Global Warming in Malaysia
New Initiatives on Global Warming - 1/18/08
Global warming and climate change will be dealt with more emphatically under the Ninth and Tenth Malaysia Plans, which will feature a chapter on measures to mitigate their effects, the deputy prime minister said. Datuk Seri Najib Razak said initiatives would include stringent regulations on residential projects built in low-lying areas and projects to reduce flooding.
Some of the initiatives have already been started, such as placing sand dredging barges in all major rivers in the country to increase their water carrying capacity during heavy rains.
Others include requiring developers to take account of an area's vulnerability to flooding before housing projects were built and reviewing the designs of houses, Najib said.
The floods in December 2006 and January 2007 had caused RM1 billion in damages. It was reported that sand dredging barges had already been stationed in major rivers such as Sungai Johor and Sungai Pahang to deepen beds and widen the banks all year round.
Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid had also announced that the government was considering reviewing or even cancelling projects that could worsen floods.
Malaysian Company Says Bio Fuel from Nipah Can Help Halt Global Warming - 4/10/07
A Malaysian government-backed company claimed Tuesday it has found a new source of energy to replace fossil fuels ethanol from nipah palm trees that it believes can help stop global warming.
Pioneer Bio Industries Corp. said it is building the world's first refinery to commercially produce ethanol from the short palm trees, found in equatorial countries, that could fuel everything from automobiles to power plants.
The Malaysian government has given Pioneer the right to harvest nipah palm trees on 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) of land in Perak.
The company envisions a fuel of the future that would be 85 percent nipah ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, he said, thereby greatly reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
With a production capacity of 100 million imperial gallons (450 million liters), the refinery in the northern state of Perak will go on stream by the end of 2008, Badrul Shah said. Pioneer plans to build 15 such refineries across Malaysia.
The Palm Oil Advantage in Biofuel - 2/24/07
THE high prices of petroleum have stimulated the rapid development of the biofuel industry in the European Union, United States and to some extent in Malaysia. Biofuel offers strategic advantages for different sectors and stakeholders.
For the Malaysian palm oil industry, it creates new market demand which will lead to the firming up of commodity prices. This reduces the risk of prices falling to a low level as seen during the period of excess supply in 2001.
Environmental non-governmental organisations and parliamentarians in the EU and US allege that the new demand for palm oil in their newly developed biofuel industry will lead to deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia to accommodate the expanding cultivation of oil palm. The alleged conversion of forests is then linked to habitat loss, biodiversity and now global warming.
In reality, protectionist measures are being cleverly disguised as environmental issues, which are being exploited and propagated as anti-palm oil campaigns by environmental NGOs to increase financial contributions from unaware sympathisers. Any measure to exclude palm oil will naturally contravene World Trade Organisation provisions.
Global warming causes climatic change and results in extreme weather events, including frequent occurrences of long droughts that lead to forest fires which systematically destroy the world’s forests. The real culprits in forest destruction are those responsible for huge emissions of carbon dioxide, especially the industrial countries with the highest use of fossil fuel per capita. The Malaysian palm oil industry cannot be blamed for global warming, for in reality, it slows the process.
