Geopark in Sarawak

Sarawak and Sabah will have a geopark each after the country’s first in Langkawi. “The proposed sites are the Sarawak River Delta covering the river from Bau to Santubong in Sarawak, and Mount Kinabalu in Sabah,” said Minerals and Geoscience director-general Datuk Yunus Abdul Razak.

Yunus: It is pivotal for these sites to be gazetted as geoparks for the conservation and sustainability of the environment and communities living in these areas.

It was pivotal for these sites to be gazetted as geoparks for the conservation and sustainability of the environment and communities living in these areas, he said.

“We want to create an awareness on conserving the areas and to have better local involvement towards the end. We’re also working for these sites to be part of the Unesco Global Network of Geoparks, and if accepted, officials from Unesco will be monitoring these sites from time to time.”

“Any site recognised by the Unesco Global Network of Geoparks will also enjoy socio-economic spinoffs.

“Since Langkawi was accepted (on June 1, 2007), the number of tourists have increased,” he told reporters after officiating at a technical talk in Kuching yesterday.

Geoparks are nature parks where emphasis is given to the geological features, biological diversity, management as well as socio-economic development for locals living in the designated parks. Yunus said the department had been working closely on the matter with the Sarawak government and was glad to note that it had received encouraging response from the latter. Sarawak Minerals and Geoscience director Dr Kamaludin Hassan said a workshop involving government agencies would be held next year to further deliberate on the proposed geopark site for the state. “We’re now at the stage of collecting data to make the Sarawak River Delta a geopark. The area is very interesting and significant in terms of geology, human habitat and culture as you have the Bidayuhs, Ibans, Malays and Chinese living along the river,” he explained.

On a separate matter, Yunus said the department had taken measures to address public complaints against quarries in the peninsula. Citing examples, he said quarries in Selangor had to carry out activities in more enclosed manners and install sprinklers 24 hours to reduce noise and air pollution. He said sometimes quarries were not solely to be blamed because housing developers and buyers were the ones moving in close to these quarries. “The quarries have been there a long time but without realising it, housing areas are encroaching into these areas,” he said. “There are between 300 and 350 quarries in the country but the ones in Sarawak and Sabah are small scale and short term, operating between five and six years only compared to the ones in the peninsula,” he added.

-thestar online.