MAN AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Throughout the history of Malaysia, the link between man and the environment has been a close one. Descendants of the earliest peoples, such as the Iban and the nomadic Penan of Sarawak, still worship spirits that inhabit the natural world.
Since man has derived his food and shelter from nature, it is almost impossible to separate socioeconomic issues from environmental ones. Many forms of development erode the environmental resources upon which they must be based. Similarly, environmental degradation can undermine economic development. Poverty, for example, is both a major cause and effect of global environmental problems. Any discussion of environmental issues, therefore, needs to be seen in the light of both the biophysical and the socioeconomic aspects of the community.
In Malaysia, the natural environment is continually being transformed by human activities. During the 20th century, successive changes in land use have left their physical mark on the landscape. Commercial agriculture, mining, land development schemes, commercial logging, shifting cultivation and urban development have all been instrumental in bringing about such transformation. The once lush tropical rainforest is rapidly being replaced by rubber trees and oil palms that extend from the undulating coastal plains to the foothills. Tin-mining activities leave ugly scars in the form of widespread sand plains and man-made pools. Large-scale land development further reduces forested areas, while accelerated erosion due to deforestation contributes to the siltation of rivers and water channels. However, it is in the large and intermediate urban areas that the transformation of the environment has been greatest and thus the environmental implications most serious.
In the industrial-urban corridors like the Klang Valley, Penang/Seberang Perai, Johor Bahru and Melaka, development is rapidly altering the physical landscape. In the case of the Klang Valley, the Federal Capital Kuala Lumpur, for example, is expanding as part of a merging conurbation stretching from Port Klang by the Strait of Melaka in the west to the foothills of the Main Range in the east, a distance of close to 50 kilometres. Changes in land use will accelerate as the Malaysian economy continues to undergo structural adjustments. Already transport arteries, such as the North-South Expressway along the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, are changing the mosaic of land use and influencing the patterns of human activities.
