Jumbo job ahead as waters rise

A PAIR of elephants went ambling around a housing area in Kluang, Johor, tearing down the fence of a house before moving on. That was two months ago.

In August last year, 10 wild elephants were seen roaming around Taman Seri Impian in the same district, sending residents into panic mode.

And in 2020, a group of starving elephants rampaged through the streets of Kota Tinggi, taking down fruit stalls and cars.

Meanwhile, also in Johor, there were the “great floods” of 2006, and big ones again in 2011, 2020 and this year, not to mention the annual flooding as well.

Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced, millions of ringgit lost, with many lives disrupted and scores of deaths.

So, what do rampaging elephants have to do with floods in Johor? Plenty.

The rampant clearing of forests and jungles mean the elephants – and even tapirs and many other wildlife – are losing their habitat. Forced out of their homes, they are coming over to see the homes the humans live in.

The problem is, the homes of the humans are also in deep trouble, literally.

The loss of forest cover causes rain to run off and enter rivers rather than be absorbed into the earth by trees. With rivers filling up quickly, the banks overflow and houses end up getting inundated.

People have blamed many things for the floods. Massive development, poor drainage and clogged rivers, caused by people who still use them as their most convenient rubbish dump, are all part of the problem.

But there is always that elephant in the room – rampant deforestation.

Between 2002 and 2021, Johor lost 36,000ha of humid primary forest. That’s bigger than the size of Penang island!

What’s worse, that 36,000ha was only 5.1% of the total tree cover loss in the state over the same period. Some 745,000ha of tree cover was lost – or about 10 times the size of Singapore.

And we wonder why Johor is being hit by floods so often.

In Pahang, the Earth Observation Centre has found that more than 20% of forest area had been cleared for development since 1989.

Of course, there is also climate change. And how it has changed. We no longer need to fear the Ides of March. In Malaysia, it is the floods of March that we have to worry about.

The days of the December rains are gone. These days, rain is lashing at unexpected times.

It used to be hot and dry in March. Only in 2014, there was a drought, leading to a water crisis in Selangor and Negri Sembilan. Thousands of houses had to do without water as dams in the two states hit critical levels, with water rationing in Selangor from March to May.

Now, though, it pours in March. It’s almost as if the weather is changing with the calendar of the Malaysian Examinations Syndicate, which moved the SPM exams, thinking it could avoid the end of year rains. The rains just followed suit.

It’s not just this year. It also happened in 2020 when many states, including Selangor, Pahang and Johor, were hit by floods in March.

Some may claim these floods are just acts of God. But that’s really no excuse.

If it was indeed an act of God, why aren’t Singaporeans swimming out of their HDB flats to work? After all, Johor is just a stone’s throw from Singapore.

Those in the republic are not worried about floods. They are just wondering if vegetables from Malaysia will come across the Causeway and if they will cost more. Not that money is a big problem for people whose currency is worth thrice that of Malaysians.

So, why is Singapore not flooded? After decades of rapid industrialisation, the little island republic woke up to the threat of floodwaters when its iconic Orchard Road was inundated back in 2010.

It is spelling out a new future with what it calls ABC – Active, Beautiful, Clean – Waters, a plan to manage the country’s water supply and drainage.

It’s a long-term plan, one that makes full use of the country’s water bodies, even turning them into vibrant, new spaces for the community.

Singapore has converted a 10km concrete drainage channel – built in the 60s as part of a flood alleviation project – back into a natural river. Parks and greenery beside the new river, where parents and children can gather to swim and frolic, now absorb and hold water, while the drainage channel continues to do its work.

It has some 1,000 water-level sensors installed at rivers to monitor conditions at the various sites so the public can get early warning while quick response teams can manage any flood by clearing up blocked rivers, deploying portable flood barriers and handling traffic.

But Singapore is tiny, Malaysia is much larger. And Malaysia has also done much work.

We have the Stormwater Management and Road Tunnel (Smart) in Kuala Lumpur to bring floodwaters to a retention pond and then into the sea. The problem, however, is that a lot of the floods in the Klang Valley are happening in areas outside the coverage of the tunnel.

Better yet, there are attempts to revive the forests. In Sabah, an NGO – Rhino and Forest Fund – is buying over oil palm plantations and reconverting them into jungles so that habitats and migration routes of wildlife like elephants are not threatened.

“We have already lost the rhino. We need to connect the fragmented forests for the wildlife to move and survive,” Annuar Jain, manager of the NGO, is reported to have said.

Some 2,300ha of previously unprotected forest land have now been gazetted and a 65ha oil palm plantation has been acquired and turned back into forest to create a corridor for the elephants.

That could give the elephants their homes again. But that is in Sabah. What of Johor?

It faces a mammoth task to end the flooding.

It could start by bringing back some of the forest cover, and maybe scrapping several development projects.

After all, I am told, there are quite a number of white elephants in the state.