SANDAKAN, Aug 15 — An interim committee on climate change in Sabah has tasked itself to work on proposing an enactment on carbon exchange to the state government within a year, as the tenure of the committee started from August 1 this year and stays on to July 31 next year.

Its chairman Datuk Sam Mannan said the committee was of the opinion that for Sabah to venture into the carbon exchange market, a third party in business dealings is not required as the state has years of experience and its own experts in environment conservation efforts.

"Temperature in Europe has shot up. There are forest fires and floods (around the world). But nothing in Sabah because we have so many forests to fight back carbon in the air. We’ve (Sabah) done it successfully.

"The carbon exchange market was quite underdeveloped for many years. But now it is (developed) because of pollution. So, organisations buy carbon credits to offset their own pollution.

"In doing so, Sabah needs to build a carbon exchange legislation to regulate how the state markets this because we want to lead the market. We don’t want the deal to go through a third party,” he said at a press conference on the matter here today.

Carbon credit trading is a market-based system designed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming, especially carbon dioxide, by creating a financial incentive to do so.

Sam said the state entity to lead the deals in Sabah’s carbon exchange would be the Sabah Foundation (Yayasan Sabah) and that right should remain Sabahan.

"Sabah is blessed with the perception in the region that we have a high level of governance in conservation. But the big difference is on pricing of carbon,” he said.

Sam, a former Sabah chief conservator of forests and currently technical adviser on forestry to the Sabah chief minister, said the state government has landed a deal on carbon exchange after 10 years of deliberation, involving 80,000 ha of forest land in Kuamut.

He said an advanced payment to the state government had also been done.

"Due to business considerations, the sum earned so far cannot be disclosed. It is pertinent to disclose that this UK-based partner of ours was recently awarded the best carbon project in the tropics for 2022, based on their assets outside Sabah,” he added. — Bernama