Over the last few decades, a significant amount of forest has been lost in Malaysia due to human development activities such as oil palm, which has led to habitat fragmentation, loss of biodiversity and other ecosystem services. In 2015 the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs (EZ) began to build a research collaboration with Malaysia on sustainable production of palm oil and its use. The joint research programme consists of a collaboration of researchers between Wageningen Food & Biobased Research, Wageningen University and Research (Plant Production Systems), Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Science, and Malaysia Palm Oil Board (MPOB).
A number of studies on ecosystem services in oil palm landscape have been conducted, including a study on the potential for alternative land use systems using non-drainage peatland species (read the publication here). Currently a new study is initiated focusing on assessing the importance of landscape heterogeneity through mapping ecosystem services in oil palm dominated landscapes. This project is an initiative of MPOB in collaboration with Van Hall Larenstein University, and is coordinated by Nik Sasha Khatrina Binti Khairuddin, with co-researchers dr. Kho Lip Khoon, dr. Peter van der Meer and Joline Middelberg.
