The laws and policies for the sustainable management of biodiversity in Malaysia

Biodiversity conservation and management in a sustainable manner is crucial for Malaysia and having sufficient laws and policy providing for such is mandatory. As a Contracting Party to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Malaysia has undertaken to abide by what has been stipulated by the CBD and to endeavour to provide legislative, administrative and policy measures towards achieving the objectives and expectation of the CBD. Among the first measures taken by Malaysia was the conduct of a country survey on biological diversity cumulating in the “Assessment of Biological Diversity in Malaysia” in 1997, which was immediately followed by the launching of the National Policy on Biological Diversity on 16th July 1998. Malaysia has also taken the steps to provide legislative implementation of the broad objectives of the Policy by putting in place three specific legislations namely the Biosafety Act 2007 (Act 678), the Access to Genetic Resources Act and the National Biodiversity Council Act, both of which are still in the bill stage. This paper aims to provide an overview of the existing laws and policy in Malaysia that subscribe to the effort of sustainable management of natural resources and determine the sufficiency of these laws and policy in providing for biodiversity conservation and management in Malaysia as sanctioned by the CBD. This research methodology employed aqualitative study carried outvia content analysis on the data collected from the primary sources namely the National Policy of Biological Diversity (NPB) as well as the numerous federal legislations. The research tool used for data analysis is the Rule of Statutory Interpretation, which is the same tool used by the judges. The findings reveal that the Vision Statement and the Policy Statement of the NPB undeniably emphasize Malaysia’s commitment towards the conservation and sustainable use of her biological diversity heritage for the sustainable progress of the nation. However, it is also found that the currentlegislative framework creates some restrictions, thereby causing some deficiencies for an effective conservation and management of biological diversity in the country.