EA Internship with Sahabat Alam Malaysia

Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) is an NGO that campaigns on contemporary and urgent environmental and social issues. They challenge the current model of economic and corporate globalization and promote solutions that will help to create environmentally sustainable and socially equitable societies. Along with working towards food sovereignty, gender injustice, dismantling the Malaysian patriarchy and economic injustice, a large part of their work revolves around increasing transparency in the environmental sector – which is what I focused on in my time there.

Our focus was orientated around calling for the federal government and relevant agencies to ensure that there are veritable transparency and outright public feedback and consultations before carrying out any matter that could potentially harm the environment. I was able to learn how NGOs construct a reputation allowing them to be perceived as legitimate by the citizens. My firsthand experience allowed me to discover the true importance of good governance regarding the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented, as I could see how the low levels of transparency in Penang’s state government reduced their internal legitimacy, compelling the citizens to put their trust into NGO’s like SAM instead.

My efforts concentrated on the Penang Hill Project helped reinforce this.

The recent breakdown of the Penang Hill funicular railway was used by the state government to push for a cable car project (CCP) along the hillThrough a short discussion with president Mohideen Abdul Kader, I learned that the CCP would deteriorate the sensitive and fragile ecosystems of both the hill and the Penang Botanic Gardens.

“The cable car project, if implemented, will cause irreparable damage to the hills and the gardens through the building of more hotels, bungalows for the rich elites, cafes, amusement joints, and roads.”

In his public report, the Federal government failed to mention the RM100 million allocation for the development of the CCP, the certainty of a more aggravated traffic situation, the damage to the already sensitive hill and garden area and the changing nature of the environment to one that is crowded, noisy and polluted. My work in SAM consisted of creating an awareness video regarding all the matters the Penang government failed to make transparent. I was able to use soft power, a persuasive power deriving from attraction and emulation, in attempts to quickstart campaigns and non-violent protests against the CCP. Through interviews with Penang hill farmers saying “there is no point, they will build it anyway”, despite the internal legitimacy that SAM possessed, I realized the amount of power the federal government held in Malaysia. They seemed to exercise their sovereignty – the full right and power of a governing body over itself, without any interference from NGO’s like SAM.

I also realized their conscious priority placed on the economy as opposed to the environment, potentially mirroring Rostow’s Stages of growth. Their low levels of transparency with issues regarding the environment have opened me to their even lower levels of transparency with political matters. This realization was a stepping stone towards drafting questions for my interviewees.

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