Activities in fiscal 2007

Reviving the Tropical Rainforest in Borneo, Malaysia

It is said that over 50% of the world's species live and grow in tropical rainforests. In recent years, these rainforests are being rapidly destroyed by commercial logging and other human activities. Fujitsu is working, from the standpoint of protecting biodiversity, for the revitalization of the tropical rainforest in Borneo, Malaysia, Southeast Asia, which is said to be one of the world's three largest tropical rainforests.

Since 2002, Fujitsu employees, as volunteers, have been reforesting the 150 hectares of the Fujitsu Group Malaysia Eco-Forest Park with the support of the Sabah State Forestry Development Authority and the Japan International Forestry Promotion and Cooperation Center. Until now, these volunteers have planted 37,500 seedlings of the tropical rainforests' native kinds such as Shorea.

Together with Advantest, which has been cooperating in reforestation since fiscal 2005, Fujitsu carried out a study of the state of the planted seedlings. Since the reforestation site is almost directly under the equator at 6 degrees north latitude, we had expected that the incident sunlight would be unrelated to the direction faced by the planted slopes. However, the study discovered that, contrary to this expectation, the closer to facing south a slope was, the faster the seedlings grew. Also, in areas that were covered with grass, the survival rate of the seedlings was worse, and that there was also a tendency for growth to be slower when there were miscellaneous trees in the area.

From these results, we realized that it was necessary to improve the amount of sunlight the seedlings received by removing grass and brush. In the future, Fujitsu will put efforts into removing grass and brush to assist in the restoration of tropical rainforests.