Nick Nazmi confirmed from the first day of assuming office as the Ministry of Environment in Malaysia that he would balance “development and environmental preservation” (Malaysian Ministry of Environment)
Malaysia's Minister of Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change, Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, is 42 years old, but his direct and structured speech reveals the face of an experienced politician.
You will not have much trouble discovering the secret behind this. The man, born in 1982, combined the study of law with the rich political experience that began when he was a student at the university. The richness of his experience tempted him at this young age to issue his memoirs under the title “The Malaysian Son... A Political Journey.” progressive in the heart of Southeast Asia.
Nik Nazmi, who holds a Bachelor's degree in Law from King's College London, began his political activity in the Fog City, where he was active with several organizations, including the Executive Council of Malaysian Students in the UK and Ireland and the Federation of Islamic Societies Students in the UK and Ireland. After returning home, he worked as a private secretary to the current Malaysian Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, and in 2008, he was elected a member of the Selangor State Legislative Council, becoming the youngest candidate to win in those elections.
Following the fifteenth general elections in Malaysia and Anwar Ibrahim being sworn in as the country's Prime Minister, the Ministries of Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change were merged and assigned to Nik Nazmi, making it the first ministerial position for the former youth leader of the People's Justice Party led by Anwar Ibrahim.
On his first day in office about a year ago, the young minister laid out the broad outlines of his policy, which focuses on balancing “development and environmental preservation,” and sought to implement this through a set of trends and policies that he revealed in an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera Net.
In a quick meeting that lasted "half an hour", in that short period of time, Nick Nazmi gave every question a sufficiently satisfactory answer. He spoke about the problem of "cross-border fog", his assessment of the outcomes of the "COP28" summit, the climate dimensions of the Gaza war crisis, and adaptation and mitigation measures. The climate change approach that Malaysia is adopting to deal with climate challenges. The following is the text of the dialogue.
On your first day as Minister of Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change about a year ago, you told local media that you would focus on “balancing development and environmental preservation.” What has been achieved so far in this direction in about a year?
I believe that within a full year of assuming responsibility for the Ministry of Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change, we were able to develop a strong framework regarding energy transformation. Malaysia, like all countries in the world, was completely dependent on fossil fuels, and we are also producers of oil and gas, but we developed an ambitious plan aimed at increasing Reliance on renewable energy from 25% currently to 70% by 2050.
We have already begun steps aimed at achieving this goal, as we reduced the subsidies directed to electricity and water, and began increasing the prices of these services, especially for companies and the wealthier segments of society. As a result, we have seen that more people are adopting energy efficiency measures in order to reduce their utility bills, and one of these measures is installing solar panels.
We have also been able to be very active in preserving our existing carbon sinks, which are tropical rainforests. As you know, we are one of 17 countries in the world with highly diverse forests, and we are also part of the Coral Triangle (an area of 6 million square kilometers extending Across 6 countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific), the environmental fiscal transfer allocated to underdeveloped state governments for forest conservation increased from 70 million ringgit (US dollar equivalent to 4.78 ringgit) in 2022 to 150 million ringgit, and the Prime Minister agreed to increase the amount to 200 million ringgit in 2024. So there is a huge increase, about three times.
We also supported the community activity of indigenous communities and military veterans within what is known as the “Forest Coalition”, and the number of these community guardians of the environment increased from one thousand to two thousand people, and this had a significant impact in reducing the poaching of the famous Malaysian tigers and other animals, and we are currently moving towards... Conducting a package of legislative amendments to increase penalties and punishments regarding water pollution, forest encroachment, etc.
Malaysian Environment Minister Nik Nazmi: Malaysia will not tire of the drumbeat of "climate justice" (Malaysia Ministry of Environment and Climate Change)
So we can read your statement to Reuters last October that you are seriously considering issuing a law similar to Singapore's law that holds companies responsible for cross-border haze, as a move within this legislative package?
There have already been calls within Malaysia since 2019 for us to enact our own legislation, which deals with the problem of “cross-border haze” similar to what Singapore has done.
In fact, the problem is not a problem of Malaysia alone, but it is recurring in the countries of Southeast Asia (ASEAN), and it increased with the “El Nino” phenomenon in 2019, which is a large-scale climate phenomenon that occurs naturally and involves fluctuating ocean temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, to... Aspect of the changes occurring in the upper atmosphere.
Then it reared its ugly head again last year with the return of the “El Nino” phenomenon, and it is clear that people feel very dissatisfied, because this problem caused the closure of schools and businesses, and it also has clear effects on health.
Thinking about issuing a law is one way we are exploring, and the challenge was to look at what Singapore did, and are there clear mechanisms for enforcing the law, because when you talk about cross-border haze you are talking about practices that come from farms in our neighboring countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ASEAN) such as Indonesia, and as you know, implementing the law at that time will require cooperation from the local authorities in those countries.
But in addition to this legislative path, we already have another agreement on transboundary haze pollution at the level of the Association of Southeast Asia (ASEAN), which was concluded in the early 2000s, and Malaysia was one of the first signatories to it, and now I believe that all ASEAN countries I signed it, but there is criticism that it is not strong enough in terms of implementation.
So one option is to look at whether we can upgrade this agreement, so that it includes a stronger scientific committee to assess the risks, or we can also hold some bilateral talks for example with Indonesia to look at this issue.
We have already held open sessions with members of parliaments and civil society on the problem and ways to solve it, and we will continue to look at this matter in detail from different angles, and we will consider all ways of solving, but we will give attention to the special angle of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreement, because Malaysia will assume the presidency of the Association for the year. Next.
I hope that in the end we can find solutions, as I understand very well the desire to have solutions that reflect air quality.
Why does this particular problem spark a recurring crisis with your neighbor, Indonesia?
As you know, we have a specialized meteorological agency, and the data provided indicate that the problem comes from the fires that occur in Indonesia, but we do not want the issue to turn into a diplomatic issue. Rather, we want it to be an incentive to search for common solutions, because air crosses borders. Its quality can only be improved within a framework of regional cooperation, just as the governments of Canada, the United States of America, and Mexico did in 2020.
We do not aim to point the finger at anyone as much as we aim to search for solutions. For our part, we have communicated with Malaysian companies operating in Indonesia and asked them to cooperate with the central government and local governments to ensure that they do not contribute to the problem. In general, I believe that we have witnessed a lot of positive cooperation. I also sent a letter to my Indonesian counterpart in which I stressed that Indonesian law must be applied to any Malaysian company involved in the problem, and this commitment on our part confirms our desire to solve the problem within a framework of cooperation.
As I emphasized previously, we aim to solve the problem within the framework of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). We have done good work through that association in the past, and we now need to develop ourselves to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.
Nick Nazmi drew attention at the COP28 summit to the climate losses resulting from the Israeli aggression on Gaza (Malaysia Ministry of Environment and Climate Change)
How does improving the Association’s performance help it confront the challenges of the twenty-first century, most notably climate change?
If ASEAN were a single economic unit, its population would be a significant human force, and that makes us a major player on the global agenda. But the challenge is that we need to be able to do things together, and that is where the difficulty lies.
When we look at two countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, they are two countries that are important in diversity, and here I mean diversity from a purely environmental standpoint. If we work together to protect our carbon sinks as much as possible, we will have a huge amount of carbon sinks, especially if this coincides with the conduct of economic activity in a way that reduces Carbon emissions, which will make us an important player in the fight against climate change globally. But if we follow the same path as other countries or if we destroy our forests, I don't think that represents any hope for the world.
In its National Contributions Report submitted to the United Nations in July 2021, Malaysia increased its emissions mitigation ambition by pledging to reduce carbon intensity, relative to GDP, by 45% by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. What has been achieved so far in this context?
We are in the process of preparing a long-term strategy for low-emissions development, and I think this will be something we explore soon, there are still gaps that we are working on.
We can say that we have made progress, but certainly when we talk about not increasing the average global temperature beyond 1.5 degrees, we have to do more, and I think the recent COP28 summit in Dubai was a good occasion to remind us of that.
In Malaysia, we not only aim to reduce carbon intensity versus GDP by 45%, but we have another goal, which is to reach net zero emissions by 2050, and achieving this requires a strategy that balances development and the environment, as I said from the first day of taking office, because we We are still a developing country and have a large number of poor people, and it is not acceptable and logical for the goal of preserving the planet to come from warming at the expense of development and the economy.
Malaysian Environment Minister Nik Nazmi (right) from the ministry headquarters wearing a traditional batik shirt (Malaysia Ministry of Environment and Climate Change)
During your participation in the COP28 climate summit, you referred to the “devastating” climate losses resulting from the Israeli aggression on Gaza. In your estimation, to what extent does this crisis reflect, from an environmental standpoint, the absence of what is known as “climate justice”?
Before the Gaza war, I condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the environmental genocide that occurred there, but the situation in Gaza is more dangerous. We are talking about a densely populated area that basically suffers from a scarcity of resources, and the war has increased this suffering, as there is no source of clean water, and infrastructure has been destroyed. Sanitation infrastructure, so while we are talking about a climate-resilient planet and seeking to achieve net zero emissions, there is a piece of this planet that has been stripped of any components to achieve that resilience due to tons of pollutants resulting from the war, so if you take the climate dimension out of the Gaza crisis, you will not be able to From seeing the human tragedy in its true size.
Reactions to the results of the COP28 conference varied between those who saw it as a step in the right direction after adopting pledges related to maximizing the use of renewable energy and working to reduce emissions, and those who saw that there is a large gap between the pledges granted and what is required to confront the effects of climate change. So to Which direction do you lean?
Malaysia welcomes the outcomes of the conference. Although there was ridicule that its holding in an oil-producing country heralded positive results on environmental and climate issues, the conference witnessed, for the first time in more than 30 years, an explicit stipulation of the necessity of phasing out fossil fuels.
But this is not enough, and we need to make more efforts to confront the problem of climate change within the framework of what is known as climate justice, which we will continue to beat, demanding that the developed world bear its responsibility in supporting developing countries, because it is not fair and just for the developed world to cause over the past two hundred years The large amount of greenhouse gas emissions we then ask developing countries to abandon their development and economic goals to preserve the global climate.
We do not deny the problem of global warming resulting from climate change, but we will not tire of beating the drums of climate justice, which stipulates that the solution should not be at the expense of developing countries’ efforts to improve their economic conditions.
A survey conducted by the Climate Change Communication Research Center at Monash University in Malaysia between July and August 2022 revealed that most participants are keen on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but they do not know what they can do to mitigate the effects of climate change. What is your plan to raise awareness? Between local communities on emission mitigation measures?
I think the challenge that Malaysia faced for a long time was that we underpriced our services, as you know, electricity, water and sewerage services were very cheap, and that was one of the reasons for the increase in emissions, but we looked at the prices of those services and they were adjusted, and now we are looking at In fuel prices.
But this is part of the solution. We need to develop alternatives represented, for example, by electric vehicles and environmentally friendly public transportation, and above all to increase awareness of climate issues among the youth group, and I imagine that there is a clear development in this context that I see in the behaviors of my two sons, for example. , who always blames me every time I use plastic bottles.
According to the climate risk statement prepared by the World Bank Group and the Asian Development Bank, average temperatures are expected to rise by 3.11 degrees Celsius in Malaysia by the 1990s. How are you preparing to confront this rise and its environmental and economic repercussions?
The Malaysian weather is hot and humid, but it is becoming hotter and more humid. Like many countries in the world, last year was our hottest year, and two children died from heatstroke, which is unusual.
Therefore, we need not only measures to reduce emissions, but we also need “climate adaptation” measures, and these measures start from the way we design our cities, and even the clothes we wear. In this context, we must preserve urban forests and return to our traditional clothes that It helps us adapt to the high heat, so we recently allowed employees to wear the traditional batik shirt which helps in this regard.
Kuala Lumpur witnessed “unprecedented” floods in late 2021. To what extent was this event influential in national plans to deal with climate change?
In the past, most of our focus when dealing with climate change was on emissions mitigation issues, but now we are developing our national plan to pay attention to “adaptation” issues, within a multidimensional approach, to deal with the threat of floods.
As you know, Malaysia has a long history of heavy rainfall, and our way of adapting was to have the house stand on stilts, but we are not doing that now, so we will return to this style of construction, and there will be no approval for new homes that are not based on those stilts. There will be measures to secure homes from flood risks, and we will seek to implement nature-based solutions such as sponge cities (a term that arose from the idea of making cities behave like sponges, being able to absorb, store and reuse rainwater instead of allowing it to quickly flow into drainage systems. health).
What is your ministry's strategy to ensure sustainable management of Malaysia's natural resources, including forests, minerals and water?
We have many natural resources, and we cannot tell people not to approach them. It is not wise for us to be on the pedestal of a statue and say that we will not touch it, but the challenge is to manage those resources in a sustainable manner. For example, palm trees, we make sure that they are managed in a sustainable manner to ensure the continuity of oil production. Palm trees are a commodity that is in demand globally, and are used in important food industries such as the chocolate industry. We have tin and rare earth minerals, which we are keen to ensure are used in a sustainable manner as well. This requires decisive legislation that ensures sustainability when dealing with these resources, and cooperation between the government. Central and state governments, and this is what we are working on.
Source: Al Jazeera