Malaysia destroying its forests three times faster than all Asia combined

The pictures also show that its carbon-rich peat soils of the Sarawak coast are being stripped even faster than its rainforests.

A report commissioned by the Netherlands-based Wetlands International says Malaysia is uprooting an average two per cent of the rainforest a year on Sarawak, its largest state on the island of Borneo, or nearly 10 per cent over the last five years.

Most of it is being converted to palm oil plantations, it said.

The deforestation rate for all of Asia during the same period was 2.8 per cent.

In the last five years, 872,263 acres of Malaysia's peatlands were deforested, or one-third of the swamps which have stored carbon from decomposed plants for millions of years.

"We never knew exactly what was happening in Malaysia and Borneo," said Alex Kaat, spokesman for Wetlands International.

"Now we see there is a huge expansion (of deforestation) with annual rates that are beyond imagination."

The study was carried out by SarVision, a satellite monitoring and mapping company that originated with scientists at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

"Total deforestation in Sarawak is 3.5 times as much as that for entire Asia, while deforestation of peat swamp forest is 11.7 times as much," the report said. Malaysia's peatland forests are home to several endangered animals, including the Borneo pygmy elephant and the Sumatran rhino, as well as rare timber species and unique vegetation

Mr Kaat said the study showed deforestation was progressing far faster than the Malaysian government has acknowledged.

Scientists say the destruction of the Amazon, the rainforests of central Africa and in southeast Asia accounts for more than 15 per cent of human-caused carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

Live forests soak up carbon from the atmosphere, while burning trees release that stored carbon – contributing to climate change in two ways at once. But emissions effect is amplified when trees are felled from the peatlands and the swamps are drained for commercial plantations.

Malaysia and Indonesia produce about 90 per cent of the world's palm oil, an ingredient in cooking oil, cosmetics, soaps, bread, and chocolate.

It also is used as an industrial lubricant and was once considered an ideal biofuel alternative to fossil fuel, but it has fallen out of favour because of earlier reports of widespread rainforest destruction for the expansion of plantations.

Indonesia has pledged to slow deforestation in its territory, and last year Norway pledged to give Jakarta $1 billion a year to help finance an independent system of monitoring and quantifying greenhouse gas emissions.