Urban Forestry in Sabah, Malaysia: A Perspective Review

Urbanization Pressure From Rapid Urban Growth

Sabah is the second largest Federal State of Malaysia, as well as one of the two Federal States that are located at Borneo Island. According to the statistic provided by the Department of Statistics Malaysia (2019), the human population in Sabah reached approximately 3.9 million in 2018, which was estimated to increase by 0.06 million populations per year since 2015. Three major urban areas in Sabah were enlisted as top 20 cities by population in Malaysia, with Kota Kinabalu ranked in 10th place (457,326 population), followed by Sandakan in 11th place (392,288 population) and Tawau in 15th place (306,462 population) in 2019. In other words, the urban population continues to rise every year in Sabah, hence rapid urbanization has occurred to provide sufficient living spaces for accommodating the increase in the local urban human population. Nevertheless, urban development and growth indicate the loss of the natural environment, which can subsequently reduce public access to nature in these urban regions (Chaudhry & Tewari, 2011). Therefore, the Federal Government of Malaysia included the concept of “Urban Forestry” in urban landscape development and management in 1995. Today, Sabah is rich in green cities and towns that successfully mix nature into the urban landscape, thanks to the preferences of the Sabah community in living harmoniously with Mother Nature (Lee et al., 2004).

Urban forestry involves the planning, caring, and managing of the urban environment, by using urban plants to maintain environmental and social benefits that are crucial to the well-being of urban dwellers. Then, a greener urban landscape that is established for non-priced benefit is regarded as an urban green space (Chaudhry & Tewari, 2011). Presently, various urban green spaces are available for public access within or outside of the major cities in Sabah, and then they share common functions in providing ecosystem services to the surrounding urban environment. Costanza et al. (2017) highlighted that ecosystem services were categorized into provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services, and then urban forests could provide similar ecosystem services as the natural forests to their surrounding environments. Besides that, Mojiol (2001) revealed that urban forests could enhance aesthetic value, provide a sense of serenity to urban dwellers, regulate urban environmental condition, reduce the disturbance and pollution impacts, house urban biodiversity, maintain the urban nutrient cycle and hydrological cycle, and lastly provide recreational, tourism, research and education opportunities in an urban area, as shown in below Table 1. In sum, urban green spaces serve as a replacement to natural forests in providing ecosystem services to the urban regions of Sabah, and also to the urban dwellers, flora, and fauna that reside within the given areas.

However, the current conditions of the urban environments in Sabah are rarely being assessed by researchers. Urban forestry is considered to be a rather new field of a research study in Sabah because the oldest publication was found written by Mojiol (2001). Although the number of studies conducted onto urban green spaces in Sabah was increased in recent years (e.g.: Lee et al., 2004; Mojiol et al., 2008; Mojiol and Bürger-Arndt, 2012; Wells, et al., 2014; Nair et al., 2018; Lim et al., 2019; and Lim & Mojiol, 2019), still each of these past studies mainly focused onto a specific component of the local urban forestry. Because of that, there is a lacking of information to understand the local urban forestry as a whole at this moment. Therefore, this chapter aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the urban forestry that has been implemented in Sabah by reviewing relevant past research articles and publications. In this chapter, accessibilities and functionalities of different urban green spaces will be discussed in detail and followed by the existing species compositions and diversities of urban flora and fauna communities, existing urban trail condition, public perceptions on urban green spaces, and the application of geographical information system in urban forestry of Sabah.