Call to re-examine Malaysia’s reactive approach to environmental hazards
By Zayana Zaikariah and Kieran Li Nair
Foreword by Datuk Prof Dr Mohd Faiz Abdullah
Executive summary
- Climate change is increasingly becoming a driver of instability in Malaysia. Physical stressors, such as flooding, heat, dry spells, coastal erosion and haze, are concentrated most heavily in states affected by poverty and governance burdens.
- However, Malaysia’s approach to climate change has remained largely reactive and mitigation-focused. There has not been a corresponding shift towards treating it as a non-traditional security priority. This gap in framing is compounded by governance architecture that lacks the capacity to manage risks, as it remains fragmented across federal and state lines and shaped by environmental justice deficits that disproportionately burden marginalised communities with climate costs.
- An examination of specific risk areas – including forced migration, climate health, and loss and damage – reveals how fragmentation plays out in practice, and how climate risk extends beyond the domestic scale through Malaysia’s integration into regional supply chains, decarbonisation and exposure to external climate-linked trade measures.
- Therefore, climate change should be considered through a peace and security lens because its effects erode the stable, cooperative relations within communities as well as between citizens and the state. This is despite climate change remaining classified as a non-traditional security risk. Left unaddressed, these pressures compound existing inequality, cause displacement and fuel institutional distrust.
- Recommendations include formally designating climate change as a non-traditional security priority through a dedicated inter-ministerial climate security council, developing a disaggregated climate vulnerability mapping protocol for the most exposed communities, treating the low-carbon transition as a peace and economic security challenge, establishing a national framework for climate-related displacement and Malaysia taking the lead on assessing ASEAN’s climate, peace and security measures.
