inikea

Introduction

Forest degradation by logging and wild forest fire is a common phenomenon in the Tropical Rainforest.  The recovery of the burned forest is slow and to some extends impossible in situation where most mother trees were killed. This happened in some part of the forests within the Yayasan Sabah Group’s (YSG) Forest Management Area. Forest fires during the prolonged drought induced by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation in 1982-1983 have destroyed part of the forest in the Kalabakan Forest Reserve near Tawau, Sabah in the island of Borneo. YSG and IKEA have subsequently collaborated in a project to restore the said degraded forest.

INNOPRISE-IKEA TROPICAL FOREST REHABILITATION PROJECT (INIKEA)

A Memorandum of Agreement was signed in June 1998 between Innoprise Corporation Sdn Bhd (ICSB) and the Sow-A-Seed Foundation (Insamlingsstiftelsen Så ett Frö) to collaborate in a tropical forest rehabilitation project.  ICSB is wholly-owned by Yayasan Sabah Group and the Sow-A-Seed Foundation is a foundation established by IKEA of Sweden. ICSB manages the project on a day to day basis. Both Yayasan Sabah and the Sow-A-Seed Foundation contributed to the total costs of the project.  The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SUAS) provides research and technical assistances.

The objective of INIKEA Project is to improve biodiversity and to assist the recovery of degraded forests. The INIKEA project area, a consolidated block of 18,500 ha, is located in the southern part of Yayasan Sabah’s Forest Management Area.  INIKEA is now part of the 2012-gazetted Sungai Tiagau Class I Forest Reserve (Protection).

The five-year development phases of INIKEA have been extended for the fourth time and by the end of the Phase 4 in 2020, not less than 14,000 ha of degraded forest shall be rehabilitated with enrichment planting of indigenous species and liberation activity.