By: Cris Huddle
Malaysia's Sustainability Challenges and ICT's Role in Solutions
Malaysia is a south-east Asian island country whose form of government is a federal constitutional monarchy. Embracing free market economics, its government attempts to play as little role as possible in trade, which has resulted in a thriving economy. Its main exports are semiconductor components and devices, petroleum and palm oil. Since economic factors tend to give rise to environmental ones, it’s appropriate to mention these at the outset. The three most relevant environmental issues facing the nation, in order of importance from greatest to least are; deforestation, air pollution, and water pollution.
What makes one environmental issue more important than another? Within a short period of time spent researching, one can glean the most common or prevalent environmental issues pressing a nation, but it’s up to the researcher to assign them value. The rubric for importance applied here is as follows: the time and effort required to reverse said issue, the number of affected species, and the intensity of affect on species.
Deforestation made the top of the list for several reasons. First and foremost, obviously a forest can’t be replaced in a matter of a decade or two. Secondly, Malaysia is “recognized as one of 17 countries…with mega biodiversity,” so one can assume that reestablishing an ecological balance consisting of original species would be of inconceivable difficulty (ASEAN 53). Lastly, given that the forest serves as the natural habitat for the majority of indigenous species, it is safe to assume that the destruction of this habitat would yield an affect of high intensity on them. Air quality, although affecting an equally high number of species as deforestation, does not have the same intense affect as displacement. In addition, air quality has been shown to be reversible within a relatively short period of time; case in point, southern CA which reduced its number of high ozone days by 85% in only 16 years (The History, prtl.uhcl.edu). Water pollution ranked last due to its affected area being that of close proximity to industry and urban sprawl; and thus affecting a drastically lower number of species.
Deforestation lies at the heart of Malaysian ecological concern due to the fact that not one, but all three primary economic exports directly contribute to it. Malaysia’s continued industrial boom creates an ever-growing demand for energy, resulting in the clearing of forests for plants, roads and electrical grid architecture. Of the 129 oil exporting countries, Malaysia ranks 26th, exporting just under half of the volume produced by the U.S.; again resulting in the clearing of forest for wells, roads and supporting infrastructure (East &, cia.gov). The last and single most contributing factor to its deforestation is Malaysia’s palm oil industry. Simply put, forest is cleared in large swaths to make room for palm plantations. It is no wonder that with this trifecta impacting the forest Malaysia ranks third, world-wide, in highest number of species threatened with extinction (IUCN, iucnredlist.org). Air pollution is occurring as a result of the booming demand for energy from industry, by means of its primary source of electricity; coal fired plants (Koh, Lim 4725). In addition Malaysia’s lack of public transportation is resulting in an automobile-transported populace exacerbating the air pollution problem (ASEAN 67). Water pollution being the result of industry waste and the sewage associated with urban sprawl.
Being that deforestation is the most pressing ecological issue for Malaysia, what role can ICT play in a problem that is agricultural? That is a tricky issue, because the question at hand here is how do we use less land to produce the same amount of palm oil? And in this case algorithmic modeling to more accurately gauge crop yield and tailor it to particular year’s demand is useless, because re-forestation requires permanent boundaries; trimming some crop acreage due to a fall in demand one season, does nothing to solve the problem of deforestation, if the following season means reclaiming those acres with the return of demand. The first thought that comes to mind is to squeeze the palms closer together and in turn use less acreage, however, given that Malaysians have been commercially farming this crop since 1917, and the fact that they’re the number two producer of palm oil globally, I feel it safe to assume that the trees are already as close together as they can be. If you can’t increase the number of palms per acre, then the next logical step would be to increase the yield of each tree; and here is where ICT begins to have some marginal opportunities to exact change. It is also important to note that in light of the fact that palm oil farming is conducted in much the same way today as it was a hundred years ago, there is little (outside of supply chain management) application of ICT. In fact, even among Malaysia’s biggest competitor, and the world’s number one producer (Indonesia) of this commodity, there is little in the way of applied ICT, so what will be discussed here are ways in which ICT may be able to help.
Being that restoring a forest would also be intended to restore the wildlife therein, both factors will be considered for this analysis. The first approach employs geospatial technologies or geomatics for short. In this approach wildlife would be tagged then their movements recorded and analyzed, creating a map of areas most preferred by wildlife; plantations within these areas could then be moved to less traversed areas allowing the forest and wildlife to return to the former location. This serves to relieve the stress on the wildlife, but does nothing to decrease the acreage of plantations or increase their yield. The second approach involves the use of a deployed sensory array among plantations to record such data as water use, soil quality and hours of sunlight in order to reveal underperforming plantations. They could then be removed returning those areas to the forest. This would likely result in little returned to the forest. It appears that attempting to get more palm oil per acre, outside of genetically engineering them to do so, is likely not a realistic. So how does one return the forest and wildlife to its former state while preserving the economic interests of Malaysia? The answer is one doesn’t. The most feasible solution seems to lie in a compromise between forest and commerce, by means of the guild. To its credit palm oil is labor-intensive at the time of harvest, meaning men and women still have to walk the plantation and harvest by hand. In this situation, since harvest isn’t dependent on machine requiring homogeneity on the plantation, as is the case for example with cotton or corn, there is the possibility for restoring certain elements of the forest back into the plantations themselves in the form of guilds. In this case ICT can be used to analyze forest species on the basis of sunlight, water and soil requirements, as well as take into account shade requirements and wildlife support. In addition certain species can be ruled out which would make palm oil cultivation too difficult or hazardous. Once the guilds are composed and the species are integrated with the plantations, the next step would be to use the wildlife tagging and geomatic data to track and predict herd movements. Once these movements are understood, cultivation operations can be scheduled for times when certain dangerous or bothersome species are not in the area, e.g. elephants, tigers or monkeys. In this approach the forest and wildlife would be able to return to a substantial degree, while palm oil production would suffer a relatively small loss in productivity. This method also allows for economic growth in the form of future acres available for cultivation; something Malaysia’s neighbor Indonesia has already ruled out. Recently the president of Indonesia, out of deep concern for its diminished forest, declared by executive order that no new permits would be issued for razing forest for additional cultivation.
In the end, Malaysia will have to decide for itself where its dedication to commerce ends and its commitment to preservation begins.
Works Cited
Pitsuwan, Surin. “Terrestrial Ecosystems.” Fourth ASEAN State of the Environment Report (2009): 53, 67. Web.
Siong Lee Koh & Yun Seng Lim. “Meeting Energy Demand in a Developing Economy Without Damaging the Environment- A Study in Sabah Malaysia From Technical, Environmental and Economic Perspectives.” Energy Policy 38. 2010: 4725. Web.
“The History of Air Quality.” University of Houston, Clear Lake. Np. Nd. Web. 19 Feb. 2013. prtl.uhcl.edu
“East & Southeast Asia: Malaysia.” Central Intelligence Agency. Np. Feb. 5 2013. Web. 19 Feb. 2013. cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
IUCN 2012. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Np. Version 2012.2. Web. 19 Feb. 2013. iucnredlist.org