LEAD: Malaysia ranks 3rd in Asia in environmental performance index

Jan 27, 2012, 12:41 GMT

Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia ranked 3rd in the Asia Pacific region in the 2011 environmental performance index, which measures the effectiveness of countries' green programmes, an official said Friday.

Zaini Ujang, head of Malaysia's environmental performance index team, said the south-east Asian country was behind only New Zealand and Japan in the Asia Pacific and was ranked 25th among 132 countries around the world.

Zaini said Malaysia was cited for very good performance in air pollution control, sustainable agriculture and protection of biodiversity and habitats.

Malaysia, with a total area of 329,758 square kilometers, is known as one of the world's mega-diversity areas.

The government said its forests, believed to be about 130 million years old, covers about 70 per cent of the country and supports 14,500 species of flowering plant and tree, 210 species of mammal, about 600 species of bird, 150 species of frog, at least 80 species of lizard and thousands of different kinds of insects.

While a lot of forest areas have been cleared for agriculture and development during the past decades, the government has launched various programmes to protect and conserve the forests.

In 2010, Malaysia was ranked 54th worldwide, Zaini said. The 2011 rankings were announced this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The environmental performance index was developed in 2002 by Yale University and Columbia University in collaboration with the European Commission and the World Economic Forum.