Green Cities

Terminologies such as sustainability dividend, productivity dividend, global reporting initiative, life cycle analysis, return of investment, cost benefit analysis, SPEAR, environmental accounting, carbon trading and etc were brought up countless during the 2-day Green Cities Conference held in Putrajaya last week. Many participants might have heard about them or some might have understood them, but I believe many have not applied them in their works or daily practice. None of the Local Authorities in Malaysia has even incorporated the terms in their master plans and programmes. The closer we have, I think is talking about climate change briefly in the report. Therefore, it must be an eye opener to many local participants hearing the foreign speakers sharing their experiences. Similarly, it must be refreshing listening to accountant from Australia talking about accounting in sustainable cities and property man spoke on strategic and total asset management. Sustainable development and climate change is responsibility of everyone, contradict to the believe of many city managers in Malaysia that the topic is confined to town planners and environmentalist.

While climate change is real and attempts are forthcoming from all stakeholders to overcome it, the real challenge to me must be creating common stand and agreeing on common target. Everyone agrees that human factor is chief amongst the many factors determining the success of minimising impact from global warming. People as the end user of resources as well as the polluter has personal responsibility to reduce his/her ecological footprint. And doing so, means changing the way of life and lavish lifestyle. While the people from developed countries except North American have realised it and moving towards less consumption lifestyle, the people from developing countries is considering of having lavish lifestyle a symbol of higher social status.

Everyone is talking about reducing carbon emission through innovative approaches and technologies on transportation, land use planning, structural change of governance system and management of cities. At the end of the day, it is leadership and initiation of people. The President of Putrajaya Corporation and community leader of Sukunan, Indonesia vindicated the importance of political and management will in greening the city. We need a mover, initiator and builder for sustainability.

The terms of sustainable city, livable city, green city, knowledge city, healthy city and etc are mentioned and quoted throughout the Conference. Many have spoken passionately about various initiatives. While some agencies or individual are ego and tend to protective on championing their own initiative under different terms, it must be acknowledged that all these programmes are trying to achieve same goal, that is to preserve a quality living environment for all within the carrying capacity of our Mother Nature. To me, it is OK for having many individual championing various agenda as above as long as we are talking about the same ultimate goal. Processes and approaches are, thus secondary.

The Conference has also brought up changing focus of urban challenges from environment to climate change and to integrated land use planning. It must be amazing to Malaysian city managers that evolution has been so actively done in other part of the World, even China has produced many eco cities. Believe me, we have long way to go. Perhaps Putrajaya and Cyberjaya as Green Technologies City as designated by the Federal Government would have to do it fast.