In this third and final part on how the public can participate in EIA reviews, we discuss the need and ways to get the public more involved in development planning. It must start long before the EIA process. Also read Part 1 and Part 2.
WHEN MARINE conservationist Alvin Chelliah chatted with experts for the Tioman airport EIA report, their replies were calm, technical, and dotted with data. For the local villagers, however, emotions ran high, for the stakes were higher.
“They were stunned and shocked to hear exactly what was happening,” recalled Chelliah of his at Kampung Paya and Kampung Genting. These villages sat on the shore by the proposed airport. Before Chelliah showed them the site map from the EIA report, the villagers did not know where the airport runway would be.
He and his team had been encouraging locals to share their views. But many of the details in the report – construction physics, soil dynamics, hydraulics – were gibberish to the untrained.
(Feature image: A random selection of the hundreds of graphs, tables and images in the EIA report of the proposed Tioman airport project. | Compiled by Macaranga)
“People broke down in tears. They were so worried about what would happen in front of their villages and how their business would be affected. It became very emotional when they realised the gravity of what the project meant for their livelihoods.”
It seemed the locals knew hardly anything about the 7-year project that would change the land and sea before their homes. They were also pushed and pulled by conflicting narratives of economic benefits and environmental damage. Some village heads supported the project. Others challenged the authenticity of the social impact assessment study cited in the EIA report.
It became clear to Chelliah that face-to-face dialogues were key to ensuring everyone could understand the EIA report and voice their views. After Kampung Paya and Kampung Genting, his team visited 5 other villages to explain the report.
Town halls make great public participation
Like the dialogues that Chelliah did, town halls would greatly benefit public participation in the EIA process. These would be public events where the project representatives and authorities answer questions from the audience.
EIA consultant and waste management specialist Ramkumar recalls a town hall he did for a landfill project in Sabah.
Ramkumar’s team explained the project’s impact and outcome in simple terms at the town hall. They answered questions and noted every concern raised by the participants.
“How noisy is the equipment?” asked one man in the crowd. There were about 10 houses near the landfill site, each with 4 to 6 residents. While the men of the households would be away during the day, they worried that the noise from the project site would bombard their wives and children. “What about our families?” he asked.
In response, Ramkumar’s team revised the EIA report. They added a wall to shield the residents from the noise.
“The client would never have built the wall without the town hall,” said Ramkumar. So, an effective public participation format like a town hall “is not just fluff” but “really useful for people to understand what’s actually on the ground.”
But town halls are laborious to run. The DOE, already severely understaffed, is wary of committing to more, they told Macaranga.
Making public participation more efficient
However, town halls would be more feasible if public participation were made less burdensome and more effective. Start by redefining the criteria for which projects require public participation, said Ramkumar.
Currently, the DOE generally uses project size or location to categorise projects. Larger projects are grouped into Schedule 2 and their EIA reports require public participation.
But grouping projects by size is too rigid and not tied to actual potential social impact, said Ramkumar. A more effective and efficient way would be to base public participation requirements on how many people would be affected by the project and to what degree.
For example, a small project that clears forest inhabited by Orang Asli would have a larger social impact – and thus a greater need for focal group discussions or town halls – than a factory built in an industrial zone.
Meenakshi Raman, president of environmental NGO Sahabat Alam Malaysia, agreed with Ramkumar’s suggestion. “One of our critiques is that [the current classification] has a very narrow perspective,” said Meenakshi.
She argued that discussions on the need for town halls or more engagement should be done at the earliest stages of the EIA process. “You genuinely need to give attention to those who are going to be impacted.”
DOE wants 3,000 more officers
If the DOE adopted a more targeted approach to public participation needs, it might reduce the workload for running town halls. Nevertheless, the agency still desperately needs to boost its ranks.
The DOE has an “incredible role”, said Meenakshi. Sahabat Alam Malaysia “has always advocated for much more resources to them, particularly in the EIA process.”
Nationwide, the DOE has about 1,100 officers handling technical and enforcement matters. The workload is most dire for those reviewing EIA reports. In 2024, there were 8 states in which every EIA review officers had to handle more than 20 reports. DOE’s “ideal workload” is about 8 reports per officer.
What does DOE wish for? An office in every district, and 3,000 more officers. They presented their request to the Ministry late last year.
Public participation should start before the EIA process
Despite the importance of public participation in the EIA process, consultants and the DOE are irked by the many instances in which it has gone beyond the scope of the EIA process.
At a public dialogue for the EIA report of a highway, people asked about future toll rates or the developer’s qualifications; for a plantation project, comments demanded a survey of wildlife sounds. And, of course, there is an overwhelming number of “I disagree” one-liners.
Why does the public throw all sorts of questions and comments at the EIA process? Likely because they have no other official platforms to talk about projects.
Make other reports as public as EIA reports too
There are various other impact assessment reports, such as those on a project’s traffic, radiological, or social impacts. But those are kept locked away from public view. Only the EIA reports stand alone in the light. Naturally, public scrutiny is tight.
Macaranga asked PLANMalaysia, the government agency overseeing social impact assessments in the country, if these reports would be made accessible. They did not respond.
“These other impact assessments should be open for public review,” said Meenakshi. “[The transparency] has to be on par with the EIA process.
“This goes back to good governance, goes back to accountability, goes back to transparency. The government should not fear the public and public interest groups.”
Meenakshi’s view is shared by the EIA consultants Macaranga spoke with.
“If the EIA report is made public then all reports done for the project should be made public too,” said water quality specialist Geetha P Kumaran. All the reports must be seen holistically because the EIA report “is only one of the technical reports done for a project.”
“Unfortunately, the EIA report has become such a big elephant that people don’t see the whole picture,” said waste management specialist Ramkumar. “They think it can do everything, but it’s not.”
Start at the policies, not the EIA reports
Rather than jumping only at an EIA report, those who wish to influence development ought to start a few levels earlier in the pipeline.
“It is quite late to start making noise at the EIA stage,” said EIA consultant Dr G Balamurugan. By then, the federal or state government would have approved the project (at least in principle), secured the financing, and are merely deliberating on the final details. “If you really want to protest, start at the policy level.”
Balamurugan gave an example of a national agricultural policy that wants to promote temperate climate farm produce. Scrutinise that and one would realise the government wants to increase farming on hilly areas like Cameron Highlands. Farmers heeding the national policy would clear more slopes or use more fertilisers.
“[Whenever] there is a policy statement, somebody needs to question – what is the impact?” said Balamurugan.
The airport was years in the making
Balamurugan’s words might carry some premonition for Chelliah and his colleagues, who toiled for weeks in 2023 to find every shortcoming possible in the Tioman airport EIA report.
The EIA report has a section that compares the merits between building the airport and not. The consultants emphasised that airport has been a long-running and integral part of state planning. It says that the state government and the National Physical Planning Council had approved the project site as early as 2004. The project was also included in the gazetted Special Area Plan for Tioman Island Cluster Pahang 2030.
The EIA report stated that canceling the project would “run counter to the aims and aspirations of the State and federal government’s policy…to promote tourism as a major revenue source in the state and country….The No Project Option will not be exercised.”
The Special Area Plan 2030 has an indicative map of future developments. It was published by PLANMalaysia in 2019 – 4 years before the EIA report.
There, between Kampung Paya and Kampung Genting, is an airplane icon.
Updates: 10/3–Added pull-down “EIA legislations in Sabah and Sarawak”.
This is Part 3 of a 3-part series that covers how public input works within the EIA process. Part 1 explains what and how public comments work in the EIA process. Part 2 looks at how the public can better provide technical comments on EIA reports.
[Edited by SL Wong]
This story was also produced with a grant from the Youth Environment Living Labs (YELL), administered by Justice for Wildlife Malaysia (JWM). The contents of this story do not necessarily reflect the views of YELL, JWM, and their collaborators.
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