, especially in terms of the forest industry,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the Earth Day celebrations at Taman Tugu here today.
Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad launched the celebrations.
Xavier was asked to comment on whether Putrajaya had plans to compensate the Pahang government for loss of revenue after sections of forest and wildlife reserves were converted to water catchment areas.
Pahang Menteri Besar Wan Rosdy Wan Ismail reportedly said the state is planning to demand RM17.1 billion in compensation from the federal government.
He said the compensation was for “opportunity cost” for the nearly one million hectares of forest and wildlife reserves in the state that were being used as water catchment areas.
“This is also for the Klau Dam, where the state government is losing out on revenue for logging, minerals, palm oil and quit rent for an area of about 33,000ha,” he was quoted as saying.
Xavier said the federal government was into huge reforestation programmes and urged the states to take advantage of them.
“The states should take full advantage of these programmes to boost the economy as far as the forests are concerned.
“There are lucrative business models already there for us to use in future,” he said.
Xavier had said last year that a massive reforestation programme, including rehabilitating land left barren by logging, was expected to be introduced.
He said an NGO, Tropical Rainforest Conservation & Research Centre (TRCRC), would receive a grant from the Norwegian government to conduct the reforestation.
After six to seven years, the forest can be reharvested for a downline industry such as bio plastics, he said.
Currently, 52% of Malaysia is under forest cover but if Sarawak and Sabah are not included, forest cover for Peninsular Malaysia would not even reach 50%.