APART from the environmentalists, Malaysians in general do not talk about climate change as much as they do about a regular change of cars from one brand to another, or of a change of government every five years. They hardly talk about global warming, let alone link it to food security. What has all this got to do with the price of fish? they ask. We have enough food, bah.
In this last respect, we are being complacent and naïve, more like being blissfully ignorant. We have had no major disasters, apart from the occasional floods; for that we blame the moon. Really, the moon should not pull the tide. When it is unusually hot, we blame the sun.
When the Rajang River was choked with rotting logs of all sizes a couple of years ago, some people blamed the gods! The real culprits, the loggers, illegal or otherwise, were exonerated.
Small flat island countries like Tivalu, Seychelles and the Maldives, low-lying coastal nations Bangladesh are worried stiff about the rising sea level and the frequency of more and more violent storms and destructive typhoons. They blame all these phenomena on the global warming caused by the greenhouse gases from advanced countries like USA and China.
The destruction to New York by a hurricane is still fresh in our minds but it was many miles from us. But when a horrible disaster struck nearer home early this month, we couldn’t believe that it should have happened just north of our sister state of Sabah, the Land Below The Wind.
On the TV screen we have witnessed thousands of suffering people in the southern Philippines after typhoon Bhopa had devastated their villages, destroyed their crops, and left hundreds of them dead along its trail.
According to some accounts, a typhoon of this magnitude hadn’t happened in that part of the Philippines within living memory. But this time, it showed how powerfully it could unleash its force. According to the environmentalists, much of the massive damage to the people of New Bataan has been the result of logging and mining activities in Mindanao.
That’s why the environmentalists are so concerned about the effects of climate change and global warming. Unfortunately, NGOs are prime suspects for spreading unnecessary alarm and sometimes are treated as enemies of the state.
I was a bit skeptical about their claim of the relationship between forest destruction and global warming and food shortages. That was until my friends from the Sahabat Alam (Friends of the Earth) in Penang gave me a lecture on this subject: the destruction of the forests leads to toxic carbon emission into the atmosphere and that in turn causes global warming. This is compounded by the emission of more gases from factories. It causes an imbalance in the weather pattern; when drought occurs long enough, it decimates crops. When it rains, it rains heavily accompanied by storms and together they cause a deluge where they should not normally be.
Was it that bad, I wondered. I began to get curious – nothing to do with the gods at all?
However, when I read about how the prolonged drought in the USA that has caused withering of its corn crop, how that in turn has caused an increase in cereal prices in the world because America is the largest exporter of corn, soya bean and wheat, I began to speculate.
What if all the Americans (who convert corn into biofuel and feed wheat to their animals), what if all the Europeans (who cannot survive without bread) begin to eat rice? Will there be enough of the stuff for the Asians?
Then I read the FAO report which says “When the pressure on wheat increases, then high wheat price will spill over into rice”.
That reminds me of how the Thais and the Vietnamese began stocking rice for their own consumption and there was shortage of rice in the market in Kuching. That’s it – I’m on board with the environmentalists – climate change and global warming are real.
Land for rice
This cereal is a staple food for most Asians. Have we got land, good enough for rice cultivation? How much has the rice bowl of Sarawak in Batang Lupar produced? Will the rice be enough for the next generations and plenty enough for sale overseas?
Recently, I read about the Lembaga Padi Beras (Bernas). It has been given another ten years to manage the national rice stockpile and distribute it amongst the suppliers throughout Malaysia. I don’t know if there is a stockpile of rice in Sarawak. If not, it may be a good idea to think of having one here as a security measure. During emergencies, transportation of the stuff across the sea may be disrupted. Think of this possibility – a war between rival claims of islands and shoals in the South China Sea. Not in the next few years, but some day, who knows.
The concerns are about food security, mainly the staple food. My friends in the environmental movement are convinced that rice production is likely to be affected by global warming or climate change. And I believe it. When Thailand’s forests were destroyed and floods followed, her rice industry was badly affected. She started stockpiling rice for its own people, resulting in less rice for export. As we depend so much on imported rice from Thailand and Vietnam, we have no choice but to buy expensive rice. We must avoid a situation like this at all costs. Be less and less dependent on others.
We have been talking about rice bowls of Malaysia for the past 49 years and a number of areas in Sarawak have been earmarked for the purpose. Yet we have not been able to produce enough rice for our own consumption let alone for export. We’ve heard about some project being undertaken in the Batang Lupar. I have been to a privately run rice farm in Bau – small but the kind of project that we should have for many parts of the State. I have heard also about the project in Bintangor. The more of these projects the merrier.
Although there is shortage of good land for wet padi cultivation – all good land has been allocated for palm oil and tree plantations – we must make do with whatever land is available especially those DID schemes. What’s happening in such schemes as the Tanjong Purun in Lundu, or Paya Selanyau in Sebuti and others? Are they capable of producing enough rice for our consumption, at least?
Millions of Ringgit have been invested in these government funded schemes for the past thirty years. Perhaps, our politicians should talk more about how we should adapt to climate change along with the plan of change at Putrajaya – of food security as well as of political security. These are vital ingredients of a working democracy, the lack of which sparked food riots in 30 countries in 2007-2008. Except for the political tsunami, no riots took place here because we had enough food bah. What if ….