A view of a street in Taman Sri Muda, Shah Alam, on Dec 20, during the height of the 2021 floods. While Malaysia is accustomed to floods during the annual monsoon season, these floods were unprecedented in their severity, probably because of climate change, say experts. — Bloomberg
THE Federal Government, state governments, political parties, civil society organisations, businesses, academia and society at large must focus our energy in the next few months – October to March – to prepare for high water.
Flooding is, of course, a common phenomenon in Malaysia. The recent devastating flood in greater Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley is an example of a disaster most likely due to climate change and anthropogenic activities of development.
The Shah Alam and Hulu Langat areas within greater Kuala Lumpur experienced one of the worst floods in recent history during the Dec 18-22, 2021, period – again, most likely due to localised impacts of the climate crisis.
The short-term and very heavy rainfall in Selangor exceeded 380mm on that fateful Dec 17 last year, while the normal maximum and average rainfall for November was only about 180mm and 60mm respectively.
Apart from the tragic loss of lives, the property damage arising from floods is indeed a serious threat to the nation’s green development agenda. The floods of 2021 in several states resulted in the evacuation of almost 20,000 – 19,711 – families, with an estimated loss of at least RM20bil.
Malaysia’s Meteorological Department (MetMalaysia) recently announced that the public should prepare for a forecasted average rainfall of around 100mm to 900mm in November this year during the north-east monsoon period, and La Nina episodes for most states in Peninsular Malaysia.
[The La Niña weather pattern tends to bring increased rainfall to this part of the world.]
Hence, there’s an urgent need to be prepared for the impacts of monsoonal floods, flash floods, strong winds, heavy downpours, etc, in the coming six months of October till March.
On Sept 12, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob chaired a National Disaster Management Committee meeting attended by Mentris Besar/Chief Ministers, the Chief Secretary to the Federal Government, all state secretaries, and directors-general and senior management officers of relevant government agencies.
The Prime Minister ordered everyone to avoid a repeat of the devastation the December 2021 floods imposed on the rakyat by strengthening all levels of preparedness, especially via community-based disaster risk management programmes.
The National Disaster Management Agency under the Prime Minister’s Department and its partner institutions have so far conducted around 155 such programmes involving about 12,600 participants from among community leaders, young people, village committees and NGOs; these people will be the first responders at local levels during a flood event.
The World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2022 highlights that “human-made environmental damage” is the prime concern for Malaysia while globally, the prime concerns are “climate action failure, extreme weather events and biodiversity loss”.
Fewer than half of the countries in the world possess a multi-hazard early warning system to mitigate extreme weather events. This is despite the fact that the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction have reported that a significant majority of the world’s population live in conditions that are vulnerable to climate change.
Fortunately, Malaysia has a relatively good early warning system, one example of which is Kuala Lumpur City Hall’s multi-hazard platform.
Achieving success in flood risk preparedness and management requires top notch collaboration and cooperation among relevant stakeholders, especially at local level, with steady support and voluntarism from academia, businesses/industries and communities/NGOs.
Effective decision-making by local governments should be supported by reliable data and information from multi-stakeholder groups for better flood risk preparedness and management.
An example of this is part of a research project led by Dr Minhaz Farid Ahmed of Lester (Institut Alam Sekitar dan Pembangunan) Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia with a national research grant awarded by the Higher Education Ministry that aims to support local governments in disaster management, especially floods.
This decision-making model for local government is in line with the aspirations of the 12th Malaysia Plan (2021-2025) as well as programmes such as the National Water Sector Transformation 2040, Voluntary Local Reporting, Voluntary National Reporting, and district disaster management committees chaired by the District Officer.
All this is part of a bigger framework involving the National Disaster Management Agency at the federal level, and the state disaster management committees at state level.
The Federal Government has so far approved an allocation of about RM8mil for preparedness against potential impacts of monsoonal floods and flash floods from October 2022 till March 2023.
This supports the aspirations of the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction. Customised training modules for local and state government officials, the community at large, businesses and the academic sector are important tools in minimising loss and damage arising from floods and other disasters.
Multidisciplinary approaches combining Science and Technology and the Social Sciences and Humanities are also essential for better preparedness and management of any kind of disaster.
While development activities are still necessary for Malaysia, we urgently need to comply with our promised commitment to reduce our carbon emissions by 2030, and achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 via Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction pathways.
For the next sixth months, let’s focus our energy and mobilise our resources to make sure all Malaysians are safe in the face of high water. Don’t be distracted by other concerns and risk lives and property – everything else can wait.
Prof Datuk Dr Mazlin Mokhtar is deputy head (research) of Sustainable Development Solutions Network Asia, Sunway University; and chair of the environment committee at the Academy of Sciences Malaysia.
