The SPaCES Project

The SPaCES Project (Spatial Planning for Conservation, Sustainable Economic Development and Society) is a holistic approach to better land utilisation for Sabah

FOREST, WATER & SOIL  |  LIVELIHOOD, TOURISM & ENTERPRISE | ENERGY, INFRASTRUCTURE & WASTE | FOOD, AGRICULTURE & FISHERIES

Background

SPaCES provides Forever Sabah with cross-cutting services to its programs, projects and partnerships on as an as-needed basis.

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SPaCES current project is focusing on mapping and advocating for the protection of mangroves in Sabah. This project is focused on identifying current mangrove extents in Sabah, as well as identifying mangrove forest loss in the recent past. It also is focused on identifying current threats to existing mangrove ecosystems, and identifying degraded mangroves that need restoration. The overarching goal of this project is to try and protect all mangrove ecosystems in Sabah.

Proposed PBH coastal routes would affect sensitive and important natural habitats such as mangroves, sea grass beds, estuaries and coastal fishery areas

In recent years SPaCES has also had major involvement in the following areas of work:

• Humans Habitats Highways: by providing the mapping requirements of a ten organisation coalition who came together to share our collective resources and bodies of work, and engage more coherently, effectively, and usefully in infrastructure planning and development processes in Sabah and Malaysia

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• High Conservation Valley (HCV) Mapping for Sabah: working with the Sabah Forestry Department’s Forest Research Centre and a wide consortium of conservation and research organisations in Sabah collectively mapping HCV values at an unprecedented scale as part of the State’s Jurisdictional Certification of Palm Oil program

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• Forever Segama: providing the mapping support to this project to “mainstream biodiversity in management” of the catchment and riparian of the Segama, Sabah’s second largest river; particularly in the identification of riparian forest for restoration and/or gazettement

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• Sabah Renewable Energy for Rural Electrification (SabahRE2): to map the current distribution of Sabah’s un-electrified communities in relation to the grid, infrastructure and renewable energy potential, including micro-hydro forest catchment management

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SPaCES is funded by the Woodspring Trust as well as through Forever Sabah’s project funds from a variety of international and local donors including UK-PACT, United Nations Development Program/GEF. 

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Dr. Nicola Abram serves as SPaCES’ Technical Coordinator and Hong Ye Lim (MSc) as Research Assistant.

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