Green Aside

Since 20th April 2013, streets, public place, garden and junctions throughout the cities in Malaysia have been decorated with new facade. A facade that is not green, peace or pleasant or even at time danger to the motorists and road users. Many of the road signs have been blocked because the buntings and banners or boards have been erected too close to the signs. Trees and plants are not spared from this. The vegetation have been victimised with too many buntings nail on them. I presume, the notion of loving the trees and protecting our environment has been put aside. Is this our value or we can temporarily shelve our value for bigger picture at the national level? Well, the arguement will go on until 5th May 2013 and repeat again every 5 years. Can we come out with better idea of doing publicity? Pre-requisite is not to damage the hard or soft landscape we have.

Earth Day

The Earth Day of 2013 will be celebrated worldwide on 22th April 2013. The theme of this year is The Face of Climate Change. While global warming is real and impacted everyone, many are not aware about the effect as many do not see the direct effect impacting their daily routine. Many might have taken note of the effects of climate change but decided do nothing as the changes might not be that significant yet. Individually, of course yes as individual with higher resistence power will make climate change mitigation or even adapdation plan more friendly to them. They are able to protect themselves. But, what happen to those vulnerable who cannot afford to even meet their daily end need? Collectively, everyone has equal responsibility towards climate change, but individually those posing higher capacity should do more for the Earth. The face of climate change is changing every second. Although changes are unavoidable, change for the betterment should at least be the call of the day. For changing towards a better face, at least the smiling face of human, we should do more of protecting the environment and preventing speedy change of excessive climate circumstances. Happy Earth Day

Freedom of Choice

Today marks the nomination day of 13th General Election of Malaysia. It is a day political parties presenting their candidates for the choice of people. It is also a starting day for people to listen the candidates' pledge, to read the manifesto and to analyse the candidate with calibre to serve the people, community and nation. The choice is with the people, or in precise the voters. Freedom of choice is the underlying principle of public participation, to whom the public participation forms a major contributing component for sustainable development. We tend to choose things that we familiar and used to without taking an initiative to think further or to try to be more adventurous. This is understood as human nature is very much comfortable with the present life style they have, if they are enjoying it. Some do not like change because they have the fear of changing for worse scenario. Some do not like change because they might have some personal experience. Some do not like change because they have countless interest in not changing. For people to step out from the comfort zone required extra and concerted efforts from those who aspire to bring changes. For those people who aspire for changes will need a lot of courages. If we choose to embrace sustainability, then action must be taken to walk the talk. If we choose to NATO (No Action, Talk Only), then nothing is going to happen and we will have ourselves to blame if our own backyard is getting unsustainable. Whatever it is, the undenying fact is everyone has a choice to choose.

4E for Behavioural Change

When it comes to programmes success, 4 key factors are important, namely the machinery, money, method and manpower. Out of the four, manpower is believed to be the tougher. As we are talking about human being, changing their way of life, style of doing thing or even attitude is more difficult than other consideration. Many programmes, for example the waste composting project is not about how best the technologies are and how much money was invested, but rather the software or human part of it. The effectiveness of waste composting project is depending much on the level of stakeholders participation and the level of awareness. If the stakeholders decided not to give full cooperation, the success of the project will definitely in doubt. Changing behaviour of the people, has hence become a major task of gauging the success of a programme. There are 4 processes of changing behaviour of people or commony known as 4E by Jackson (2005), namely enable, encourage, engage and exemplify. We have to enable an individual to change in which authoritative approach without much room of freedom for choice should be avioded. Once enabling environment is created and an individual is happy to change, we must encourage them to do so by facilitating the change. Encouragement without engaging is not guarantee for continuing improvement or change to be sustained. We must hold an individual hand and walking along side them so that change can become a norm and value. Any positive change, then should be highlighted and promoted amongst the peers and even being recognised. After all, human at time need to be acknowledged and motivated for achieving greater height.