Suriyan Vichitlekarn
Yong-Kwon Lee
KUCHING: Officers from Asean member states (AMS) are brainstorming on the best ways to enhance their cooperation in forestry before the ministerial meeting in Seoul in South Korea on Aug 30.
Assistant director and head of Agriculture Industries and Natural Resources Division of Asean Secretariat, Suriyan Vichitlekarn told reporters here that the ministers would be looking at various models, projects and the budget for the cooperation for the next two years.
“We are expecting something in the region of US$3 million over two years from South Korea. We will seek more funds, but it will be based on how Asean countries cooperate,” he said after the Second Special Technical Meeting on Asean-Republic of Korea (ROK) Forest Cooperation meeting here yesterday.
Suriyan said some 300 million people in the Asean region would benefit from the forest sector if all AMS had a firm sustainable forest management policy.
“We are holding the meeting here in recognition of ‘The Heart of Borneo’ (HOB) forest region which comprises Sarawak and Sabah representing Malaysia, Kalimantan Indonesia and Brunei.”
Suriyan said for Sarawak the area of interest was from the aspect of restoration and rehabilitation of degraded forests.
“We hope that HOB will be the pilot site while at the same time generate lessons and experiences for sharing with places such as the Mekong.”
He noted that the Malaysian government had a strong interest and liked to take the lead in the dialogue and cooperation with South Korea on forest matters.
Suriyan said the backdrop of this cooperation was that Asean was now moving from a loose organisation into a regional community by 2015
“Forest resource utilisation forms a very important part of that community building. The Koreans also see the importance of the forest, particularly in the promotion of low carbon green growth economy.”
Meanwhile, the director of International Division Korea Forest Service, Dr Yong-Kwon Lee, said the meeting would provide AMS and ROK ideas for forest cooperation.
He said he was optimistic the meeting would be fruitful and expected more details from the technical meeting.