Oleh/By : DATO' SERI DR.
MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD
Tempat/Venue : THE SHANGRI-LA HOTEL,
KUALA LUMPUR
Tarikh/Date : 20/03/2000
Tajuk/Title : THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF
POLMET 2000
I wish to thank the organisers for inviting me to
declare open this conference. It is indeed a great
honour that the first POLMET conference to be held in
the new millennium is taking place in Kuala Lumpur. It
is also very timely.
2. Urbanisation is taking place at a very rapid rate
in Asia, as its city and town populations continue to
grow. The region already has the largest population in
the world, and about 700 million people now living in
cities and towns. By year 2015, it is estimated that the
region will have more than one billion people living in
cities. There will be nine megacities with populations
of more than 10 million and 17 very large cities with
populations of more than five million. Economically and
environmentally sustainable urban development in Asia is
therefore a pressing need to ensure a safe, healthy,
convenient and pleasant environment for its growing
urban population.
3. We now face the daunting, yet inspiring, task of
forging a new relationship with the natural world.
Current patterns of population growth, resource use,
economic inequities, and environmental degradation
cannot extend indefinitely into the future. To ensure
human well-being over the long term, people need to move
toward consumption patterns that maintain and restore
the earth?s life support systems and safeguard earth?s
resources for the use of future generations.
4. This new relationship, between human and the
natural world, is captured by the idea of
"sustainability", a concept that has emerged in recent
decades from a number of international studies and
conferences concerned with regional and global trends in
population, development and the environment.
Sustainability implies meeting human needs while
preserving the environment and natural resources for
future generations.
5. The term ?sustainable development" is used to
stress the relationship between continued national
development and long-term environmental conditions and
goals. It is development that meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs.
6. Now, how does it apply to the Third World where
uneven development, poverty and basic needs are problems
which have to be given priority?
7. The disparity between poverty and wealth, levels of
development and consumption among nations of the world
present contrasting pictures when the developed and the
developing worlds are compared. A newborn in the US, for
example, requires more than twice as much grain and more
than ten times of oil as a child in Brazil or Indonesia
? and produces far more polluting waste. In fact, a
simple calculation shows that the annual increase in the
US population of 2.6 million people puts more pressure
on the world?s resources than the 17 million people
added in India each year. Unless developed countries
choose less resource-intensive lifestyles and develop
less polluting technologies, it will be impossible to
make the transition to a sustainable world economy.
8. Studies indicate that by using resource more
productively it will be possible in the coming decades
to reduce energy and material consumption levels in
industrial countries by a factor of four while actually
improving the standard of living. And because developed
countries are the model that developing countries follow
one way or another the decisions they make about
lifestyle and technologies could be decisive for the
world as a whole. A further comparison between the
United States of America and India shows that although
the US has 5% of the world's population, compared to
India's 16%, the US uses some 25% of the world's energy
compared to India's 3%, emits 22% of the world's CO2
compared to India's 3%, and accounts for 25% of the
world's GNP compared to India's 1%. And yet, despite
all odds, developing countries like India and others
must continue to operate in a world in which the
resource gap between most developing and industrial
nations is widening, in which the industrial world
dominates in the rule-making of some key international
bodies, and in which the industrial world has already
used much of the Planet's ecological capital. This
inequality is the Planet's main `environmental' problem;
it is also its main `development' problem.
9. International economic relationships pose a
particular problem for environmental management in many
developing countries including Asia. Agriculture,
forestry, energy production and mining generate at least
half the GNP of many developing countries and account
for even larger shares of livelihoods and employment.
Exports of natural resources remain a large factor in
their economies, especially for the least developed.
Most of these countries face enormous economic
pressures, both international and domestic, to over
exploit their environmental resource base.
10. Many developing countries now have lower per capita
incomes than when the decade began. Rising poverty and
unemployment have increased pressure on environmental
resources as more people have been forced to rely more
directly upon them. Many governments have cut back
efforts to protect the environment and to bring
ecological considerations into development planning.
11. In Malaysia, we enjoy a relatively high average
standard of living and our housing conditions are much
better than in most developing countries. Nevertheless,
there is a great deal still to be done in our country if
we are to respond properly to the challenges presented
by sustainable development.
12. The primary objective of Malaysia's housing goal
is to ensure that all our citizens, particularly the low
income group, have access to adequate, affordable and
good shelter. Besides ensuring the adequate supply of
houses for the various income groups, our policy also
emphasises the importance of a safe, healthy, convenient
and beautiful living environment to be achieved through
comprehensive settlements planning, including the
adequate provision of basic infrastructure and social
facilities in housing schemes, as well as landscaping.
We believe housing provision should be a vehicle for
achieving viable and sustainable units of human
settlements that not only address the physical need for
shelter but also our particular national need for
social, cultural and ethnic integration.
13. The principles of sustainable development are
progressively being incorporated into our planning
systems as well as into other policy areas. The
government recognises that local authorities have a
crucial role to play in developing and implementing
policies for sustainable development. They are
particularly well qualified to understand local needs
and determine priorities for local action. Many non-
governmental organisations are also involved in action
at the local level. On the environmental front, they
include groups concerned with practical conservation,
preservation of historic buildings and sites. Housing
associations and the private sector, have become
increasingly involved in the provision of low-cost
accommodation.
14. The success of local initiatives will play a major
part in determining whether Malaysia can properly
achieve its targets in respect of sustainable
development. People need to witness improvement at the
local level. Critical to this will be the concept of
partnership, bringing together the skills and resources
possessed by the government, the private sector and
local communities. The government seeks to ensure that
the principles of sustainable development are taken into
account with the operation of land use planning systems.
Also, it will ensure that planning policies and
guidelines are kept under review in the light of the
understanding of the sustainable development concept.
Environmental quality objectives and targets play an
important role in guiding policies and environmental
improvement. There is a need for the development of a
series of indicators to help measure progress towards
sustainable development.
15. Like our counterparts in much of the developing
world, Asia as a region has the ability to make
development sustainable. However, meeting essential
needs requires not only a period of economic growth for
nations in which the majority are poor, but also an
assurance that the poor get their fair share of the
resources required to sustain growth.
16. For Asia, it is imperative that growth must be
revived. This is where the links between economic
growth, the alleviation of poverty, and environmental
conditions are essential. Yet developing countries are
part of an interdependent world economy; and the levels
and patterns of growth in industrialised nations must
affect the growth of the developing countries. The mid-
term prospects for industrial countries indicate a
growth of 3 to 4%, the minimum that international
financial institutions consider necessary if these
countries are going to play a part in expanding the
world economy. Such growth rates could be
environmentally sustainable if industrialised nations
can continue their recent shifts for less material and
energy-intensive activities and the improvement of their
efficiency in using materials and energy.
17. However, as industrialised nations use less
materials and energy, they will provide smaller markets
for commodities and minerals from developing nations.
And this must affect the growth of the developing
countries unless new markets are found among the
developing countries themselves. Unfortunately the
attack by currency traders on the tiger economies of
East Asia has stunted their growth as a new market.
Malaysia alone lost 250 billion US dollars in purchasing
power because of the Ringgit's devaluation and the
depression in the share prices. Those whose activities
can destroy wealth and therefore purchasing power must
be curbed if we are serious about achieving sustainable
development whether in the rich or in the poor
countries. But despite the concerns expressed about the
environment by the rich, they are unwilling to do
anything to curb the currency traders and the short term
capitalists.
18. For developing countries to grow a lot more has to
be done in terms of technology transfer, foreign direct
investments and better terms of trade. These together
with a new international financial regime will enable
them to grow fast enough to overcome their internal
problems. Of late there has been much talk about reforms
being more important than growth. This is like putting
the cart before the horse. Of what use are banking
reforms and best practices if the banks have no money
and there is no business to speak of. These can only
come if there is growth, and if a certain degree of
laxity is needed in order to achieve growth, then we
should not be insisting on growth strangling reforms.
Poverty we must always remember is almost synonymous
with environmental degradation.
19. Future patterns of agriculture and forestry
development, energy use, industrialisation and human
settlements can be made far less material intensive, and
hence both more economically and environmentally
efficient. Under these conditions, a new era of growth
in the world economy can widen the options available to
developing countries. Reforms at international levels
are needed to deal simultaneously with economic and
ecological problems in ways that allow the world
economy to stimulate the growth of developing countries
while giving greater weight to environmental concerns.
20. In a region as vast and as diverse as Asia, a
uniform application of the sustainable development
concept is neither possible nor desirable. Here, the
levels of development, standards of living and extremes
of poverty vary remarkably from one country to another.
Sustainable development needs to be applied gradually in
accordance with the ability of individual countries to
cope, and with what each country perceives as
appropriate.
21. Important as it may seem, we in Asia, however,
cannot afford to depend solely on outside help to
develop. Most of our initiatives will have to come from
within us using our own ingenuity, wisdom, available
resources, regional cooperation and a lot of hard work.
Although there seems to be some scepticism about the
virtues of `Asian values', this can actually be a source
of strength that Asia can capitalise on in its efforts
to develop and revitalise the region the `Asian way'.
What I mean by Asian values is an absence of extreme
individualism, a sense of responsibility for the
community, a belief in strong families, a reverence for
education, frugality, hard work, national team work, a
social contract between the people and the State, moral
wholesomeness, a free but responsible press, a belief in
citizens as stakeholders, and last but not least respect
for the environment.
22. Much knowledge, know-how and capacity for improved
decision making are now available in Asia. However,
there is a great need for mechanisms that can transform
what one person, group, firm, or nation knows into
something that another person, group, firm or nation can
use. These mechanisms are today taking the form of
collaborations and partnerships rather than the
unidirectional technical assistance of earlier efforts.
23. New forms of communication technologies now make
possible a global electronic network that connects us to
people in all countries and occupations. It allows us to
access and assess the scientific and technical knowledge
that we need to solve local problems and enhance the
quality of our lives, as well as to communicate our own
knowledge, insights, and needs to others. Connecting us
to one another is a first step. We then must use these
initial connections as a tool for spreading our
knowledge, skills, and values throughout our own
nations, including our local communities. By taking full
advantage of new information technologies, we have an
unprecedented opportunity to close the vast `knowledge
gap' between peoples.
24. In this respect, POLMET 2000 KUALA LUMPUR will be
an important forum to contribute, learn and exchange
ideas and experiences on environmentally sustainable
development of cities and urban areas in Asia. I am very
pleased to learn that as part of the POLMET 2000
Organising Committee's efforts to promote networking
among delegates attending this conference, a survey has
been carried out. I hope that with the help of this
information network, this conference will be the start
of greater interaction and networking among POLMET
delegates, especially through the Internet.
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