COMMENT | If your house was on fire, it would be ridiculous to sit around saying “Let’s carry on as usual and we can replace the old electrical wires by 2050”. No, we would urgently call the emergency services and expect them to respond quickly to save as much as possible, using the skills in which they have been trained and drilled.
As teenager Greta Thunberg famously told world leaders at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos on the Climate Crisis: “Behave as if your house is on fire, because it is.”
While a house on fire may be extinguished by the fire brigade, our only home, Planet Earth, as UN scientists emphatically report, is on fire, overheating so much faster and more perilously than previously projected, threatening the existence of all life, including us humans.
All countries must step up, for nothing short of a global and national-level climate emergency is called for right now to deal with the disasters already happening and those on track within the next five years, never mind in 2050.
It is thus shortsighted and irresponsible for Malaysian leaders to continue to invest in land reclamation projects, oil guzzling industries, deforestation and business as usual, all of which contribute to the global warming overshoot. We need leaders to drive urgent action around the systemic issues with which we are confronted.
With the Covid-19 pandemic, we trust science and have urgently swung into action to collaboratively protect and save lives as best we can, even though most of us cannot see the Covid-19 virus. Global heating (warming is too mild a word) is all-encompassing.
Just like the frog in the gradually warming water in the pot over the fire, we get used to things, so we may not even notice when they are much worse than ever before, for they do not affect the privileged in the same way as the farmer, the urban office worker and the migrant workers. Frequent flooding, extensive droughts, extreme seasonal uncertainties that ruin crops and together threaten livelihoods, reduce food security and are already driving more folk into extreme poverty.
So, what is new, you might ask. While the scientific community agreed that a 1.5°C increase in average global temperature is the limit to reduce the worst impacts for the planet and its inhabitants, figures show we have already exceeded 1.0°C.
With the current rising trajectory of fossil-fuelled greenhouse gas emissions and the shrinking carbon capture capacity of forests and oceans, the UN Environmental Protection Agency projection is that, even if all the Paris Agreement promises are fulfilled, we are likely heading to 2.0°C by 2030. Isn’t it time that we seriously engage in a national dialogue to examine what this means?
As with Covid-19, a declaration of climate emergency could kickstart the decisive action needed at local and national levels for the ecological well-being on which we humans depend. Think about it, without the gift of oxygen from plants, we cannot breathe, and without water, we die.
We are interdependent with ecological systems and we have no choice. Since the first climate emergency declaration in 2016, almost 40 countries have followed suit and over 1,800 local governments have made climate emergency declarations. Such declarations are infectious and are rippling out to mobilise more and more nations and communities into action.
Malaysia has one of the worst ecological footprints in Asean
Malaysia has exceeded six of the seven safe ecological boundaries around our precious home, Planet Earth, in our unsustainable drive to keep growing en route to becoming a “high-income nation”. As the recent Dasgupta report on the economics of biodiversity stresses, we must cease to exploit natural resources as if they are infinite, for they are not.
Instead, we must redirect all our economic thinking, investments, activities and accounting systems towards the outcome of a safe and just global space within planetary boundaries. Facing our past folly responsibly, Malaysia has the opportunity to take the lead nationally and regionally, to radically value life and the services the Earth provides and turn things around.
Three examples highlight the current carelessness by the powers-that-be and the need for transformative emergency action:
1. We depend on our rivers for drinking water, yet the quality of Malaysian waterways remains alarming. I recall the stinking black Sungai Pinang in the 1990s and 30 years later we see the Class 4 almost “dead” condition of the same river today, in the heart of densely populated George Town, only one of too many national waterways in such condition.
From a climate emergency perspective, those industries and agencies culpable for the killing of our waterways, directly via effluent and indirectly through poor governance, would be charged with a national crime against humanity, for they are depriving today’s children of a future with safe, potable water.
2. In Asean, Malaysia’s land-use change overshoots way beyond safe ecological boundaries, along with the emissions from excessive so-called “development” and mono-cropping practices. Land is within the state jurisdiction – just take one current example in the richest, most populous state of Malaysia, Selangor. Here another crime against humanity is on the agenda, and like many before it, to replace the valuable carbon drawdown peat forest and its indigenous stewards of Kuala Langat, with yet another carbon-emitting concrete project.
Malaysia urgently needs more green lungs, not fewer, and state governments are entrusted to make responsible, wise, "just" decisions for a genuinely sustainable future for all its citizens.
3. Malaysia has extensive coastlines, many of which are foolishly denuded of protective mangrove and too many destructive land reclamation projects. Coastlines are already facing saltwater inundation, ever-worsening floods and serious erosion – as farming and fishing communities will testify.
Sea level rise is one of the most worrying and costly effects of climate change and rates are intensifying right now, much faster than predicted, as polar icecaps disappear. Do the land reclamation projects around the country take these projections and ecological facts into consideration in their EIAs? And will these projects safeguard coasts against certain future sea rise?
An agenda of planetary well-being
Let’s learn from best practices in countries like Costa Rica to immediately take regenerative steps that include collaboration with local communities in:
a) Implementing zero-emissions strategies now, and ensure renewable energy access for all in our solar paradise. The UK, with much less sunshine, has dropped emissions by 38 percent since 1990 – so surely we too can.
b) Preparing for disaster scenarios such as the coastal dislocation of millions of Malaysians because of serious sea-level rise, just as the Netherlands has.
c) Gazetting, protecting, and expanding carbon drawdown capacity in the mangrove, peat, and montane tropical forests to ensure we are within safe margins of emission.
d) Ensuring national food security via healthy regenerative farming methods that end industrial farming practices and a dependency on imported food.
e) According our indigenous ecological stewards their land rights and learning their interdependent practices within the ecological web of life is a basis for a radical reset in our “modern” thinking and behaviour.
This complex and unpredictable emergency demands urgent, bold, courageous and purposeful leadership and collaboration across all ministries, all sectors and all levels of society.
For too long, the short-term myopic interests of the few have dictated our so-called “development” path. All who engage in perpetuating this “business as usual” path are culpable for the climate crisis and are therefore responsible for leading the way in eliminating emissions and drawing down carbon to bring our nation back within safe boundaries.
Fed up with adult inaction, young folk have stepped up with youth-led Climate Strikes in 185 countries across the globe for more than a year. This is NOT their job, and yes they have every right to scold us, for we adults are the ones who have made the mess. Our Malaysian youth are speaking up too, along with a coalition of seasoned civil society organisations which have been advocating for a truly sustainable approach for years. Too much of our house is burning now for complacency.
With Covid-19, there are many uncertainties and yet we take strategic action anyway. With climate change, we have the facts that get more alarming by the day, we have the frightening diagnosis that our actions now can make all the difference.
Malaysia has the opportunity to stand tall in Asean and stand tall at the UN Global Climate Action Summit in October 2021 with outstanding initiatives. What more is needed to take this existential threat to our existence seriously? It is way past high tide for leaders to boldly declare a Climate Emergency. Now!
Existing emissions pledges barely scratch climate targets, UN tally finds
ANNE MUNRO KUA is with the global Climate Coaching Alliance, which was set up in late 2019 to bring together coaches, coaching psychologists, coaching supervisors, facilitators and other leading professionals in order to co-create a space to share resources, explore practices and hold dialogues as the capacity of our planet to support life dwindles, climate-related catastrophes occur, as well as an increased rate of extinction in the more than human world.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
