Governments Reasoning Behind the Usage of the Forest

The government plays a vital role in the establishment on the and regulations of the state according to the problems of a state. The Penan tribe have been given many reasoning by the government to watch the destruction of the livelihood in front of their eyes and some of them are:

1) Emergence of new diseases - In 1997, approximately 5 million hectares of tropical forest in Malaysia were slashed and burned to make room for pig farms, and the widespread burning caused a severe haze that blanketed much of the region (Kahn, 2011). The haze coincided with a drought -- a combination of factors believed to have reduced the number of flowering and fruiting trees that the local fruit bat population relied on for survival. With their food sources diminished, the bats sought nourishment in orchards near the pig farms; the pigs in turn ate fruit contaminated with bat urine and saliva, transmitting the virus to the livestock (Kahn, 2011). The Malaysian government was unprepared for this new disease and subsequently bore high costs from the outbreak, including more than 100 human lives lost as well as an economically devastating collapse of its pig-farming industry. Eventually, the new scourge was identified and named: the Nipah virus. But then even the goodness that the forest would bring to the individuals living is huge, as diseases caused can be received anywhere in the world. With the construction of the Bakun Dam, huge reservoirs of water will be there, which will lead to huge more prone places for water born disease like malaria etc. Everything in the world would have to face some or the other kind of problem but  it is the governments duty to face theses problems and make sure the people living in the country are not destroyed of their hometown

2) palm oil Development -  Malaysia is one of the world’s largest producer of  Palm oil and this is only possible due the many varieties of Palm that are available are available to the country.  (Zelizter, 2010) Malaysia is covered with densely populated forest and it is in this forest that such large amounts of palm oil can be cultivated  (Zelizter, 2010), the only problem with this cultivation is that many of the other trees are destroyed to make room for palm because they might be worth less in the eyes of the government but maybe one of the sources of survival of another tribe in the forest.

 3) A quicker approach to attain the Malaysia 2020 and 1 Malaysia - The main focus for the Malaysian government is to attain he Malaysian 2020 perspective which calls for a close to developed Malaysia as possible, thus which mean an increase in the economic social and political factors that cause for the development of the country. Thus to increase the exports of the country , the products development should also be increased and thus the procurement of the raw materials must  be increased leading to a larger scale deforestation for wood, oil and other forest related products.