ABH of Sustainable Development Goals

SITTING by Tanjung Aru Beach watching one of the most stunning sunsets in the world, I reflected on what it would take to prioritise the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

We had just finished an intense three days with 170 local and global organisations like the World Wildlife Fund, mostly non-governmental civil societies, businesses, investors and policymakers, on how we should accelerate action on bringing impact investing into SDG projects at scale in Sabah and beyond.

The UN launched its 17 SDGs in 2015 and, 10 years later, only 18% of the goals are achievable by 2030.

Bluntly speaking, there are lots of aspirations, but insufficient impact and almost no money, on top of a lack of political will.

If practical execution is the process, the end game is to pick or prioritise the problems, fix them and show everyone. Complaining gets you nowhere.

People will only believe when you deliver planetary and human justice. But we must start small, think big and act at scale.

So, with limited resources, where would we choose to deliver impact on biodiversity, water, food and energy?

The Amazon Basin, Borneo Island and the Hindu Kush Himalaya (together, ABH) are not just wild and exotic – they form the planetary frontier for experimentation and action on climate stability, biodiversity and human survival.

Combined, ABH holds nearly 40% of the Earth’s terrestrial carbon, sustains one-quarter of all known species, and secures water, food and energy for nearly three billion people across three continents.

But the threats are daunting: deforestation, peat destruction, glacial melt and short-sighted, uncoordinated development may trigger irreversible tipping points that will harm rich and poor across the world.

Each region shows unique features. According to the UN 2025 report, the Amazon Basin spans nine countries and holds 120 billion to 200 billion tonnes of carbon. The mighty Amazon discharges one-fifth of global river flow from the Andes to the Atlantic.

Home to 47 million people, slash-and-burn practices for industrial output have cut 18% of its original forest, and if climate warming accelerates, the world’s largest rainforest could shift permanently to savannah, altering global weather patterns forever.

The Hindu Kush Himalaya is the “Third Pole”, holding much of the high-altitude ice compared with the North and South Poles, but it is warming two to 2.5 times faster than the global average.

Its glaciers feed 10 major rivers that sustain 1.7 billion to two billion people across Asia.

If these glaciers disappear, they will trigger huge floods or droughts, threatening water and food crises for nearly one-quarter of mankind in South Asia alone.

Borneo – and within it, Sabah – is the smallest of the three regions by area and population, but it packs the highest carbon density on Earth, storing nearly 40 billion tonnes, including vast peatlands that hold 40% of that total.

Sabah’s blue economy – with four of the world’s top dive sites and 59% of Malaysia’s mangroves – contributes 18% to 22% of state gross domestic product (GDP) and supports millions of livelihoods.

But Sabah and Borneo are also at extreme risk: notably, 30% of the original forest has been cleared, and peatlands exposed to industrial agriculture are releasing methane that adds to global warming.

In terms of human biodiversity, Borneo has the same 2.2 million indigenous people who protect the forests, rivers and seas as the Amazon.

The economics are unambiguous. Adding data from all the UN reports suggests that protecting all three regions requires US$67bil to US$91bil annually through 2030 – less than 0.1% of global GDP.

This could return huge benefits in terms of avoiding climate heating, reducing water stress for billions of people, and finding solutions for sustainable, inclusive environmental protection and productivity at scale.

Impact investing means finding blended sources of capital from charitable foundations, friends and family, retained profits, and mainstream equity markets, banking, insurance, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds to make change at scale.

Put human capital (money) to work to fix and nourish natural capital. We need money, technology and markets to help communities protect nature.

We just need pilot projects and pioneer eco-warriors to show the way. Listening to the passionate native civil society movements, particularly from the indigenous tribes, Sabah can prove how to close this gap.

It is uniquely positioned to combine four finance streams unavailable together anywhere else: terrestrial forest carbon, peat carbon, blue carbon from mangroves and reefs, and premium markets for sustainable palm oil, seafood and ecotourism.

Sabah straddles the highlands of Mount Kinabalu like the Himalayas, the Kinabatangan river basin that is a micro-model of the Amazon, and lies at the heart of Borneo Island.

The choice is clear: we either treat the three ABH regions as separate “environmental” crisis spots, or act together to secure the systems that keep our climate stable, our food growing, and our water, energy and economies flowing. Sabah can show us the way – now the world must back her, and scale the lessons to the Amazon, Borneo and the Himalayas.

This is thinking globally, framing regionally, and being the focal point for acting locally. This fusion of urgency, integration and forward-looking policy makes the small state of Sabah the ideal global pilot.

Its 2025 Climate Change and Carbon Governance Enactment – the first of its kind in South-East Asia – enshrines free, prior and informed consent or FPIC, guarantees over 50% benefit-sharing for customary communities, and creates a unified registry for forest, peat and blue carbon.

No other jurisdiction in these three regions has combined these elements into law. It is time to stop preaching and just do it.

The risks of not acting are higher than those of being the path-maker and thought leader hub of climate action.