Legal framing for achieving ‘good ecological status’ for Malaysian rivers: Are there lessons to be learned from the EU Water Framework Directive?

Abstract

River degradation and loss of ecosystem services due to pollution and deforestation poses a great challenge for a holistic and sustainable river basin management. In Malaysia, about two third of its rivers are categorized as slightly polluted or polluted and this has led to the loss of ecosystem services in many of its river basin, notably in the rapidly developed Langat River Basin. The general historic legal responses to pollution control like imposing water quality standards and gazettal of protected areas seems to rectify the problem as it occurs and is unsustainable. In other parts of the world, there has been a rise in alternative framings of river basin management like the Ecosystem Services Approach (ESA), integrated river basin management (IRBM), catchment based and stakeholder led river management; and these are seen as the way forward for sustainable river basin management. The aim of this paper is to explore whether such framings can be implemented in Malaysia based on the current legal and federalism framework. It identifies the major causes and drivers of the polluted and poor state of Langat River and its tributaries and how might an alternative approach improve the situation. Towards this end, a comparative analysis is made with the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) and its implementation in the Tweed UNESCO HELP Basin. Particularly, it explores the application of subsidiarity principle that allows decision making to be made by agencies closest to the problem within the basin. It concludes that redefining the roles of levels of government in IRBM and stakeholder engagement can speed up the process of reframing the Langat IRBM to reduce river pollution and enhance the ecosystem services of the basin.

Developing A Pollution Free Environment Framework Through Technology Integration (e-Hailing App)

“…The most recent study on river pollution in Malaysia concluded that about two thirds its rivers to be categorized as polluted (Khalid, Mokhtar, Jalil, Rahman, & Spray, 2018). This fact is further supported by an earlier study which highlighted that the water environment in most areas of Malaysia had suffered a certain level of pollution (Wang et al, 2017) ever since Malaysia was considered as one of the countries with a relatively high socio-economic development in Southeast Asia since 1980s.…”

Assessment of the Flood and Drought Occurrence Using Statistically Downscaled Local Climate Models: A Case Study in Langat River Basin, Malaysia

“…Fig. 1: Langat River Basin with indication of different districts and state boundaries [12]. The asterisks indicate the location of meteorological monitoring stations in the Langat River Basin.…”

Payment for ecosystem services of water resources and its economic valuation

“…La exposición a la contaminación del agua potable es una preocupación relativamente menor en el mundo desarrollado (a pesar de las recientes excepciones respecto a la contaminación por plomo), sin embargo, las decisiones de tratamiento del agua en los hogares tienen efectos directos sobre la salud en los países en desarrollo (Jack, 2017). En Malasia dos tercios de sus ríos tienen la clasificación de contaminados o ligeramente contaminados, traduciéndose en perdida de servicios provistos por muchas cuencas hidrográficas, las respuestas legales históricas generales al control de la contaminación, como los estándares de calidad del agua y el lanzamiento de áreas protegidas, parecen corregir el problema a medida que se presenta, pero son insostenibles (Md Khalid et al, 2018). En ese entender la asignación de derechos de propiedad bajo obligaciones que deben de cumplir los que usufructúan los recursos pueden solucionar los problemas de contaminación o sobre-explotación como refieren Leibbrandt y Lynham (2018), para los casos de sobrepastoreo la privatización ha sido una solución, en temas relacionados a conflictos sobre el uso del agua estos se redujeron producto de asignaciones formales o informales de derechos de agua, es decir cuando los gobiernos toman la decisión de implementar los derechos de propiedad, generalmente intentan establecer la cantidad total de derechos asignados a un objetivo socialmente eficiente.…”