Managing Nature’s Biodiversity Assets - Critical in Five Year Plan

 by Professor Dato Dr Ahmad Ibrahim

The government has just launched the 12th Malaysia Plan. The initial response has been mixed. Some laud the Plan for its alignment to the SDGs. Others say the targets and assumptions are unrealistic. Many agree the success of the Plan would depend on the commitments of stakeholders. Most important of all, the key stakeholders, including the business, community, and civil society, must own up to the Plan. There must be good buy-in from all in the execution. As has been shown in most Plans, effective implementation is the greatest challenge.

All 5-year plans have one thing in common. How can the country’s assets be managed efficiently to deliver returns sustainably? How can we sweat out maximum value from our assets? Values include those accruing to the economy and society without depleting the asset’s core value. In this age, where sustainable development is a common agenda, some key assets including nature, people, talent, and the built-up physical infrastructures must be well managed. Increasingly, nature assets have emerged as one most critical. It has always been the upset in the natural assets such as water which have been most disruptive. Managing such assets requires close monitoring and supervision, to achieve efficiency. The usual monitoring is done by physically assessing the assets. This is often time consuming and less reliable.

Because of advances in imaging technology, nowadays monitoring can be done remotely and at reasonable cost. We are talking about using satellite technology to generate the image and deploying AI algorithms to decipher the image for decision making. That way, the assessment can be fast and reliable. Take the natural asset of biodiversity for example. It is one of our prized assets because it has implications on many resources that we depend on. Water is one resource which an economy and society cannot do without. As logging increasingly encroaches into sensitive water catchment areas, disruption to water supply has been showing a disturbing trend. There is no doubt that as the population grows, increased social and economic demands will create threats to the country’s land and marine biodiversity.

In response to these threats, the Government has created the National Policy on Biological Diversity 2016-2025 which addressed the country’s biodiversity goals and aligned the country’s commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is where effective monitoring is key. Many companies offer services on deploying earth observation data for effective monitoring. The largest is Planet which provides daily, global satellite data. With Planet as a partner, the Government can leverage high-resolution imagery to make strategic and bold progress towards achieving the goals identified in the National Policy on Biological Diversity and drive the country towards a healthier and diverse ecosystem.

The earth observation technology can also support other SDG agenda including smart cities, border surveillance and early warning on climate disasters. Such investments pay as we strive to deliver sustainability to the nation.