Mr Conservation

:: theSun Weekend | 7 May 2005 :: BRITISH-BORN Datuk Dr Mikaail Kavanagh Abdullah, who turns 60 this year, has been executive director of WWF-Malaysia (World Wide Fund for Nature, Malaysia) since 1991. But his involvement in the environmental non-governmental organisation began way back in 1981 while he was working as an honorary research associate at the then Universiti Pertanian Malaysia.

A permanent resident married to a Malaysian, this biologist by training has a deep knowledge of and love for the country's environment. He talks to theSun about the breadth of WWF-Malaysia's work in environmental conservation and management and the challenges ahead.

WWF Malaysia was set up in 1972. How would you rate the state of Malaysia's environment today compared to then? Are you encouraged or disheartened?
Am I encouraged or disheartened? [Laughs] I'm not sure! When I started, I was focusing just on the things that interested me. I was a volunteer and then a project executive. Now, I have to look at the bigger picture.

If you look at the massive increase in the Malaysian population over the last 30 years, it's obvious that it's brought a lot more pressure on the environment. And there have been huge amounts of land clearing, for example, and habitat change. Which we didn't really think about in those days. I know that there are places I wish I had visited 30 years ago. I wish I had spent more time in Ulu Kelantan or somewhere like that when it was that much more remote.

But I can give you some specific examples, you know, apart from the general picture. Well, looking at the numbers first of all. Loss of forest area in Peninsular Malaysia is an example. In 1970, the natural forest area covered about 61% of the total land area. By 1999, we were down to about 45% natural forest. People often count forest and tree cover together but they are very different, obviously. I mean, a rubber plantation is not exactly a forest [chuckles]. And we try to distinguish [between the two].

Mangrove coverage is similar. It's declined at quite an alarming rate. In fact, if we look at mangrove forest cover in the 30 years between 1973 and 2003, we lost more than 17% of our mangrove. And we already have a limited amount of mangrove. That's almost 120,000ha.

So, obviously, that's not an improvement because we need mangroves. As we now have discovered, they give us coastal protection, they can even mitigate a tsunami to some extent, but much more importantly, they are breeding grounds for fisheries and so on. How many Malaysians know that most of our fish are caught in the Straits of Malacca rather than in the South China Sea because of the mangroves?

I didn't know that.
And it's mind boggling, it's amazing. If I can give you something rather more emotional, all species of marine turtle have declined drastically over the years. The numbers of leatherback turtles have gone down enormously. The leatherback turtle is getting to the point where it's almost functionally extinct. Whether the population will come back for those in hatcheries or not, we don't yet know.

But having said that, you are asking me to compare then and now. If I look at some other countries, then I would have to say that we don't do too badly. We are a small country, yet we still have magnificent biodiversity and a certain amount and quality of forest covering nearly half of our land area. So, if you look at it that way, it's not that bad. But if you look at what it might have been, it's not that good either.

It's a question of whether your glass is half full or half empty?
Yes, exactly. If you are a conservationist, you have to be optimistic to keep your spirits up. You have to be a "My glass is half full" person and figure out how to stop it getting any emptier [laughs].

But in the past 30 years, have there been good things that have happened that have been encouraging?
I think the extent to which there have been protected areas set aside. There has been a steady attempt at implementing environmental protection legislation in relation to development. There has been a greater awareness about the need to make our forest management sustainable. Most of these things somehow get related to good policies. Then, sometimes, the implementation isn't where we would like it to be.

And WWF has been quite instrumental in helping the government draw up some of these policies, like the Ecotourism Plan?
We were the lead consultants to the government for the National Ecotourism Plan. We were in a similar position for the National Conservation Strategy, just after the Rio Earth Summit [in 1992].

Before that, we spent many years developing state conservation strategies which helped because we did them for 10 states. Every one was a big undertaking and they helped to orientate the state governments in terms of integrated land use.

What do you think are some of the biggest threats to the environment in Malaysia today? You've already mentioned some, like the population explosion.

It's not just population. People do want higher living standards for their grandchildren but not at the expense of their own living standards, generally. I mean, that's to be realistic.
Well, forest conversion for economic use, obviously, is a threat. It's always happened. Years ago, it was happening in the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Conversion for oil palm [cultivation] is something that remains a threat, especially in Sabah and Sarawak. Also, conversion for dams and inundation that tends not to be huge, but very often, other forms of development go with it. Certainly, once you put in roads and things, that results in conversion of prime forest into agriculture [land]. That then becomes a threat to the environment, depending on how it's handled.

And then there's the case of land reclamation in coastal areas which can be very serious [and] would result in the destruction of natural habitat, especially habitats which are at risk and are as important as, say, a mangrove habitat, which are undervalued by the vast majority of the population. They just regard them as awful, mosquito-infested swamps. "Why not get rid of them?" The fact that they are extremely productive is not known.

In addition, I would say, what I call assaults on the rivers. Our fresh water systems are being devastated by both, you know, pollutants if I can't use the word poisons, which sometimes they are, but definitely pollutants, especially industrial pollution and so on. And sedimentation from land clearing. I, personally, regard this as Malaysia's great unseen environmental disaster because we lack the data but it is pretty much a no-brainer that the fauna in the river that are adapted to living, for the most part, in relatively clean rivers -- they've obviously been devastated.

Plus, in the case of rivers, exotics have been put in, for example, we have tilapia almost everywhere. Now, that's an African fish and it competes with and destroys a lot of our native fish.

I think anybody who is brought up in a rural area in Malaysia, or even in a suburban area, if they are more than 30 years old, can remember going out somewhere when they were a kid and seeing a nice river or something like that where they would swim or go fishing. And now you wouldn't put your toe in it. So, what's it doing to the sorts of things that live in it?

Air pollution is obviously a problem. It's been a problem [for] a long time because of industry and traffic. Forest fires, yes, they are a big problem but they tend to be cyclical. But we live with the pollution of traffic the whole time except on major public holidays when those of us living in KL suddenly start breathing naturally again [laughs].

One other problem -- marine coastal development. They often threaten the integrity of marine life such as coral reefs and sea grass. Turtles can't come in. If you have terrapins which use the edges of a river estuary and then you canalise that river estuary, you put in nice clean concrete and maybe it looks beautiful and all that, but you just killed off the feeding ground of the turtles. And if you kill off a system, of course, you kill any fish in that area. So, sometimes, it doesn't just wipe out something like the terrapin population, it also threatens the prawn fisheries in the same way.

Lots of these things come down to economics. But, at the same time, I don't think we should undervalue the heritage. I think itÕs wrong to look at it only in dollars and cents but we have to cope with the dollars and cents.

What do you think needs to be done to stem these threats to the environment?
Well, for the most part, we [already] have the policies. We need, first of all, the political resolve, I suppose, to implement those policies in a way that may be inconvenient in the short term, at least inconvenient for somebody's interest.

We need leadership in this issue, which I think we are getting. I think the Prime Minister is showing very clearly that these things are now taken very seriously and that's quite heartening.

But, the other thing we need is people... When you have the people, then you can do the implementation.

We need, for example, more taxonomists. Here we are, one of the 12 most bio-diverse-rich countries in the world. You can go see a spider on Fraser's Hill that everybody knows is there and not even know exactly what species it is. If you can't do the labelling, how do you do the sorting? If you can't do the sorting, how do you do the managing?

We really need people to know what is there and we need the ecologists to help us figure out how it works, and how, therefore, we manage it. And that goes to the next stage down, which is your wildlife managers. We are short in these areas because I think not enough attention has been paid to it.

The recent controversy over the Bukit Cahaya Seri Alam Agriculture Park in Shah Alam has revived discussion about the EIA [Environmental Impact Assessment] process. And in the past, critics have said that the EIA process has been turned into a mere rubber stamp procedure. In what ways do you think the EIA process can be strengthened?
Well, I think that first of all, I know that it needs to be reviewed and it is being reviewed. The Department of Environment [DOE] is in the process of reviewing it, and that's a good thing because it clearly has shortcomings.

Among those shortcomings are the very poor provisions for public participation and the transparency a process like this must have if it is to retain anybody's confidence.

Also, a key issue in implementing that process is that the developer pays for it [an EIA report]. So, if you are doing a development [project], you pay for it, you pay the consultant. And we know that that process doesn't work because consultants would be disadvantaged if they give an adverse report. He who pays the piper, calls the tune. That needs to be looked at. In fact, flat out, it clearly needs to be changed.

The other thing may be that people can be quite clever with loopholes. For example, I'm not sure how up to date I am, [but] with logging concessions, it used to be that you needed an EIA if you logged an area of more than 500ha. So, you can log an area of 499ha and there's no need for an EIA.

Same with mangroves. If, [for example], you have a 20ha requirement for an EIA for a development project, well, just sub-divide into 19 hectares, and do lots of them, which is obviously ridiculous.

The other point is, the EIA in general, or very often -- I'm not saying always -- they can sidestep cumulative issues. I think the classic one was the old days with [the] Bakun [dam project] where they divided it into three [chuckles] which I think, was the dam, the river and the cable, or something like that. Which is obvious nonsense because you're going to do the whole thing together. Even [if there are] three people doing proper EIAs and they are near each other or all in the same river basin, what is the cumulative effect? If you want to draw 10% of the water out of this river for your operations -- which is the allowable limit -- and if two other people are doing the same thing, you can look at any one and say, well, it's all right, it's allowable. But taken together, it's obviously nonsense.

Has the DOE called for feedback from groups like WWF for the review of the EIA?
Yes, we are involved with that process. It's an ongoing process. And we will continue to give our opinions on it. As will other NGOs. I don't think people are in any way inhibited about giving their opinions.

Do you think that enough is done with the EIA process to make it accessible to the public? In the past, language was a problem, getting to the document was another problem. The high degree of technicality involved in an EIA report was another problem so that people were really turned off or were unable to read and understand the document.
Well, it's like what I pointed out at the beginning. It's about public participation and transparency. For all sorts of reasons, it feels too difficult to people. Sometimes, it's difficult to get access. There may be language issues [because] you can't cope with whatever language the report is written in. So, yes, that needs to be looked at in a very practical way.

Having said that, the fact that we've had the Environmental Quality Act and the EIA Guidelines since the mid-1980s has certainly had a beneficial effect. And there have been proposals that have been put forward that have been rejected because they were very negative to the environment.

Let's not be totally negative but let us agree that it's now time to improve it.

Do you think that the damage we do to the environment is irreversible?
A lot of it is. If you demolish a hill, for example, for a development, that's irreversible. You're not going to build it up again. If you take a large area of forest that functions ecologically, if you chop the forest into more or less two halves, and put a barrier down the middle, the decline in ecological functions, the decline in species, will be a lot more than half. As you know, if you fragment a forest, the decline in richness is something that goes downhill at a geometrical pace.

Those sorts of things are largely irreversible although you certainly can do something with setting up corridors and planting along riverine strips. We are involved with these kinds of things in eastern Sabah, in the Kinabatangan area, where the riverine areas which shouldn't have been cleared, have been cleared, they've been allowed to be cleared, and we are now working with the local government and local plantation industries and so on to try to re-establish those strips. But it will take a long time.

If you look at logging of a forest, depending on how it is logged, yes, it can grow back especially if it is near pristine forest which can help to seed it. It won't be exactly the same but reversible doesn't necessarily have to mean 100% reversible.

But, there are some things you can't make better. If you dump a marina on top of a coral reef, you devastate the coral community and what comes back isn't going to be the same, if anything does come back.

If you wipe out a species, then the chances of you being able to reintroduce it, are very remote, except in a few circumstances. To give you an example, we've wiped out the Javan Rhinoceros.

I suppose you also have to look at where you have limited distributions of anything ... There's a trapdoor spider found only around Batu Caves, so if we had carried on in the 1970s with turning Batu Caves into cement, that would have certainly gone. There's no way back.

Think about elephants, for example. We have the Borneo Pygmy Elephants. We have only recently, for sure, proved that it's different from the other Asian elephant. Same species, but definitely different. But, there are only a couple thousand of them. It's not really very difficult to wipe them all out if you convert primary forest to oil palm [estates].

Somehow, there isn't something in our education system or our system of beliefs that promotes a sense of longevity, not just of our own species but of other species as well. What do you think needs to be done to address that gap?
Well, I suppose it's what we call awareness raising and education. I think the first thing that people are concentrating on is their immediate prosperity to a large extent, and that's understandable. I think, people's work goals, be they in government or the private sector, tend not to take these things into account. It's somebody else's job. If my job is to build a new township somewhere, that's what I will focus on, and I am unlikely to focus on the fact that I am likely wiping out some crucial patch of forest.

I think we are very lucky in this country that we don't have the levels of poverty which would drive everybody to doing that and not caring. I have seen places like Kalimantan where I understand why people harvest illegal forest products because there's huge population pressure, [and] there is this pressure of poverty.

In WWF, about five years ago, we were saying to ourselves that it was absolutely vital not just to get the technical people in universities and governments to understand the relationship between forestry and water catchment and the water that comes out of your tap, [but it] is vital that the public understand these things. Because then, the public will support government measures or even demand government measures which bring about protection.

And I think we have seen that with Cameron Highlands, for example, a lot of people have come to understand that connection, enough people that ... the government now takes it as something that has more public support.

After all, the government's job is in many ways to lead, yes, but also to do what the nation wants government to do.

I think you need a base of public opinion and understanding which is why we work in the schools, we work on curriculum development, on infusing environmental education into the school system, primary and secondary schools. We also have had a mobile environmental education unit going around schools in Malaysia since 1977, it's sponsored by Bata.

The other thing that I think is important to bring about change is that environmental management and conservation has to be seen as something that is of mainstream value. Firstly, I think people have to appreciate the heritage value. And people don't.

Also, people have to understand that it's profitable. For example, our fastest growing source of foreign exchange in this country is tourism. What niche do we have to offer?

Yes, we have a lot of golf courses but so do a lot of other places. Yes, we have some nice beaches, but other people have cleaner ones than ours. What do we have that other people don't have?

Well, one of the things we have is our ecology. You can go out and you can see wildlife in Malaysia in a tropical forest with very little of the inconvenience that you would have to tackle if you went to see it in a less developed country.

I think, also, people need to understand the service that we get from natural systems that we don't pay for. The simplest one to explain is water. There is no way that we can afford to collect and purify the water that we need for our population except by maintaining well-managed forested habitats.

What can we learn from cases of environmental degradation in developed countries? And is there a country we should look at as a role model when it comes to environmental protection?
On a very local level, take the River Thames that runs through London. That was filthy until the 1950s. And then, they set a goal. We want salmon to come back up the River Thames. We want a river that's clean. And the river has been cleaned up to a large extent. And that's been true of some other rivers around the UK.

Also, after the mid-1950s, the air in London was so poisonous from smog, it used to kill people. And that's been cleaned up. There's a Clean Air Act and things. Action was taken.

If you want to look at a much better record on clean air, then look at the Scandinavian countries. It's lovely. You go somewhere like Stockholm, everything is crisp and clean. To some extent, it's not tropical, [so] it's a lot easier. But, equally, they could mess it up.

I think the Netherlands is a country that is an excellent example of consumer involvement. The Dutch public makes the connection between what they use and where it comes from and what impact it has. And an increasing number of them don't want to buy a product that's not responsibly produced.

Other countries that have done well? Well, after Rio, global targets were set for technical aid for the environment. Almost no country met those targets but Denmark actually did. Denmark is an example of a country that gives technical aid in a very constructive way and at a level which is consistent with the size of their economy, which almost no country does. [So], there are good guys around [chuckles].


What do you think of the government's decision not to build a landfill on Pulau Carey? Does it show that public opinion counts?
It does show that public opinion counts. I have to say the idea of building a landfill in such a sensitive area as Pulau Carey should never have arisen in the first place. As things stand at the moment, we need to find out more about what's happening now. And we don't have that information.

We know that the MB [Mentri Besar] of Selangor has announced that the landfill is not going to be built at Pulau Carey but we don't know where it's going to be built. I believe the EIA process is still ongoing. So, let's hope that is followed through. Let's hope also that alternatives in terms of more modern technology are looked at.

Has WWF-Malaysia's role changed since it was set up more than 30 years ago? How big is your organisation today compared to before?
Well, when it was started, it was about two people, I think. That was before my time. [We have] just 90 at present. The highest we've been is about 100, but it depends on projects.

How has the role changed? I think we focused more specifically on wildlife and nature conservation issues in the beginning. We used to do survey work for species and proposed protected areas and we focused a lot on nature education. And in those early days, we could only do one or two projects at a time. Most of them were carried out by unpaid volunteers, which is how I got started.

Nature conservation is still an important focus. We still care about the forests, the marine areas, the fresh waters and the beaches, but we've broadened our approach to allow us to do this in the context of national development. And it is kind of a much more complex technical game.

We have to know much more about laws and policies. We have to be much more knowledgeable ourselves. We maintain the value that if we work in an area, say site-based work, then we actually go there and do it. So, the actual fieldwork remains important to us. The education work remains important to us. That's gone more into looking for multiplier effect, working with the ministry, curriculum development, teacher training and so on.

Where we would have looked at forest conservation, in terms of a park or something like that in the beginning, now we would address things like sustainable forest management which includes harvesting of products, mainly timber. And we would take note of the fact that you can't address forest conservation without addressing international trade in timber or forest products.

One other way in which it's changed is that over the years, we've built a solid technical reputation. People believe that WWF is a professional organisation, which it is, and that we do our work in a responsible manner. That gives us the opportunity sometimes to criticise or to disagree even with the authorities in a way that is acceptable. Because we can back up what we say with science and data.

Where does WWF get its funding from?
A lot comes from other parts of the WWF network. There are country offices, national organisations, which raise money and send it elsewhere. They don't give it to us automatically. We have to prove that we have the right people and projects.

So, if WWF-Malaysia wants to sell a tiger conservation [project] to WWF somewhere in Europe, then we might be up against the guy in Brazil who has his own conservation project. And there's not enough to go around. But because we are good, we get our share [laughs cheekily].

We also get donations from corporations, from trust foundations and where in the old days, they gave relatively small amounts, now they ask questions, they want to be involved. They want to know that we are going to spend it on something that means something to them. And that means we develop longer-term relationships with our key corporate partners, which is very important. They are shareholders and they are getting value for what they do.

How much does WWF Malaysia need to run all its projects? What's your budget like?
It's RM12 million this year.

Has that been going up?
In 1991, it was probably around RM4 million. I remember once, we targeted RM8 million [chuckles]. That was about six years ago. Our problem is both money and people. And you asked where the money came from. In addition to it coming from the network and so on, it's also increasingly coming from the Malaysian public. The other main sources are government and aid agencies. These are the major sources. The Malaysian government gives us money on a project basis when there is a project and they want it done and we want to do it. And we have a very constructive relationship with the aid agencies. That's important.

But, also important to us is the money that we now get from the Malaysian public through direct debit of their credit cards and since we've started that about 18 months ago, it's making a very big difference. What's happening now is that people are actually signing up and saying, 'I would like to make a regular donation'. It's making a big difference, and giving us the flexibility to react to issues and the confidence for us to say, 'Ok, we can employ somebody to do this job'.

On a personal note, how did you get involved in environmental activism?
In 1981, I was working at what was then Universiti Pertanian Malaysia [UPM, now Universiti Putra Malaysia]. I was asked to lead a survey of the Lanjak-Entimau Protected Forest in Sarawak, to assist the Forest Department in establishing it as a wildlife sanctuary. The work was successful and the state government created what is still the biggest such wildlife sanctuary in Malaysia.

I was asked to join WWF for a couple of years to work on other projects with the Sarawak government. One thing led to another and I am still with WWF to this day. I can assure you that it was not planned, but I have no complaints about the way that things have worked out!