Handful Of States Hold Fate Of World’s Vanishing Wilderness

In this file photo taken on June 28, 2018, the Jaraua river flows through the Miramar Sustainable Development Reserve in Amazonas State, Brazil. — AFP pic

(AFP -  November 01,  2018)

PARIS -  More than 70 per cent of Earth’s last untouched wilderness lies in the territories of just five countries, scientists said yesterday ― mostly nations that alarm environmentalists with their lukewarm response to climate change.

True wild spaces ― land and sea areas mostly unaffected by mankind’s explosive expansion and insatiable appetite for food and natural resources ― now cover just a quarter of the planet.

They form vital refuges for thousands of endangered species threatened by deforestation and overfishing, and provide some of our best defences against the devastating weather events brought about by climate change.

New research published in the journal Nature found that nearly three quarters of the wilderness that’s left belongs to Australia, Brazil, Canada, Russia, and the US.

“For the first time we’ve mapped both land and marine wilderness and showed that there’s actually not much left,” James Watson, professor of conservation science at the University of Queensland and lead paper author, told AFP.

“A few countries own a lot of this untouched land and they have a massive responsibility to keep the last of the wild.”

Researchers used open-source data on eight indicators of human impact on wilderness, including urban environments, farm land and infrastructure projects.

For oceans, they used data on fishing, industrial shipping and fertiliser run-off to determine that just 13 percent of the planet’s seas bore little or no hallmarks of human activity.

In a week when scientists warned that animals were being driven to the brink of extinction by runaway consumption, the paper’s findings that most remaining wilderness lies with just five nations will likely set conservationists’ nerves on further edge.

Russia’s vast swathes of taiga forest and permafrost contains trillions of trees that suck carbon from the atmosphere, tempering the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.

But Russia has been vague in its conservation commitments and President Vladimir Putin suggested last year that climate change was not caused by humans.

‘Alarm bells’

President Donald Trump has said the US is leaving the landmark Paris deal on climate change, and Brazil this week elected a right-wing former army captain who has pledged to drawdown existing legal protections for the Amazon rain forest.

The wilderness list sets off “alarm bells”, said Watson, who is also director of the science and research initiative at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York.

But “there’s time to break the mould and show some leadership. Because to sustain wilderness you just have to stop industry and not allow people in,” he added.

Due to voracious human consumption of fossil fuels, wood and meat, as well as our exploding population, just 23 per cent of land on Earth is untouched by the impact of agriculture and industry.

A century ago that figure stood at 85 per cent. Between 1993 and 2009, an area of wilderness the size of India was lost to human settlement, farming and mining.

The conservation group WWF warned this week that mankind’s consumption had decimated global wildlife and triggered what is known as a mass-extinction event.

In the last 40 years populations of fish, birds, amphibians reptiles and mammals have plummeted, on average, by 60 per cent.

In their paper, Watson and his colleagues warned that Earth’s wild places were facing “the same extinction crisis as species”.

“Similar to species extinction, the erosion of the wilderness is essentially irreversible,” they wrote. ‘Nature needs a break’

As well as being havens for biodiversity, wildernesses such as the boreal forest in northern Canada ― which acts as a carbon sink and which is protected by federal law ― form mankind’s frontline protection against runaway climate change.

“These areas are the places where many, many species retreat to,” said Watson. “At the same time they have massive amounts of carbon reserves.”

Scientists called for greater legislation to protect other unspoilt areas from industry, and to reformat global finance initiatives to provide incentives for forest protection.

“It requires nations to legislate and not let industry in. Nature needs a break,” said Watson.

“We can’t just exploit everywhere and these nations still have these strongholds of wilderness. I think the world would appreciate these nations standing up and saying we’re going to look after these places.”

Plastic Waste: Malaysia Struggles As global Scrap Piles Up

Plastic waste is piled outside an illegal recycling factory in Jenjarom, Kuala Langat October 14, 2018. — Reuters pic

"Dozens of factories have opened up in Malaysia to handle that waste, many without an operating licence, using low-end technology and harmful methods of disposal."

(Reuters - 25 October 2018)

Hundreds of sacks filled with plastic waste from the United States, Britain, South Korea and Spain spill onto the streets of an industrial zone in Pulau Indah, an island town just an hour’s drive from Kuala Lumpur and home to Malaysia’s biggest port. 

The stench of burning plastic and fumes from nearly a dozen recycling factories wafts through the neighbourhood, even as more container-loads of plastic waste are unloaded.

Pulau Indah — ironically, the name means “beautiful island” in Malay — is one of many towns in Malaysia where illegal plastic recycling factories have popped up in recent months as the South-east Asian nation became the top choice for plastic waste exporters from around the world.

The trigger for this dumping deluge was a Chinese ban on waste imports from the beginning of this year, which disrupted the flow of more than 7 million tonnes of plastic scrap a year.

Malaysia quickly became the leading alternative destination, importing nearly half a million tonnes of plastic waste between January and July from just its top 10 source-countries. 

Dozens of factories have opened up in Malaysia to handle that waste, many without an operating licence, using low-end technology and harmful methods of disposal.

“The situation is getting worse, especially with more and more illegal plastic recycling factories,” Yeo Bee Yin, Malaysia’s minister of energy, technology, science, climate change and environment, told parliament last week.

Used plastic is recycled into pellets, which are then used to manufacture other plastic products, but the process comes with pollution risks. 

Plastic unsuitable for recycling is burnt, which releases toxic chemicals into the atmosphere. Or it ends up in landfill, potentially contaminating soil and water sources.

Yeo said she does not want Malaysia to be the “trash can” for developed nations, but Housing Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin, who oversees the waste management department, told Reuters that the government also does not want to miss out on a business that could be worth billions.

Both ministers are members of a government committee studying its options for dealing with the growing pile of plastic waste. 

Burning plastic 

In the Pulau Indah industrial zone, Reuters reporters saw nearly a dozen recycling plants, many of them without signboards or company names, though government data shows only two factories in that area have a licence to import plastic waste.

One of the bigger ones, Jingye Manufacturing Sdn Bhd, was shut down in August for not having a licence, according to an official notice seen by Reuters. But workers in the factory and others nearby say it reopened within weeks, and when Reuters reporters visited earlier this month, it was operating. Plastic waste was stacked up within the premises and all along the road.

The factory supervisor declined to comment. Company records show Jingye was set up in Malaysia in October 2017, three months after China said it would ban imports of foreign waste from 2018.

Reuters could not reach the owners of the factory and no contact details were listed in records.

One worker in the industrial zone, who did not want to be identified, said there were as many as eight illegal factories in the zone and many openly burned plastic that cannot be recycled.

“Every night they burn. I see black smoke at night, so I go over and ask him ‘why are you trying to kill me?’ They ignore me,” he said.

In the nearby district of Kuala Langat, authorities found 41 factories operating illegally, many of them run by Chinese companies, according to Housing Minister Zuraida.

Around 30 were shut down by authorities in the last three months after residents complained of open burning of plastic and health complications.

Plastic waste is piled outside an illegal recycling factory in Jenjarom, Kuala Langat October 14, 2018. — Reuters pic 

Stricter rules

It is unclear how the illegal factories are sourcing plastic waste. 

Zuraida said some of the 95 companies that have a permit to import and recycle such waste are subcontracting to illegal factories as they lack the capacity to handle such volumes.

Malaysia’s imports of plastic waste from its 10 biggest source-countries jumped to 456,000 tonnes between January and July, versus 316,600 tonnes purchased in all of 2017 and 168,500 tonnes in 2016.

The United States, the world’s top exporter of plastic waste, sent 178,238 tonnes of such waste to Malaysia between January and July, nearly twice as much as it sent to second top destination, Thailand, according to the United Nations’ trade database and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. Britain, another big plastic waste exporter, sends a quarter of its waste to Malaysia, also more than any other country.

Environment Minister Yeo estimated that the plastic recycling industry would earn Malaysia RM3.5 billion this year. Zuraida said she planned to introduce new rules soon that will make it harder for factories to qualify for an import licence. 

 “I understand plastic recycling is quite lucrative. So I am also thinking should we miss this economic opportunity? This is something the committee will study,” Zuraida told Reuters.

If such an option is pursued, Malaysia would do so on strict terms, require high-end, green technology and allow factories to operate only in heavy industrial areas, she said. 

The factories are currently located haphazardly, including near or within residential areas. In Kuala Langat, southwest of Kuala Lumpur, a massive recycling factory nestled between palm plantations was shut down three months ago. 

But 3m tall towers of plastic waste — mostly consumer packaging material from the United States, Britain, France, Netherlands, Germany and Australia — were still piled in the front yard. A large plot of land next to the factory has been turned into a dumping site for scrap.

All Acclimatised To The Challenge - Yeo Bee Yin

"She is fortunate to head a ministry where the “terms, jargons, graphs and calculations” are familiar to her, she does not believe that prior training in a ministry’s particular field to be essential."

IT is hard to imagine Yeo Bee Yin - engineer, Cambridge University graduate and politician extraordinaire – as a “problematic pupil”.

Writing in her personal blog, Yeo has described how as a pupil in SRJK (C) Seg Hwa, one of the best schools in Segamat then, she used to feign stomach ache and even chased after the school bus once to beg the driver to take her home.

Today, however, any chasing related to her is only that of reporters trying to catch up with the Bakri MP, who, as the Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change Minister, has been very busy in the past two months learning the technical nitty-gritty of her new portfolio.

While Yeo thinks she is fortunate to head a ministry where the “terms, jargons, graphs and calculations” are familiar to her, she does not believe that prior training in a ministry’s particular field to be essential.

“Because what ministers eventually do...is to drive the direction for the ministry.

“It’s good if you’re an engineer or a scientist to lead a ministry like this but I think I have as much faith in an accountant and anybody (else) to lead, as long as the person can learn quickly and have a direction,” she says.

Indeed, Yeo has shown, through a series of media interviews and press conferences in the past two months, that she is more than capable of driving a new direction for the ministry under the Pakatan Harapan government.

Soon after being sworn in, she told a room full of energy stakeholders that four “hastily awarded” Independent Power Producer contracts under the previous administration have been scrapped, warned them against name-dropping, railed against the country’s dependence on coal for energy, and even confirmed to the press later that plans for a controversial nuclear plant were off the table.

Clearly, Yeo means – and knows – her business.

However, with a portfolio as extensive as her ministry’s name – Mestecc, for short – she is only too keenly aware of the huge challenges she faces.

In a frank 50-minute, fact-filled interview with The Star, Yeo confesses to not merely having to grapple with the lack of manpower and equipment – the climate change unit only has five people while the Department of Environment has no vehicle to carry out enforcement against open burning – she also has to wrestle with a fixed mindset from the academia and civil service.

An issue, Yeo thinks, is that while many government officers are good and professional, they are not given the opportunity to build up their capacity in a particular field, with “generalists” going to serve in one government department to another. And for those who do actually get to pursue their Masters in a particular field, they are often eventually assigned to another ministry and to a task completely different from their interest or field of study.

“Because my ministry is a technical ministry, a lot of things that we study need to be in-depth and (so they) need to be more than just generalists.

“You need people with deep capacity in one particular subject and so, it’s difficult at this moment (to find talent),” says Yeo, adding that there are still two or three more vacancies to fill at her ministry.

She is hoping to attract people of top management quality with mid-management pay but admits that “the problem is that the skills level needed is high but the pay is low.”

“What we are looking for is people who have relevant knowledge and yet are willing to do national service,” said Yeo.

In fact, she is hoping to focus on capacity building within her ministry, pointing out that the previous administration had been too reliant on outside consultants who were paid millions to make policy decisions.

“What happens is that people who execute it are not those who actually come up with the plan themselves.

“If you’re not the one who actually think the plan will work but it’s the outside consultant who are paid millions and millions of ringgit to tell you what to do, do you think you will do it passionately?”

The challenge now, Yeo feels, is for the ministry to come out with its own plan because it is what the government of the day, the stakeholders and the civil service think is the policy that matters.

“It’s time for us to shift our money paid to consultants to the training and skills development for our civil service,” she says, hoping that this would also get more talented young people to join the Government.

Another uphill task that Yeo is adamant about tackling is the current disconnect between much of the funded research in the country and the industry’s needs.

Researchers in Malaysia, she insists, should actually be solving society’s problems or building up demands of the market, describing any technology that does not create value as “fluff”.

The ministry will be embarking on a reform of its funding for research and development from next year, with half of this having to go to demand and industry driven areas.

“This is so that we don’t spend money on useless, syok sendiri (self-fulfilling) research. We will spend money on what the market needs and research that can generate jobs and money for our economy,” says Yeo, pointing out that currently, only 8.6% of Malaysia’s research funding goes into experimental research.

On the contrary, that figure is 45% in Singapore and 60% in Japan.

“We cannot afford it. We are a middle-income country,” Yeo notes, stressing that the emphasis has to be on research and development that in the near or medium term would be able to generate jobs, economic growth and wealth for Malaysians.

Another area of concern for Yeo is the severe understaffed unit for climate change, considering Malaysia’s vulnerability to any rise in sea levels and extreme weather patterns.

“We will start with 20 people this year and slowly build up the numbers,” she says, adding that two years after the country signed the Paris Agreement, “nothing much has been done”.

“We really need a plan on mitigation and adaptation,” Yeo stresses, revealing that at the moment, Malaysia neither has a plan nor capacity for proper carbon accounting.

The ministry also lacks negotiators and a team to pitch for international funding, she adds, underlining the ministry’s intention to pitch for international funding for its plan on climate change.

“But first of all, I really need a plan – a data driven plan, not a fluffy one. We have lots of plans but those are not data driven,” she said, adding that most were also not practical at all.

“As a minister, I really want to do this,” says Yeo, assuring the public that the new government remains committed to the Paris Agreement.

Eventually, Yeo hopes to institutionalise the plan on the climate change in the ministry.

“So that this will be carried out, even after I leave, and regardless of the results of the next general election.”

(The Star)