Community Participation in Gunung Ledang Protected Area: Supporting the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)

Abstract

Abstract The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth - all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests. This paper examines the current practices of community participation and its implications on sustainable development agenda (SDG) in the Gunung Ledang Protected Area, Johor, Malaysia. The research utilizes a combination of primary and secondary data. Interview was employed to gather the primary data, while scholarly works, government documents and archival records are the instruments used for gathering the secondary data. The findings shed light on the implications of community participation on sustainable development agenda (SDG) in the Gunung Ledang Protected Area. The main challenge seems to be the lack of holistic measures in tackling community issues that are in conflict with the objectives of SDG. This main factor stems from a combination of several other issues such as decision-making based on short-term result that are mostly constraint due to budget cut and pandemic effect and the lack of understanding on the real meaning of sustainable agenda. These scenario inadvertently influence development processes and threaten the implementation of SDG.