GEOPARK imple­ment­a­tion agen­cies have been urged to adopt the National Geo­park Devel­op­ment Plan (PPGN) 2021-2030 and National Geo­park Imple­ment­a­tion Plan (PLGN) books as a guide in devel­op­ing and man­aging geo­parks.

Download PPGN 2021-2030 and PLGN

The Nat­ural Resources, Envir­on­ment and Cli­mate Change Min­istry (NRECC), in a state­ment, said this was import­ant to make national geo­parks of inter­na­tional stand­ards and on par with the Unesco Global Geo­park.

“The pub­lic­a­tion of these two plans is an ini­ti­at­ive of the min­istry through the Depart­ment of Min­eral and Geoscience Malay­sia to strengthen the agenda for devel­op­ing and man­aging national geo­parks, and they need to be ref­er­enced and adop­ted in all national phys­ical devel­op­ment plan­ning,” the state­ment said.

The state­ment was issued in con­junc­tion with the launch of the books by Deputy Min­is­ter of Nat­ural Resources, Envir­on­ment and Cli­mate Change Datuk Seri Huang Tiong Sii at the Inter­na­tional Greentech and Eco Products Exhib­i­tion and Con­fer­ence Malay­sia 2023 in Kuala Lum­pur recently.

PPGN 2021-2030 is a stra­tegic plan for geo­park devel­op­ment with a vis­ion of guid­ing a National Geo­park towards a Unesco Global Geo­park recog­ni­tion in a 10-year period.

It out­lines ele­ments of strategy, pro­ced­ure and action by the gov­ern­ment agen­cies involved so that they can be har­nessed in an integ­rated man­ner through a com­mon man­age­ment approach.

The imple­ment­a­tion plan is to serve as a man­age­ment guide for inter­ested parties at the state gov­ern­ment level and rel­ev­ant agen­cies, espe­cially National Geo­park man­age­ment author­it­ies. This is to ensure all strategies and pro­grammes con­tained in the doc­u­ment can be done accord­ing to the stand­ards set by the National Geo­park Com­mit­tee and Unesco Global Geo­park.

Accord­ing to NRECC, the two plans were agreed to at the 42nd National Phys­ical Plan­ning Coun­cil meet­ing on Sept 18, which was chaired by Prime Min­is­ter Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, for the adop­tion of geo­park devel­op­ment and imple­ment­a­tion by fed­eral agen­cies with the cooper­a­tion of state gov­ern­ments to strengthen the eco­nomy and well-being of local com­munit­ies.

Apart from this, the meet­ing also agreed that the pro­pos­als be trans­lated into Local Plans for state and local author­it­ies throughout the coun­try.
The min­istry also said that the Depart­ment of Min­eral and Geoscience Malay­sia had con­duc­ted geo­lo­gical her­it­age map­ping activ­it­ies, espe­cially on geo­sites, since the 1990s to develop geo­park areas for the pre­ser­va­tion and con­ser­va­tion of all nat­ural resources her­it­age in Malay­sia.

“The geo­park devel­op­ment concept involves three import­ant ele­ments, namely edu­ca­tion, con­ser­va­tion and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment to ensure geo­lo­gical, bio­lo­gical and cul­tural her­it­age resources are pro­tec­ted and at the same time enabling the use of these her­it­age resources to strengthen the eco­nomy of local com­munit­ies and geo­tour­ism products,” it added.