Former Perak state park director Shah Redza Hussein has been appointed chief executive officer of the Malaysia Forest Fund (MFF), a federal government agency working to channel financing towards forest conservation, protection and management in the country.
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Shah Redza succeeds former MFF chief Jeffri Abd Rasid, who left the organisation at the end of June 2024 after two years in the role.
The fund was established in June 2021 under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability (NRES) to implement a global financing mechanism known as the REDD+ Finance Framework at the national level.
REDD+ stands for “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation”, with the plus referring to additional activities around conservation, sustainable forest management and carbon stocks. The initiative aims to generate positive incentives for curbing deforestation in developing countries by raising funds via carbon markets.
Shah Redza told Eco-Business that his focus as MFF’s incoming CEO would be to further strengthen the delivery of the agency’s agenda. The veteran conservationist with more than 30 years of industry experience has also been tasked to support MFF’s work to finalise and roll out the Malaysian Forest Carbon Offset (FCO) protocol in this year.
MFF has positioned the FCO as a market mechanism which would “allow the transfer of emissions reduction from forests to buyers, in the form of carbon offsets.” A technical working group was established in November 2024 to support the development of technical standards for the mechanism; the group comprises federal and state government representatives as well as private sector and non-profit experts.
This follows the fund’s launch of the Forest Conservation Certificate (FCC) in May last year. Although FCCs are also meant to channel private sector funds towards forest conservation projects, they are a non-market mechanism and cannot be used as a carbon credit or to offset the emissions of private companies. They can, however, be used by companies to meet biodiversity targets as part of their environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting requirements, NRES minister Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad said at its launch.
“We intend to take MFF to the next level of innovative forest financing mechanisms,” said Shah Redza, adding that the agency will be looking to form strategic partnership alliances that will facilitate the deployment of new funding instruments.
Shah Redza was previously the chief executive officer of Enggang Management Services, a conservation outfit founded in 2022 to oversee environmental management in the Malaysian state of Pahang. He oversaw initiatives including the establishment of the 142,000-hectare (ha) Al-Sultan Abdullah Royal Tiger Reserve, as well as a project to restore some 110,000 of the state’s peatlands.
Prior to his role at Enggang, Shah Redza was a director at Perak State Parks Corporation, a state government entity that manages the 117,500-ha Royal Belum State Park in northern Peninsular Malaysia. He won the Dr Rimington Award 2020 for his contributions to tiger conservation in the state park, which include increasing the number of employees patrolling the park and establishing an Indigenous community-based wildlife patrol unit, Menraq.
MFF is governed by a board of trustees led by chairman Dr Yasmin Rasyid, founder of non-profit sustainability organisation EcoKnights, who was appointed to the role a year ago. Also on the board are Dr Ching Thoo, secretary general of NRES and Muhamad Umar Swift, chief executive officer of Bursa Malaysia, among others.
In a statement, Yasmin said that the fund is currently at a “progressive stage”, and is focused on implementing the FCC, developing the FCO, as well as developing several methodologies.
“With the appointment of Dato’ Shah Redza as the new CEO, we are confident that he will lead and drive MFF as a national integrated advisory agency and financial solutions provider for the sustainable forestry sector,” she said.
