سیاست پایدار مدیریت جنگل و تجزیه و تحلیل اثرات همگرایی در تولید تخته و الوار

Since the mid-1990s, three Malaysian regions, namely Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak, have implemented sustainable forest management (SFM) certification practices, one of the objectives of which is sustaining timber production per hectare. This paper attempts to examine the level of sustainability attained by these three regions by testing for convergence effects of timber production per hectare with respect to the implementation of SFM practices. Nonlinear unit root was applied to test for nonlinear convergence in the three Malaysian regions in comparison to the national average for the period of 1970 to 2007. The results of linear and nonlinear trends showed that the regions have attained long-run convergence with the national average timber production per hectare. As it stands now, this finding has shown that Malaysia practices timber production with managed sustainability.

Complying to the objectives of sustainable forest management (SFM) set by the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) requires that member countries ascribe to the principle of maintaining forest stand regeneration for timber production, environmental stability, biodiversity conservation, recreational values preservation, and the conservation of other forest products and services (Kumari, 1996). The ITTO has set the year 2000 as a target for SFM in timber-producing countries. In this study, an attempt is made to gauge the attainment of timber production sustainability exclusively, since time series data of the other elements of SFM is not available. Despite the ITTO member countries' commitment to the SFM policy, there is a possibility that timber extraction activities in the natural forest diverge from prescribed practices. Consequently, this matter will make it more or less difficult for producer countries to penetrate European or other environmentally sensitive markets. Accordingly, this paper provides a concise analytical technique of tracing the SFM policy and practices of timber-producing countries, together with some preliminary conclusions about their true commitment to and implementation of sustainably managed forests. The presence of either convergence or divergence effects was analyzed to determine the state of progress of a country toward implementing SFM practices. Convergence and divergence effects could be related to timber production among geographical regions. The forestry departments of the three Malaysian regions, Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak, have committed to implementing SFM practices as prescribed under the National Forest Policy of 1992. According to Chong et al. (2008), the convergence technique analysis of high converging effects supports the one nation policy. As these three Malaysian regions have practiced SFM, it is hoped that timber production will be operated in a sustainably managed fashion. On the other hand, diverging effects would suggest that timber production among these regions has fallen short of achieving sustainable management practices. The technique of convergence effects analysis has attracted substantial attention from researchers in various fields of economics, agriculture and tourism (see Barro and sala-i-martin, 1992, Carlino and Mills, 1993, Oxley and Greasley, 1995, Narayan, 2006, Narayan, 2007, Lean and Smyth, 2008, Muhammad and Zulkornain, 2009, Hirnissa and Habibullah, 2009 and Lee, 2009). However, to the best of our knowledge, a study analyzing the convergence effects in forest-related matters is still new and would be focused on the issue of sustainable timber production practices. Malaysia's three regions were chosen for this study, which could potentially be extended to other ITTO-producing member countries at a later date. This study focuses its attention on the procurement of timber policy and the consistency of governments toward implementing the policy, which would improve the current technique of tracing the effectiveness of ITTO countries in implementing SFM policy. Furthermore, it may help to reveal either the countries are diverging, converging or catching up with the implementation of this policy. In other words, timber production is used as a proxy to investigate whether the country is moving toward implementing SFM or the other way around. Timber production from natural forests in Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak has been decreasing steadily since the 1990s. Fig. 1 shows the continuous decrease in timber production from 1990 to 2007: from 12.81 million m3 to 4.22 million m3, 8.44 million m3 to 5.94 million m3, and 18.83 million m3 to 11.8 million m3 for Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak, respectively. MTC (2007) attributed this trend to the effectiveness in implementing SFM practices, such as tightened enforcement of laws and regulations governing forest harvesting by the respective regions. According to Article 74(2) of the Federal Constitution, Malaysian forestry comes under the jurisdiction of the respective state governments. As such, each state is empowered to enact laws and formulate its own forestry policies toward achieving SFM practices. Does the above trend in timber production statistics connote attainment of SFM among all three regions? Adoption of the convergence effects technique could help evaluate the performance of each of these regions accordingly.The above matter is of concern since several questions relating to failure to adhere to prescribed timber production criteria in the producing country and regions within it have been highlighted by ITTO, particularly on the annual coupe restrictions, both in terms of timber volume and area open for logging. These criteria are reflected in the ITTO and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification schemes and have been widely accepted as evidence of satisfying sustainable production or the equivalent of ‘sustainably produced’ (Baharuddin, 1995).

This study, which covered the sample period from 1970 to 2007, seems to suggest that Malaysian timber production has come from forest resources that are adequately managed in a sustainable manner. Among the three Malaysian regions studied, the results indicate that Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak are moving toward sustainable timber production. Although Tachibana et al. (1995) claimed that Sabah and Sarawak regions have extracted timber resources without taking into consideration the need for future generations, our results confirmed that it is the other way around. In the mid-1990s, these regions began to implement SFM practices more effectively, and forest management certifications were sought (Kamaruzaman and Dahlan, 2008). The fact that a country is implementing SFM practices does not guarantee that the results of catching up or convergence effects will be achieved. This analysis technique can identify which region or country is actually diverging from the policy of SFM practices, even though the country in question aspires to comply with SFM practices. Nevertheless, the results and the technique employed in the analysis of this paper have important implications for timber producing countries and other related organizations, such as ITTO. For example, the results of convergence, divergence and catching up will help the government and any related organizations to better understand a country's or a region's progress when conducting audit assessments on SFM certification practices. Hence, one aspect of SFM certification practices that applies to sustainable timber production could be monitored via this method of analysis. From this single country analysis, we may expand the study to all ITTO-producing countries that have implemented SFM practices. Remedial action could be taken in a particular country if they were proven to be diverging from SFM practices. Hence, this study is not only valuable at the national level, but also potentially for all ITTO-producing countries in general to monitor their performance as it relates to sustainable timber production operations.