Environment
01
361.1 million tonnes out, one forest ledger against it.
Malaysia's official greenhouse-gas inventory put gross emissions at 361.1 Mt CO₂e in 2023 — +293.7% since 1990 — while 12.37 million hectares stood gazetted as permanent reserved forest. What the country emits, and what it has set aside.
Gross emissions · 2023
361.1 Mt
CO₂ equivalent, excluding the LULUCF land sink
Biggest source · 2023
79%
energy — 285.7 Mt of the gross total
Reserved forest · 2022
12.37M ha
gazetted permanent reserved forest — a legal status, not canopy
Per person · 2023
10.8 t
gross CO₂e over 33.4M people, same-year estimates
Official latestAn inventory, not a live reading — these are the figures Malaysia compiles and reports, and they run years behind the calendar. Emissions arrive in gigagrams of CO₂e; this page shows megatonnes (1,000 Gg = 1 Mt).
NRES / Perhutanan / DOSM — ghg_emissions & forest_reserve_state (annual official series), via the data.gov.my open API · retrieved 2026-10-12 23:07 UTC
Emissions are the compiled national inventory in Gg CO₂e (shown here as Mt; 1,000 Gg = 1 Mt), gross totals to 2023, sector detail to 2023. Forest reserves are gazetted legal areas in hectares as of end-2022 — not standing forest cover.
Emissions
02
Energy is 79% of everything Malaysia emits.
The inventory splits gross emissions into four sectors. In 2023, the latest year with the full split, energy produced 285.7 Mt CO₂e — more than the other three sectors combined. The split lags the headline: totals run to 2023, sector detail stops at 2023.
| Sector | Mt CO₂e | Share of gross emissions |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 285.7 | 79.1% |
| Industrial processes | 42.7 | 11.8% |
| Waste | 24.5 | 6.8% |
| Agriculture | 8.2 | 2.3% |
Gross emissions by inventory sector, 2023 — the latest year the split is published. Shares are of that year's gross total (361.1 Mt), which excludes LULUCF.
Gross emissions (Mt CO₂e, excl. LULUCF)
Net emissions (Mt CO₂e, incl. LULUCF sink)
The net line stops at 2023because the LULUCF figure has not been published for later years — the gap is the dataset's, not ours.
NRES / DOSM — ghg_emissions (national greenhouse-gas inventory, Gg CO₂e), via the data.gov.my open API · retrieved 2026-10-12 23:07 UTC
Compiled inventory, not live measurement. Gross totals 1990–2023; the sector split and the LULUCF sink stop at 2023. "Total" excludes LULUCF; "net" includes it.
Forest reserves
03
12.37 million hectares on the books.
That is the permanent reserved forest gazetted under forestry law as of end-2022 — −5.6% since 2003. Read the label carefully: a reserve is a legal status, not a measure of standing forest. Reserved land can be logged under licence, and gazettement can be reversed.
Documented context — not from this dataset
For what is happening to actual forest, satellites are the honest witness: Global Forest Watch counts 9.5 million hectares of tree cover lost since 2001 — about 32% of the 2000 canopy — a figure the gazette ledger on this page cannot see. That story, loss drivers and all, lives in the Forests section of the Climate chapter.
Tree cover and primary forest loss from Global Forest Watch (Hansen/UMD); forest-cover, driver, peat and biodiversity figures from official Malaysian statements and peer-reviewed sources.
| State / territory | Hectares | Share of the reserved estate |
|---|---|---|
| Sarawak | 3,939,113 | 31.9% |
| Sabah | 3,574,468 | 28.9% |
| Pahang | 1,589,092 | 12.9% |
| Perak | 986,021 | 8.0% |
| Kelantan | 629,881 | 5.1% |
| Terengganu | 540,309 | 4.4% |
| Kedah | 344,175 | 2.8% |
| Johor | 335,003 | 2.7% |
| Selangor | 250,250 | 2.0% |
| Negeri Sembilan | 155,087 | 1.3% |
| Perlis | 10,854 | 0.1% |
| Penang | 6,063 | 0.0% |
| Melaka | 5,199 | 0.0% |
| Kuala Lumpur | 85 | 0.0% |
Gazetted permanent reserved forest as of 31 December 2022, in hectares. Jurisdictions with no gazetted reserve (Labuan, Putrajaya) are omitted; the dataset's Peninsular Malaysia aggregate row is excluded from the total.
Forestry departments (Perhutanan) / DOSM — forest_reserve_state (permanent reserved forest, hectares), via the data.gov.my open API · retrieved 2026-10-12 23:07 UTC
Gazetted area as of 31 December, 2003–2022. A legal status under forestry law — not a measure of standing forest cover.
Did you know
Sarawak, Sabah, Pahang hold 74% of the reserved estate.
Of 12.37 million gazetted hectares in 2022, Sarawak alone holds 3.94M ha (32%). Borneo — Sarawak and Sabah together — accounts for 61% of the national total.
Computed from Perhutanan/DOSM forest_reserve_state, 2022
By ammonia, 38 of 144 monitored river basins were polluted in 2024.
The same rivers score very differently by indicator: 116 of 144 basins were clean by organic load (BOD5), but only 61 by ammoniacal nitrogen — the signature of sewage and livestock waste, the pollutant Malaysia's rivers fail on.
Computed from DOE (JAS) water_pollution_basin, 2024
Deep data
03.3
What an inventory can and cannot tell you.
Nothing on this page is a live sensor. The emissions figures are a compiled national inventory — activity data multiplied by emission factors under IPCC rules, reported years after the fact — and the forest figures are gazette entries. Both are official, both are slow, and both leave things out.
Inventory window
1990–2023
gross totals; the newest year is still 3 calendar years behind
Sector detail stops
2023
the by-sector split and the LULUCF sink lag the headline total
Reserves since 2003
−5.6%
the gazetted total, 2003–2022 — gazettement moves in both directions
River basins · 2024
144
basins monitored by DOE and classed clean, slightly polluted or polluted
Inventory, not telemetry
The GHG figures are Malaysia's official inventory — estimated from fuel sales, industrial output, livestock counts and waste volumes, not measured from the air. Revisions happen, and the latest year is always several years old. Treat trends as firmer than any single year.
Gazettement can be reversed
A permanent reserved forest is created — and removed — by state gazette. Degazettement is not hypothetical: the Climate chapter documents a Pahang reserve excised for durian plantations. The ledger here records the legal boundary, not what stands inside it.
What is not in these datasets
Solid waste tonnage, biodiversity, marine and coastal health are not in these datasets, and no state-level emissions exist in the open catalogue. Monthly air-pollutant concentrations do exist (DOE via data.gov.my) but as national averages with gaps, so this chapter leaves them out for now.
NRES / DOSM — ghg_emissions (national greenhouse-gas inventory, Gg CO₂e), via the data.gov.my open API · retrieved 2026-10-12 23:07 UTC
Compiled inventory, not live measurement. Gross totals 1990–2023; the sector split and the LULUCF sink stop at 2023. "Total" excludes LULUCF; "net" includes it.
Forestry departments (Perhutanan) / DOSM — forest_reserve_state (permanent reserved forest, hectares), via the data.gov.my open API · retrieved 2026-10-12 23:07 UTC
Gazetted area as of 31 December, 2003–2022. A legal status under forestry law — not a measure of standing forest cover.
DOE (JAS) — water_pollution_basin (river basin pollution classes), via the data.gov.my open API · retrieved 2026-10-12 23:07 UTC
Counts of monitored river basins classed clean / slightly polluted / polluted per indicator, latest year 2024.
The two ends of this ledger have chapters of their own: what is happening to the standing forest is in Climate → Forests, and the sector behind 79% of gross emissions is in Energy.