The Star, Malaysia : Nurturing nature

Tuesday August 26, 2003

Nurturing nature

By MICHAEL CHEANG

CAN you imagine a future without durians, rambutans, mangosteens or even bananas because these fruit trees have become extinct? Well, that may be the stark reality facing us. After all, lesser known species such as the rambai and pulasan are becoming rarer by the day. It was with the aim of preventing this from happening that the Cyber Plant Conservation Project was jointly launched by two NGOs – the Environmental Management and Research Association of Malaysia (Ensearch) and the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) – last year.

Under this project which involved 1,500 secondary students from 20 schools in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, rare plants, particularly local fruit trees such as ceri Terengganu, jambu mawar, serai kayu, belimbing buluh, kedondong, jambu bol, rambai and kerian were planted in school compounds. Each school was given 10 rare fruit trees to care for.

The students were required to form a cyber club, and maintain a website on which they have to report regularly on the progress of the trees.

One year later, the trees are thriving, and there are plans to expand the project by planting more fruit trees in the community.

Starting from scratch: Students are given rare fruit trees to plant and care for under the Cyber Plant Conservation Project. They are also required to report on the progress of their plants on the Web.

Project director Dr Lee Jin says the project aims to propagate the trees to make them more common. “The indigenous fruit trees used to be everywhere around the kampungs, but now its getting more scarce,” says Lee. “The biodiversity of the fruit trees is very low, therefore the resilience to survive is not there. With this project, we hope the trees will become common once again, thus ensuring that the species survives longer.”

“We’re probably the only project that hopes people will come and steal our fruits! If that happens, it would be even better for the trees because then the seeds will be spread all over, and they will be planted everywhere else.”

The project was initially funded under the Demonstrator Application Grant Scheme (DAGS) launched by the National IT Council in 1998. The aim of the DAGS is to encourage Malaysians to be more innovative in using and adapting existing information and multimedia technologies to create an electronic community to empower society.

“DAGS encourages us to use ICT to improve the community, and since IPGRI and Ensearch are environment-based NGOs, we came up with the idea of letting students plant the rare fruit trees in the school grounds, then reporting on the trees’ progress on a website,” says Lee.

Ensearch is a non-profit environmental NGO committed to the promotion of excellent environmental management, while IPGRI is an international research institute responsible for the research and conservation of plant genetics.

Initially, project workers from IPGRI and Ensearch taught the students how to take care of their trees. In the spirit of environmental conservation, the students were also encouraged to use organic fertilisers and environment-friendly methods to keep pests at bay.

The students of SMK Maxwell working together at caring for their sapling.

“We can achieve a few things with this project, including awareness of environmental issues, biodiversity and education. It is mostly interest driven, where the students have to find out for themselves how to take care of the trees, and use the Internet to source the information they need,” says Lee.

“Some trees grow better in a certain environment, while others don’t,” says Sharmini Retnaraj, the project executive. “It all depends on where the school is located. For instance, the trees in KL schools don’t do so well compared to the Selangor ones. It’s more of a trial and error basis.”

Nevertheless, the commitment of the teachers is vital.

“The success of the project depends a lot on the teachers. We would have to go to the schools and help them if the teachers don’t cooperate, and frankly, we do not have the resources to visit all of them regularly,” says Sharmini. “The urban schools tend to pick up IT skills faster than the rural ones, but their trees don’t do so well. It’s the exact opposite in the rural schools, where their trees grow much better, but they are not so IT savvy.”

On the future of the project, Lee says that ideally, the project should be a long-term one lasting 20 to 30 years, whereby each generation of students will pass it on to their juniors to continue. They can also take it to the local community, and maybe introduce it to other countries. In fact, Canada and Vietnam have shown interest in adopting the programme.

While the project has proven to be a success, there is still the problem of funds. Now that the funding by DAGS has ended, Enserch has to come up with alternative ways to fund the Cyber Plant Conservation Project.

“We hope to get companies to support an adopt-a-tree campaign. They can do a lot by adopting a tree and helping students with the IT aspect,” says Lee.