Can plantations value more than profit? Some in Malaysia think so
Plantation owners in the Borneo state of Sabah are setting aside land for conservation but some remain sceptical.
28/06/2023 (Al Jazeera), Sabah - At the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary on the eastern coast of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo, you have to drive along kilometres of bumpy dirt roads flanked by columns of palm oil trees before arriving at a spot where you can watch the endangered monkeys feeding up close.
The sanctuary, which has grown to some 202 hectares (500 acres) of mangroves and is home to about 200 proboscis monkeys, is owned by a palm oil company and located on about 283 hectares (700 acres) of plantation.
Since 2000, the Yet Hing Plantation has been feeding the monkeys – endemic to Borneo and famous for their tawny-coloured fur and the males’ bulbous noses – and charging tourists to see them.
But it is now taking the endeavour more seriously.
In 2021, it acquired some 18 hectares (43 acres) – roughly the size of 33 football fields – of a neighbouring palm oil plantation that was unproductive and sought the expertise of the Sabah Forestry Department to plant 35,000 saplings of more than 20 mangrove species to extend the monkeys’ habitat.
The idea is to create a wildlife corridor – tracts of forest to connect natural landscapes split apart by agriculture and other human activity – for the animals and keep them away from the crops, while also protecting the plantation by providing a buffer against the risk of floods.
“We try to maintain the balance between economic activity and conserving the ecosystem of the mangroves along our plantation. The private sector can do it if they plan it properly,” said 69-year-old Michael Lee Hing Huat, who co-founded Yet Hing Plantation with his brother. “It’s not idealism or whatever. These two activities can come together.”
Such statements sit uneasily for some, especially when palm oil is seen as a key driver of deforestation. Indonesia and Malaysia together account for 85 percent of the world’s palm oil exports and both countries have been threatened with a boycott by other governments as well as consumers for unsustainable practices. Whether palm oil can be produced sustainably is a deeply divisive issue.
Animals in estates
In Malaysian Borneo, industrial palm oil development accounted for between 57 and 60 percent of all deforestation from 1973 to 2015, according to a 2018 report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The resulting habitat loss and fragmentation is a significant threat to the proboscis monkey as well as other iconic endangered species such as the pygmy elephant and orangutan. A 2019 study found that the proboscis monkey population along the Kinabatangan River, an important habitat for wildlife fragmented by plantations, was declining by 10 percent a year as a result of deforestation.
Moreover, in a world of finite land and ever-increasing consumption, palm oil plantations could double in area by 2050. According to the IUCN report, this could affect just more than half the at-risk mammal species around the world.
But palm oil has also been credited with lifting many smallholders out of poverty.
“For those who depend on oil palm as a source of income, they don’t see it in the bad light that folks overseas might. It is a crop that has helped many in rural areas send their children to university, and help them move upward to better lives – often as professionals,” said Serina Rahman, a lecturer at the National University of Singapore’s Southeast Asian Studies department.