The candid acknowledgment by Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Adenan Satem of the absurdity of the state’s past policy on collaboration with foreign scientists and researchers in biodiversity conservation must have ruffled the feathers of several authorities involved in the issue.
However, it came as no surprise to the people as they are now accustomed to Adenan’s bluntness and applaud him for speaking his mind in initiating changes on impractical – and to use his own word, ‘bodoh’ regulations.
Sarawak’s rich biodiversity had been left untapped as the state lacks the expertise to conduct research on the bewildering variety of plants in our national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and protected forests because of the reluctance to allow foreign researchers and scientists to explore the medicinal and cosmetic potential of the plants.
To be fair, the past policy makers barring foreign scientists from conducting research in our national parks and forests was done with good intention.
The policy was to protect the state from being robbed of the benefits of its herbal and medicinal plants by unscrupulous researchers who patent the products derived from the plants and claim the commercial benefits of the resources from our forests.
However, as Adenan pointed out this should not cause us to stop collaboration with foreign institutes which have the expertise and facilities to conduct the studies as agreements on the outcome of their researches must include safeguards against the state being shut out of the commercial benefits of products developed from our plants.
Another policy the government should look into is the ban on collection and propagation of rare and endangered species of plants from our forests.
Again this regulation was drawn up with the good intention of protecting these rare plants from being over harvested by botanical hunters.
Ironically this law seemed to have achieved the opposite result on the conservation of these plant species as their total protection drives up their prices in the ornamental plant market encouraging poachers to go to great extent to hunt for them.
This law was necessary before the advent of tissue culture propagation and modern technology in plant cultivation.
With tissue culture poachers now do not have to remove the whole plant to smuggle it out of the state as a small part of the plant would be enough for them to propagate it in their labs.
The state should instead allow controlled collection of our rare plants by approved institutes or companies to be propagated through tissue culture for the ornamental plant market.
This would discourage the pillaging of these rare plant species since they are easily available in the market.
As the chief minister pointed out we must review our policies to be more effective in our biodiversity conservation as new technologies like tissue culture have changed the rules of the game.