Temporal Reduction of Forest Ecosystem Services and Drivers of Deforestation

Abstract

The tangible and intangible benefits of the forest ecosystem need to be preserved, assessed and seriously considered by policymakers especially under the present threat, which is the extinction of forest ecosystem services in Malaysia. This happened due to uncontrolled deforestation and to fulfil the increasing demand by population. The direct and indirect determinants of deforestation are important in determining the long-run impacts of deforestation in Malaysia, especially in the urban area. In this case, the empirical study was carried out using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach in a study site in Peninsular Malaysia. It was found that the total population, urban population, agricultural land and gross domestic product (GDP) are the direct and indirect determinants that have a significant, long-run association between total forest area and deforestation. The temporal reduction of total forest area leads to the failure of ecosystem services and may affect the country’s sustainability and social living.