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Speaking at the National Climate Governance Summit 2025 earlier this month, Meenakshi, who is president of environmental group Sahabat Alam Malaysia, said that government leaders must acknowledge the need for more equity in decision-making and take responsibility for its environmental problems.
“We can’t just blame the Global North without taking responsibility for our own national issues,” she said, citing a common refrain by political leaders who have criticised the Global North for its lack of accountability on climate issues.
Addressing a room full of private sector investors and board members, Meenakshi said Malaysia needs to seriously look into its resource consumption patterns and the persistent natural resource abuse that happens due to mismanagement.
She argued that the rich who emit more greenhouse gas emissions due to their lifestyle should ultimately bear more responsibility and should change their consumption patterns. Data from the Oxfam report in 2015 showed that the richest 10 per cent of the global population are responsible for half of global emissions while poorest half of the population is responsible for just 10 per cent despite being most vulnerable to climate change.
Although no nationwide data is available on how much richer Malaysians emit versus poorer ones, a 2022 study on the region of Iskandar Malaysia in southern Johor showed that higher income households are likely to have larger carbon footprints.
“For whose benefit are we pursuing development and what are we producing? Are we producing more cars or are we building (our) public transport system? We can’t continue to produce wasteful luxury items because we don’t have enough resources,” said Meenakshi.
Citing the inability to recognise the consumption patterns of the wealthy as one of the “important failures of international negotiation processes”, Meenakshi said the concept of equity and inequality must be front and centre when discussing the planetary crisis.
On preventing natural resource abuse, Raman said the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a key decision-making process the public can get involved in. Starting February this year, Malaysia’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability has made summaries of its EIA reports accessible to the public.
Previously, only EIA reports for high-impact projects were available for public access during specific periods.
Meenakshi who is also the head of programmes at the Third World Network, an international non-profit, said Malaysia’s long-standing federal-state relationship over forest governance has been particularly problematic.
She said the country’s forests, which remain under the control of state governments, are often exploited for revenue through activities such as timber logging and monoculture plantations like palm oil. State governments often turn to forests for revenue as they do have immediate access to federal funding and tax revenue.
Increasingly, state governments are also opening up their lands for the mining of critical minerals and rare earths which are used in renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines, electric vehicles, and solar panels.
The exploration of these minerals is often met with protests from environmental groups and communities due to concerns over radioactive waste management, deforestation, and impacts on Indigenous communities living near potential mining sites. A recent report found heavy metals in the blood of Indigenous Malaysians, which was suspected to be linked to iron ore mining happening upstream from their villages.
Meenakshi warned that resources will continue to be exploited until all state governments adopt the 2022 amendments to Malaysia’s National Forest Act 1984 and transparency over land matters is built into the system. She did not cite specific examples.
Malaysia’s National Forestry Act 1984 was amended in 2022 to better protect forests from destruction and ensure public participation before permanent reserved forests are excised.
The amendment came into effect in the federal territories of Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, and Labuan in February this year, but Perlis is the only state of Malaysia’s 13 states to have adopted the amendments.
She said that the lack of enforcement of laws is why Malaysia cannot deal with its climate crisis effectively and called for checks and balances between economic activity and environmental protection.
Though the country has numerous environmental laws in place, their enforcement remains inadequate.
“We are good at passing laws, but we rarely give them the enforcement power they need. The time has come for us to really make sure that the reforms that were promised are actually implemented.”
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