State fund could support measures to stop forest fires before they spread
KUCHING: Sarawak could use revenue from its carbon levy to help finance haze-prevention measures through the State’s Climate Change Fund.
Universiti Putra Malaysia Faculty of Forestry and Environment Carbon Management Unit head Dr Waseem Razzaq Khan told Sarawak Tribune that such measures could qualify as forest-conservation or climate-resilience initiatives because preventing peat and forest fires also avoids greenhouse-gas emissions.
Verified reductions in those emissions could attract carbon-market revenue or results-based climate finance, although he cautioned that preventing a fire would not automatically generate a carbon credit.
However, Waseem stressed that the Environment (Reduction of Greenhouse Gases Emission) Ordinance 2023 does not specifically refer to haze prevention or expressly list those measures.
Under the Ordinance, carbon-levy revenue is first paid into the State Consolidated Fund. Section 31 allows the Dewan Undangan Negeri to appropriate money from the fund into the Climate Change Fund to meet its objectives.
Waseem also pointed to the 2026 State Budget, which stated that the Climate Change Fund was intended to support forest conservation and climate-resilience projects, alongside renewable energy, energy efficiency and grid modernisation.
If the fund’s operating rules or eligibility criteria were narrower, he said they could potentially be clarified through guidelines, programme criteria or the relevant appropriation mechanism.
However, Waseem said that interpretation would ultimately require confirmation from the State’s legal and administering authorities.
The legal position would become more complicated if carbon revenue were used to finance prevention projects outside Sarawak, particularly where fires contribute to transboundary haze.
Spending within Sarawak on satellite monitoring, modelling, forecasting and preparedness for fires beyond its borders would be relatively straightforward because such measures could directly protect communities in the State.
Sarawak’s climate legislation is primarily framed around emissions, land, forests and climate impacts within the State, while the 2026 Budget describes Climate Change Fund projects as benefiting communities across Sarawak.
He therefore favoured cooperation through established regional and international mechanisms rather than Sarawak acting unilaterally in another jurisdiction.
Waseem pointed to the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, to which Malaysia and Indonesia are parties, saying it provides for monitoring, prevention, preparedness, technical cooperation and joint responses to land and forest fires.
Under a future model, he said Sarawak could potentially contribute expertise or finance through arrangements involving the Federal Government, ASEAN mechanisms, Indonesian authorities and multilateral institutions.
If carbon-levy revenue were used for activities physically outside Sarawak, however, the legal authority, appropriation mechanism and governance arrangements would have to be explicit.
“It is that there is value in exploring a regional financing architecture where preventing high-carbon fires in Borneo benefits both the source jurisdiction and communities affected by the resulting haze.”
Within Sarawak, Waseem favoured beginning with a pilot programme rather than immediately establishing a large funding mechanism.
A future Climate Change Centre could also serve as a technical coordinator, integrating satellite observations, hotspot information, weather data, carbon estimates and air-quality information into a common assessment of fire risk.
Possible investments could include satellite and drone monitoring, automated hotspot detection, peatland and vegetation fire-risk maps, peat-water-table monitoring, weather and wind forecasting and additional air-quality sensors.
Other measures could include early-warning platforms, community fire-management teams, firebreaks, restoration and rewetting of degraded peatlands, alternatives to open burning, equipment positioned in high-risk areas and rapid-response capacity.
For projects across national borders, Waseem favoured established channels rather than direct payments from Sarawak to individual foreign landholders.
Any financing mechanism, he added, would require transparent project selection, measurable outcomes, independent monitoring and clear benefit sharing with local communities.
The more difficult question, Waseem said, was proving that preventing a forest or peatland fire had reduced greenhouse-gas emissions sufficiently to carry carbon value.
“Carbon accounting would first require a credible counterfactual baseline estimating what would reasonably have happened without the intervention.”
An approved methodology would estimate expected emissions under that baseline, while actual conditions would be monitored after interventions such as rewetting, patrols, early detection or improved land management.
“A fire might not occur because of unusually wet weather rather than because of a particular prevention programme.”
The methodology would therefore have to distinguish the impact of an intervention from climatic variability and other government measures, potentially using long historical datasets, comparable reference areas, fire-probability modelling and conservative deductions for uncertainty.
Remote sensing could play an important role, but Waseem said satellite information would have to be combined with ground measurements, peat and biomass data, hydrology and independent verification.
“The absence of a fire by itself is not a carbon credit. The demonstrated reduction in expected fire emissions is what may have carbon value.”
Waseem cautioned against designing a haze-prevention programme on the assumption that every prevented fire would produce a tradable carbon credit.
Instead, he favoured a blended, results-based financing model.
Under such a system, the Climate Change Fund or another public source could provide upfront financing for mapping, community programmes, peatland restoration, monitoring and firefighting preparedness.
If those measures subsequently produced independently verified emission reductions under an eligible methodology, carbon-market revenue or results-based payments could provide an additional source of funding.
Waseem pointed to Indonesia’s East Kalimantan jurisdiction, which has an Emission Reductions Payment Agreement under the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility linking payments to verified reductions in emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
At a larger scale, he said a jurisdictional REDD+ approach might ultimately prove more robust than attempting to assign a carbon credit to every individual fire that did not occur.
For Borneo, Waseem envisaged public climate finance providing the initial funding for prevention, followed by satellite and ground-based measurement, reporting and verification.
“That is more realistic than expecting carbon-credit revenue alone to finance prevention from day one.
“The larger point from my original article (Taking our green policies beyond our borders on Sept 8) remains the same: we normally see haze as a temporary air-pollution emergency, but a severe peat or forest fire is also a major carbon event.
“If we can put credible financial value on keeping that carbon in the landscape rather than releasing it into the atmosphere, prevention becomes not only an environmental cost but also a climate investment.”
