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.

Earth Hour 2013

WWF initiated Earth Hour 2013 would see millions of people around the globe switching off the lights on 23th March, 8.30pm to 9.30pm. It is a day to raise public awareness on climate change and its impact. It is commonly acknowledged that energy sector contributing the highest carbon emission to our Earth. Hence, finding ways to reduce non renewable energy consumption is the way forward. Electricity generated from coal is major source of carbon emission as 1kwh electricity will be generating 1kg CO2 and equivalent. Reminding people to not consume electricity over and above what needed, hence is essential. The day of Earth Hour will witness many activities of dessiminating information about environmental conservation and protection. This, especially so with many businesses using this to conduct their corporate social responsibility programmes. While holding an awareness programme is commendable, using that as a gimmick to attract people coming all the way from far, some with fossil fuel driven private vehicles might not be appropriate and go against the call for prudent in energy consumption. While switching off the light for an hour is not that difficult, practicing it daily and using electricity sufficiently for basic need remains a big challenge. Do we not putting our electrical appliances on stand by mode? Can we walk to the neighbourhood shops instead of riding on a car? Can we switch off the bathroom lights after using it? We might want to replace malfunction bulbs with the energy saving or LED lamps. Can we procure 5 star energy saving appliances? If you want a vehicle for travelling and if you can afford, why not buying a hybrid or electric car? Can we adjust the temperature of air condition to 26 degrees celcious and only on it when you cannot withstand the heat or humidity? Can we have green building or retrofiting our building towards energy efficiency? Why not generating renewable energy, a feet encourages by the Sustainable Energy Development Authority of Malaysia. Happy Earth Hour 2013

World Water Day 2013

Tomorrow is the 2013 World Water Day. United Nations has designated the 2013 is UN International Year of Water Cooperation with UNESCO taking the lead. The World Water Day held 22nd March each year is a mean to focusing attention to fresh water and advocating the importance of managing fresh water resources sustainably. UNESCO has been chosen due to its significant and long standing roles and on the issue of fresh water conservation. This is timely reminder as many of us have forgotten that this God giving gift for neccessity to sustain human life has been ignored. The importance of water and its value to society has to be reminded and reinstated. For Malaysian, the average consumption of 202 liter water per person per day is much higher compared to the world average of 165 liter per person per day. We, hence become very wasteful and generous on the usage of water. The consumption pattern can be changed if we are willing to change our lifestyle, attitude and value on water usage. Have you done anything in celebrating the World Water Day? You might want to install the rain water harvesting system in your premises. Are you recycling the waste water? Are you using the glass to hold water from tap during teeth brushing time? Have you changed the toilet flushing tank to the capacity of 6 liter or below? Thankful to the Water while celebrating it.

Responsibility of Developers

The High Court recently ruled that responsibility of developers in providing the facilities or in building the infrastructure according to approved plan has no limitation on time frame. It means that developer has to provide as such and finish the job no matter how long the projects have been completed. Very often we witnessed the project proponents run away from their duty in providing the facilities and infrastructure after long period especially for the development in phasing or go without notice. This is more so for parcels of land in a larger scheme that have been sold to individual owners. For the individual owners, they have either no knowledge about the requirement or innocent about the conditions imposed. It will come to a time that the new owners claim of unfairness to them as they are only buying a portion of it. The original owners run away from the responsibility after master layout plan approved and individual parcel of land sold. The rulling is timely that local authority should not be blamed for no infrastructure provision, a task supposedly done by the project proponents.