KUCHING: Sarawak will take advantage of its mass forest area to diversify its revenue base by venturing into carbon credit trading, said Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg.
Acknowledging the state’s forests as an overlooked and undervalued asset, he said the state should now spread the revenue base from its forests, apart from the usual royalties and taxes collected from logging operations.
“There’s a lot of potential in the forests. It does not even require the cutting of the trees,” he said in his speech at the Sarawak Forest Department’s 100th-year anniversary gala dinner here tonight.
Abang Johari said the state government had recently signed a memorandum of agreement with Shell International on a carbon credit project as a new source of revenue from the state’s forests.
“New carbon partners are also needed to harness this new source of revenue and fund our Forest Landscape Restoration programmes,” he said.