Living Integrated Catchment Management Plan & Co-Governance

Building a shared and adaptive frameworkfor the Segama River Basin

The Segama River, one of Sabah’s ecologically most significant river systems, extends 350 kilometres from its forested headwaters to the sea with a catchment of 440,300 hectares and cover 6.32% of Sabah’s land mass.

Arising in the world-renowned conservationareas of Danum Valley and Ulu Segama, the Segama flows past Tabin Wildlife Reserve into the Coral Triangle through the Lower Kinabatangan & Segama Wetlands, Malaysia’s largest Ramsar site, and one of the most important mangrove fish nurseries in Malaysia. Along the way the changing water course defines eleven indigenous riverine communities while its fertile flood plains support some of the world’s most productive oil palm estates. Furthermore, Segama supplies water to the port city of Lahad Datu and for the development of the adjacent Palm Oil Industrial Cluster (POIC).  

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The Challenge

As elsewhere in the world, this riverine lifeline for peoples, economies and nature faces worsening floods and droughts of climate change on top of existing degradation, pollution and siltation.  While two thirds of the total catchment falls within protected areas, and not withstanding Sabahan legal requirements, only one third of the river still sustains the riparian forest crucial for hydrological health, and for ecological connectivity across the mid-Segama between coastal and low land forest ecosystems.

In diverse ways across the catchment these challenges are experienced locally as river bank erosion and catastrophic flooding, declining fisheries, invasive species, soil degradation, drought, siltation, lost livelihoods, declining water quality, and losses of biodiversity of livelihood, cultural and other significance.

Sabah is well-recognised globally for its commitments to sustainability, providing the opportunity to tackle unsustainable development trajectories rooted in a failure to understand, plan and manage the Segama River Basin as one connected system. Decisions on landuse, water resources, mining, conservation and livelihoods are being made by many actors through diverse, often unconnected, institutional, development and planning processes. The same fragmentation is true of the many efforts being made to steward the river and restore its health.  

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The Case for an Integrated CatchmentManagement Plan

No single institution, approach or body of knowledge can protect the ecological integrity of the whole river basin alone.  

Managing these challenges requires realrelationships between government agencies, landowners, businesses and communities, drawing upon diverse knowledge represented in scientific evidence, community knowledge, government mandates and land-management practices, andways to monitor change from the headwaters to the sea.

This effort to build an Integrated Catchment Management Plan (ICMP) and platforms for partnership and co-governance across sectors is being crafted to make possible a shared framework for coordinated action across the basin.

It needs to be a ‘Living’ ICMP in order tooperate, respond and grow with learning and evolving circumstances.

Co-Governance is central. Government agencies retain their legal and institutional mandates, while other stakeholders bring their values, rights and responsibilities to contribute to planning, implementation, monitoring and review.

Forever Sabah’s role is facilitating relationship building and collaboration among government agencies, local authorities, comm hnical partners. Particularly important in this is Forever Sabah’s role inco-generating and integrating knowledge through participatory surveys, spatialanalysis, community knowledge and climate information, as well as in enabling ICMP stakeholders to see objectively the results of their efforts.

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Explore the Segama River Basin Baseline

The Living ICMP is being developed fromon-going spatial analysis, field surveys, community knowledge andcitizen-science assessments undertaken across the Segama River Basin since 2020.

Together, these studies provide an initial picture of the basin’s landscapes, riverbank forests, biodiversity, waterquality, communities and emerging environmental pressures.

Please find two baseline maps for the Segama River Basin catchment.

This map [livelink] covers the entirecatchment area and shows land use in the period 2015-2020 within and beyond the protected areas. [this is the map called Segama LULC]

This second map [livelink] enables a moredetailed examination of vegetation cover land use and threats outside of theexisting protected areas in the Mid-Segama region. [this is the map currentlycalled Riparian analysis]

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TASHA: note i have retitled these deletethe old titles once you have identified the docs

Community Engagement Report - developed as part of the FPIC process for the original UNDP-DID study, this report from May-June 2020 describes the situation of the ten indigenous village communities along the mid-Segama River and their livelihoods and principal river and water quality concerns.

Community Aspirations - this workshop report from July 2020 presents the findings from workshopping with Mid-Segama indigenous riverine communities, recording their perceptions of the nature and causes of decline of the Segama watershed and river water quality since the 1960s and their aspirations for the future.  It further describes their reactions to the sharing of technical findings from the study and documents baseline water quality sampling.

Water Quality Assessment Findings - this report from November 2020 reports the findings from water quality assessment studies that integrated citizen science methodologies with laboratory analysis.  Fortunately significant pollutants were not detected - perhaps because of high water volume at the time of survey - but the presence of 11 sand mining operations - including four upstream of the city’s water extraction point was highlighted as causing a high level of suspended solids and sedimentation threats.

Sand Mining - this report from October 2021 describes visits to three non-operational (COVID-period) sand-mining locations, evaluating practices against the Environment Protection Department’s ‘Guidelines for Minimising Impacts of Sand Mining on Quality of Specific Rivers in Sabah’.  Noting substantial environmental impacts with likely significant economic and ecological impacts downstream, this report avoids allegations against specific operators, while recommending a collaborative approach to informing and enabling enforcement of Guidelines and other legal protections.

Landscape Analysis and Riparian ZoneIdentification - using data from 2015-2020 this report maps remote sensing analysis of land-use status across the Segama Catchment as a whole, followed by detailed focus on riparian zones in the mid-Segama, which have mostly been cleared (notwithstanding applicable laws).  However, ten hotspots of surviving riparian corridors and other forest patches are located and described, with a detailed review of the status of four that intersect between community, state and private oil palm lands, where collaborative restoration and conservation might yield considerable benefits.

Riparian Biodiversity Survey - presents field data from September 2020 for bird and mammal presence along both banks of 99km of the mid-Segama, and for 34 stratified random sample of riparian forest quality and diversity in four hotspots identified through remote sensing.  Among important conclusions are that despite fragmentation, and other threats, biodiversity remains surprisingly high on the Segama, comparing favourably with the much better known neighbouring Kinabatangan River.  Another significant finding is that riparian forests in community areas along the river demonstrate higher than expected tree diversity and the preferential retention of wild fruit trees like the all important figs - with the consequence that bird diversity is retained in these areas even in somewhat degraded and fragmented areas, this also suggesting that restoration could lead to rapid returns on mammal and avian diversity.

Alien Invasive Species - this report from November 2020 combines a literature review and citizen science with 44 local fishermen to identify four invasive alien species present in the Segama system, including Salvinia molesta, a dangerous weed, in the lower sections, and three invasive fish, two from aquaculture (tilapia and catfish) and an unusual new predator, an unidentified knifefish (Chitala sp.).

Climate Change on the Segama

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Suggested buttons

●      View Baseline Reports [1] 

●      Follow the ICMP Development onSocial Media

Draft ICMP under development

The Draft Living Integrated CatchmentManagement Plan & Co-Governance framework is currently being preparedthrough baseline data consolidation, stakeholder engagement and strategydevelopment.

Current status: Under development