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The Maxis Award winner helms the Tropical Rainforest Conservation and Research Centre, which uses technology to preserve the country's rare and endangered tree and plant species
Southeast Asia is home to nearly 15 percent of the world’s tropical rainforests. These ecosystems play a pivotal role as the earth's green lungs, maintaining the global carbon balance by soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow and stabilising the planet's climate.
Researchers, however, calculate that between 2001 and 2019, the Southeast Asian region lost about 610,000 sq km of forest—an area bigger than the country of Thailand.
The loss of more than half of the region’s original forest cover, caused by human activities such as agriculture and logging, could lead to severe biodiversity loss crises.
Experts warn that over 40 percent of Southeast Asia's biodiversity will become extinct by the year 2100 if we keep up with the current rate of deforestation.
In Malaysia, one organisation is working to prevent this. The Tropical Rainforest Conservation and Research Centre (TRCRC) preserves rare and endangered local tree and plant species. Over the years, it has led reforestation projects across the country, establishing conservation sites in the states of Selangor, Perak and Sabah. It has also a regional presence across most of Southeast Asia.
Read more: How This Ecologist Is Using Technology To Preserve Malaysia's Rainforests
Dr Dzaeman Dzulkifli, the organisation's executive director, shares that climate change has resulted in extreme weather events such as heavier rainfall during the monsoon season and more extreme droughts during the dry season. He believes that protecting Malaysia's forested hills and water catchment areas should be prioritised as they are the first line of defence against landslides and flash floods.
“Restoring a forest is more than planting some trees in the ground,” says Dzaeman. “It’s a long process that takes between five to seven years because there is a lot of preparation involved, from gathering seedlings to nurturing them in the nursery to identifying the right location to plant them.”
Coordinating restoration work to save the forests across three states in Malaysia has its challenges—manpower being one of them. The organisation’s team of 50 people oversee conservation efforts for large tracts of forests across the states. “We have been building the capacity of the native communities in these states. Having solutions to digitally manage work plans and teams have enabled us to do so while working in remote and varied environments,” says Dzaeman.
He adds that “we have ambitions to scale up our operations and restore even more forests, which is why we need more automated solutions to help us in our daily tasks—be it monitoring and watering seedlings or managing data collected from the field.”
Read more: Recycling Simplified: How Mohamed Tarek El-Fatatry Is Tackling Malaysia’s E-Waste Problem
