The Water Voice participants with WWF-Malaysia officers and HSBC volunteers.
RANAU: Understanding local communities’ perspective on rivers is the key to forming cohesive collaboration for freshwater conservation, said World Wide Fund for Nature -Malaysia (WWF-Malaysia).
Its conservation head in Sabah, Bernard Tai said that the participatory photography programme is a good method to capture and document the communities’ dependency on Sugut River and its tributaries that flow through their villages.
“These communities that live next to the river and depend on it for everyday use volunteered as participants,” he said at the launch of WWF-Malaysia’s Water Voice event in Kampung Singgaron Baru here yesterday.
“Pictures speak volumes. Photographs captured and compiled by local communities will be used for community consultation on freshwater conservation strategies with policymakers,” he explained.
Water Voice is sponsored by HSBC Bank Malaysia Berhad (HSBC), a long-standing valuable partner of WWF-Malaysia, through HSBC’s Corporate Sustainability programme.
Sixteen volunteers from 13 villages are participating in this programme, where they will be loaned digital cameras and taught basic photography skills by a WWF-Malaysia expert prior to capturing photos on their own. This activity is expected to run for three months.
Jessica Tang, HSBC Bank Malaysia’s Head of Corporate Sustainability, said, “HSBC has partnered with WWF-Malaysia for over a decade, collaborating on various initiatives. At HSBC, we believe that all of us have the responsibility to protect and conserve our rivers because our lives depend on the rivers”.
“Participation of local communities is vital in ensuring the success of any HSBC and WWF-Malaysia’s initiatives for improving the management of our rivers,” she added.
Prior to its launch in Ranau, Water Voice has been tried and tested in the Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) campus by its students in March this year. The public will have a chance to view the images captured by UMS student volunteers and Ranau communities in a coffee table book and at a photography exhibition at the end of this programme.
The Water Voice programme is part of a three-year freshwater ecosystem conservation project by WWF-Malaysia in Sabah. This project aims to promote and support improved management of freshwater habitats within key river basins in Sabah’s terrestrial landscape, as well as to create awareness among civil society.