Adnan A. Hezri

From forest landscape to agricultural landscape in the developing tropical country of Malaysia: pattern, process, and their significance on policy.

Agricultural expansion and deforestation are spatial processes of land transformation that impact on landscape pattern. In peninsular Malaysia, the conversion of forested areas into two major cash crops—rubber and oil palm plantations—has been identified as driving significant environmental change. To date, there has been insufficient literature studying the link between changes in landscape patterns and land-related development policies. Therefore, this paper examines: (i) the links between development policies and changes in land use/land cover and landscape pattern and (ii) the significance and implications of these links for future development policies. The objective is to generate insights on the changing process of land use/land cover and landscape pattern as a functional response to development policies and their consequences for environmental conditions. Over the last century, the development of cash crops has changed the country from one dominated by natural landscapes to one dominated by agricultural landscapes. But the last decade of the century saw urbanization beginning to impact significantly. This process aligned with the establishment of various development policies, from land development for agriculture between the mid 1950s and the 1970s to an emphasis on manufacturing from the 1980s onward. Based on a case study in Selangor, peninsular Malaysia, a model of landscape pattern change is presented. It contains three stages according to the relative importance of rubber (first stage: 1900–1950s), oil palm (second stage: 1960s–1970s), and urban (third stage: 1980s–1990s) development that influenced landscape fragmentation and heterogeneity. The environmental consequences of this change have been depicted through loss of biodiversity, geohazard incidences, and the spread of vector-borne diseases. The spatial ecological information can be useful to development policy formulation, allowing diagnosis of the country’s “health” and sustainability. The final section outlines the usefulness of landscape analysis in the policy-making process to prevent further fragmentation of the landscape and forest loss in Malaysia in the face of rapid economic development.

Shifting the policy goal from environment to sustainable development

List of tables List of figures List of contributors Preface 1. Malaysian economic development: looking backward and forward - Hal Hill 2. Political challenges in economic upgrading: Malaysia compared with South Korea and Taiwan - Joan M. Nelson 3. The politics and policies of corporate development: race, rents and redistribution in Malaysia - Edmund Terence Gomez 4. The Malaysian economy during three crises - Prema-chandra Athukorala 5. Monetary policy and financial sector development - Michael Meow-Chung Yap and Kwek Kian Teng 6. Public sector resource management - Suresh Narayanan 7. Microeconomic reform in Malaysia - Cassey Lee 8. Services liberalization: the need for complementary policies - Tham Siew Yean and Loke Wai Heng 9. Is Malaysias electronics industry moving up the value chain? - Rajah Rasiah 10. The crisis in education - Lee Kiong Hock and Shyamala Nagaraj 11. Poverty eradication and income distribution - Ragayah Haji Mat Zin 12. Demographic and labour force dynamics - Gavin Jones 13. Shifting the policy goal from environment to sustainable development - A.A. Hezri and S.R. Dovers References Index

Broadening the Environmental Dimension in the Post-2015 Development Agenda

The MDGs recognise the nexus between human development and environmental sustainability through MDG 7. After more than a decade, however, the global progress on MDG 7 targets and indicators pales in comparison with progress on other MDGs. Even in an upper-middle-income economy like Malaysia, environmental sustainability is hardly an integral part of development practice despite its appreciation in key development policy documents. Albeit concise and measurable, MDG 7 has not only failed to produce enough positive results, it also fails to reflect the gravity of environmental challenges when it was conceived in early 2000. More acutely, there are emerging biophysical and economic realities at the global level demanding new development strategies. To stay relevant, sustainable development should be moved centre-stage in the quest to reimagine the international development agenda after 2015.