Trans-National Conservation and Infrastructure Development in The Heart of Borneo

The Heart of Borneo initiative has promoted the integration of protected areas and sustainably-managed forests across Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei. Recently, however, member states of the Heart of Borneo have begun pursuing ambitious unilateral infrastructure-development schemes to accelerate economic growth, jeopardizing the underlying goal of trans-boundary integrated conservation. Focusing on Sabah, Malaysia, we highlight conflicts between its Pan-Borneo Highway scheme and the regional integration of protected areas, unprotected intact forests, and conservation-priority forests. Road developments in southern Sabah in particular would drastically reduce protected-area integration across the northern Heart of Borneo region. Such developments would separate two major clusters of protected areas that account for one-quarter of all protected areas within the Heart of Borneo complex. Sabah has proposed forest corridors and highway underpasses as means of retaining ecological connectivit...婆罗洲之心（Heart of Borneo）倡议推动了马来西亚、印度尼西亚与文莱境内保护区与可持续管理森林的整合工作。然而近期，婆罗洲之心的成员国开始推行雄心勃勃的单边基础设施开发计划，以期加速经济增长，此举却危及了跨境整合保护的核心目标。本研究以马来西亚沙巴（Sabah）为研究案例，重点剖析了其泛婆罗洲高速公路（Pan-Borneo Highway）计划与保护区、未受保护的原生森林以及优先保护森林的区域整合之间存在的冲突。其中，沙巴南部的道路开发项目尤为突出，将大幅削弱北婆罗洲之心区域内的保护区整合成效。此类开发活动将割裂两大主要保护区集群，该集群占婆罗洲之心整体范围内全部保护区的四分之一。沙巴方面已提议设立森林廊道与公路下穿通道，以维持生态连通性……