Assessment of Sustainability Elements in Forestry Department of Peninsular Malaysia by Using Universiti Sains Malaysia's Sustainability Assessment Methodology (SAM)

The Sustainability Assessment Methodology (SAM) has been developed by the Centre for Global Sustainability Studies (CGSS) of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). SAM uses the Sustainability/Sustainable Development `criteria and standards' based approach for this purpose as review in this paper. The standard validity of this approach is attested by its dependence on the major outcome documents published by the United Nations and other relevant national report for Millenium Development Goals (MDG) agenda and WEHAB Framework. In this paper, SAM is used to assess the sustainability content of the activities of the Forestry Department of Peninsular Malaysia (JPSM) by using 6 years of annual reports of JPSM as the source of input. The main reason as to why authors did not use 2016 and later annual report is because of the authors intend to compare the result with MDG indicators. The authors realise that there are specific assessment that has been used by the JPSM to evaluate the peninsular forest management, however, this study does not intend to interfere those certification and assessment. The only aim of this study is to gauge their overall confinement to the global sustainability thinking and priorities.