THIS IS HOW WE DO IT: (From left) Suyoi, Uggah and Lee being briefed on the function of a tubewell in preventing peatland fire.

MIRI: Brunei has commended the effort of the Malaysian government in managing peatland fire as well as trans-boundary haze and is looking into implementing similar approaches.

Bruneian Minister of Development, Pehin Dato Suyoi Osman, during a working visit to the Fire Prevention and Peatland Management Project in Miri yesterday, said trans-boundary haze is not only a problem in Malaysia, but also Brunei.

“We like what we saw (in Miri) and will try to make it work for Brunei because we share a common border,” he said at a press conference during the visit yesterday.

Earlier in his address, Suyoi said Brunei has an estimated 100,000 hectares of peatland, which is about 17 per cent of the country’s total area.

These, he added, are mostly coastal peatland, which is part of the great Baram-Belait peat swamp, where around 80,000 hectares are intact peatland whilst the remaining 20,000 hectares are degraded.

“We, therefore, see the importance and necessity of maintaining a balance between conservation and development in the management of peatland in order to ensure its sustenance,” he said.

Commenting on his working visit to Miri, Suyoi said it was an opportunity for the delegates to seize and build upon, to gain a better insight and learn from Malaysia’s commendable efforts and experience in their approach in managing peatlands that provide many ecological functions and values.

He said peatland acts as a respirator for rich and diverse flora and fauna found nowhere else in the world.

It acts as a medium for water storage and saline intrusion control as well as an effective natural means of flood mitigation and a sequester and storage for carbon, with respect to climate change, he said, adding that, “Burning of peat will also release carbon into the atmosphere and thus contribute to the greenhouse gas effect that will impact climate change.”

Suyoi pointed out that if not properly managed, peatland will easily degrade and be easily damaged either through natural or man-induced activities that will eventually result in the loss of biodiversity, disturbance of the hydrological regime as well as haze that can be laboriously difficult and time consuming to suppress.

Welcoming Suyoi at the project site in Permyjaya here was Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Dato Sri Douglas Uggah Embas.

Also present were Assistant Minister of Communications Datuk Lee Kim Shin, deputy secretary-general of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Dato Dr Abd Rahim Nik and Miri Resident Antonio Kahti Galis.