Agriculture

rehabilitation and ecosystem restoration. Research suggests that it would be strategically pertinent for the Indonesian government to commit to keep natural forest timber concessions in production alongside PA to collectively conserve its remaining forests, while providing income and employment. This could be accomplished by recategorising natural forest timber concessions as PA under the IUCN Protected Area Category VI (Brun et al., 2015). Such a permanent forest estate would provide advantages for biodiversity conservation and restoration while laying the foundation for further investment in sustainable forestry.

Image 4.1: Logged forests and cleared land for an oil palm plantation in Jambi, Indonesia

Source: Flickr, photo by Iddy Farmer/CIFOR

4.3 Weakness of the Protected Areas Approach

Notwithstanding the positive intent, outcomes of protected areas are not always as expected. When protected areas are appropriately located, well managed and enforced, positive outcomes are forthcoming. However, experience shows that this is not always the case. Verma et al. (2020) also noted a mismatch between KBA and allocation/coverage of PA. KBA in Sundaland are mainly situated in (biodiversity-rich) lowland forest. Yet many of the PA locations are in highland areas, leaving the biodiversity-rich lowland forests unprotected.

Malaysia and Indonesia have 19.12% and 12.17% area coverage of terrestrial PAs respectively (WDPA Consortium, 2018), contributing to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi Target 11, which set a global area based conservation target of 17% for terrestrial and inland waters and 10% for coastal and marine areas. However, based on the human footprint data and following deduction of areas under intense pressure, the actual protection may only be half and one-third of the official protection respectively for Malaysia and Indonesia. This is in line with findings by Jones et al. (2018) that about 30% of the area within global PAs is under intense human

pressure and, in essence, the actual protection conferred by the current network of PAs is much lower than what has been recorded, underscoring the need to improve the accuracy and transparency of global protected area data, including that which countries submit as contributing to global targets established through the Convention on Biological Diversity. Improving the reporting and ensuring accountability will be key for the success of “30×30” initiative, conceived by the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC, 2021) which aims to conserve 30% of the world’s lands and oceans by 2030 with a priority on the most important ecosystems and ensuring that the resulting system of protected and conserved areas is well connected, fully representative, and effectively managed.

In Sabah too the situation is not encouraging. The human footprint study by Verma et al. (2020) observed that the top four species of birds affected by increased area of human pressure were all from Sabah. This finding was concordant with the fact that: (i) Sabah is a primary centre of endemism for birds and other vertebrates in Sundaland, hosting a wealth of species that are narrowly restricted to this state (Eaton et al., 2016); (ii) Sabah has endured some of the largest increases in human footprint over the last few decades. And worryingly many of the species flagged are currently not even recognised as threatened under the IUCN, emphasising the importance and urgency of re-assessing the threat to Sabah endemics. Similarly, the range of all three species of small-island specialist birds that are narrowly endemic to the West Sumatran island chain is completely unprotected, highlighting that Sundaland's PA network

completely ignores an important centre of endemism along the West Sumatran island chain.

Even though many PA in Sundaland experienced a pronounced increase in human footprint, there are also success stories of proper enforcement resulting in reduced human footprint. An example is the Belum-Temengor forest complex in Peninsular Malaysia, bordering southern Thailand, where the Perak state government gazetted 1,175 km2 as a state park in 2007 (WWF Malaysia, 2007; Schwabe et al., 2015). The Endau Rompin National Park, gazetted in 1993 is another area that has witnessed reduced human footprint. Clearly, timely interventions and proper governance structures are powerful mechanisms for restoration and protection of biodiversity and other natural capital.

4.4 Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII)

Another way at looking at conservation effort is through the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII). BII is a metric of the average abundance of organisms across a broad range of species in an area, relative to their populations in an undisturbed landscape (Scholes and Biggs, 2005; Newbold et al., 2016). BII provides an indication of the overall biodiversity state of a region, and can be estimated for the past, and modelled to forecast the future under different possible scenarios. It is an important index, because it