Youth climate action groups in Malaysia have a raft of actions drawn up for 2020. How will they proceed in the face of the Covid-19 crisis? This is the second of the two-parter on climate activists in Macaranga’s Taking Stock series.
THE PLACARDS always take the cake. “You’ll die of old age, I’ll die of climate change”. “Rumah Banyak, Bumi Hanya 1” (Houses are plentiful, there is only one earth). And of course, “Skipping my juris class to strike. Sorry Mr Rabinder.”
Climate strikes are a powerful rallying call to action against global warming. But they are just one component in the arsenal of youth climate movements in Malaysia (read our first report here).
(Photo: Climate strikes are eye-catching but far from the only form of activism. – pic courtesy of KAMY)
From capacity-building to petitions and community engagement to policy inputs, all types of actions need to be employed, according to the two most prominent youth climate groups in Malaysia.
This is because they all “feed into the goal that we’re working towards: to recognise that climate change is a serious issue that threatens the future of our next generation—youths—and political leaders must be held accountable for the decisions they make concerning our future,” says Nur Syahirah Khanum.
Syahirah, better known as Eira, is a member of the Malaysian Youth Delegation (MYD).
Likewise, Klima Action Malaysia (KAMY) employs an assortment of campaigning methods.
However, in the face of the Covid-19 movement restrictions and a new government that is still sorting out policy direction, both groups have had to adapt.
KAMY: Assembling networks
It was by organising climate strikes that KAMY appeared on the climate activism scene in March last year. Since then, they have organised another three in tandem with the Fridays for Future global strikes.
For this year’s Earth Day, KAMY is going online like everyone else because of Covid-19. However, as per its modus operandi, it is using local rather than global narratives and going low-key, says KAMY’s programme coordinator, Ili Nadiah Dzulfakar.
Webinars and online talks will be spread over April and May. These aim to encourage youths to speak up about their local issues, do activities with the online community and create and spread personalised and relevant messages.
It is not the first time KAMY has conducted digital workshops, having previously facilitated youth groups in Kalimantan and Myanmar. All are members of a Southeast Asian climate striker network.
“But we have not done this with the Malaysian audience,” says Nadiah. “That would be interesting. But we are also planning for the long-term because Covid-19 will see uncertainty for a while.”
In fact, since the start of the Movement Control Order on March 18, KAMY has refocused its resources to co-organise relief for its Orang Asli partners and the broader Orang Asli community. Indigenous groups’ incomes and supplies have been badly impacted by the Order.
Likewise, other plans need to be continually evaluated as the situation unfolds.
Building blocks
For one, KAMY worked hard last year to co-build a 17-member grassroots climate coalition, which includes farmers and indigenous communities.
An objective of this coalition is to help “raise their understanding of climate issues and policies towards developing a realistic framework where they can include climate adaptation and mitigation,” says Nadiah.
This coalition would be a building block of a KAMY long-term goal to hold citizens’ assemblies, which enable decision-making by citizens through informed deliberations.
Owning decision-making
Such assemblies would address current shortfalls in governance related to climate change.
These include red tape, one-way communication by government agencies at stakeholder meetings, and disparities among Ministries, “made worse”, says Nadiah, by the increase in the number of Ministries handling climate change portfolios in the new government.
Grassroots partners—alongside the larger climate science and communications collaborators—are also part of another KAMY project that is in the works.
This project is an ambitious effort to produce a localised and accessible version of the seminal report, Global Warming of 1.5°C, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The report soberly lays out wide-ranging negative impacts on natural and human systems of a 1.5°C temperature rise. It also calls for drastic action to mitigate and prevent these impacts.
“We aim to populate Malaysian politics as well as the public with this IPCC information. We want to promote scientific evidence as the basis of decision making,” says Nadiah.
In addition, KAMY hopes to continue building what it calls “a credible Malaysian climate database comprising anecdotes, reporting, public surveys and data analysis”. This is to fill the gaps in government data on climate change.
While they re-strategise plans for the year ahead, Nadiah says it is clear from this Covid-19 period that “it is time for us to stop relying on government. We have to organise things ourselves.”
MYD: Packing a punch in policy
Beyond students and young professionals, the United Nations Climate Change Conference briefings by the Malaysian Youth Delegation (MYD) draws an interesting crowd.
The most recent one in February saw among attendants, a marketer from a future crop tech firm, a sustainability officer from Ernst & Young and a banker. Not all fit the under-35-year-old youth criteria.
But every year since its formation in 2015, MYD has represented the Malaysian youth climate movement at these beasts that are inter-governmental climate fora. MYD has chalked up respectable knowledge and experience.
Back in Malaysia, MYD briefings aim to make the information from climate change negotiations more accessible to the Malaysian public, says Tan Cai May, 25, a MYD veteran of two such conferences.
They also serve to hold Malaysian politicians and policies accountable for climate action.
This year, public education and policy work on climate change continue to be on the cards for MYD.
Tan says climate education for Malaysians and youth specifically will continue through workshops on specifics like climate finance and carbon markets.
“We also plan to organise a national level youth consultation in the form of a Local Conference of Youth, which we have held for the past two years. This year, we want to be more active in engaging and collaborating with local NGOs and organisations.”
Policy and research focus
In terms of policy, the goal is to be “more active in producing relevant policy products in the form of articles, briefs, statements and papers.”
Hence, the setting up of a policy and research group, adds fellow MYD member Eira.
“We need to try to be more analytical, to dig deeper. We want to continue engaging with the Ministries (involved in climate policy) as well as build the capacity of young negotiators, not just to talk about climate change to the public but researchers too.”
One way in which MYD has been involved in policy has been in scrutinising Malaysia’s national reporting to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to which the country is a signatory.
Concrete actions
This year, Tan says her organisation would like to see concrete actions from the government on fulfilling the pledges made in previous reports as well as an increase in corresponding monitoring and verification data on these actions.
MYD is also demanding better work done on adaptations to climate change and less reliance on fossil fuels by expanding renewable energy sources.
It is uncertain how the Perikatan Nasional coalition will handle climate change. For one, it is now under the purview of the newly-formed Ministry of Environment and Water.
MYD is lobbying the Ministry to ensure that dropping ‘climate change’ from the ministry’s name is not indicative of diminished priority. The previous ministry was called the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Climate Change.
Adds Eira, “The previous government was very responsive. We hope this one will be too. But looking at the recession that’s going to happen (as a result of the Covid-19 crisis), climate change might get pushed aside, especially with the next (Climate Change Conference) postponed.”
Originally scheduled for November this year, the 26th conference was critical to spur commitments to deeper cuts to greenhouse gas emissions from member states.
Meanwhile, MYD is transitioning to digital activism.
“We are facing challenges because of Covid-19,” admits Eira. “Our annual retreat (for each year’s cohort) is usually held over one weekend. We’ve had to break it to three days over two weekends and it’s different when you are not 100 per cent present in body, mind and soul.”
At the same time, online engagement is something MYD knows well. “Our forte is that we are used to working remotely with all our members within and outside of Malaysia. So we’re just going to leverage on that and figure out how to engage people even more with social media.
“Engaging government Ministries will be interesting but we hope to build on our previous relationships with them. So if they can’t host roundtables or meetings anymore, which is where we can engage with them, we just have to be more creative with our communications.”
This concludes our two-parter on youth climate movements in Malaysia. Here is Part 1: Climate Action: Youth-Led, Not Youth-Only
This is part of Macaranga‘s series, ‘Taking Stock’, where we examine how environmental sectors in Malaysia are responding to Covid-19 and a new government.
