Extended Abstracts

CLIMATE CHANGE – ITS EFFECTS ON THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR IN MALAYSIA by Mustafa Kamal Baharuddin, Director, Soil Resource Management and Conservation Division, Department of Agriculture, Malaysia …………………………………………………………………………………………… ………

Malaysia is blessed with good tropical weather. Due to its proximity to the equator, stretches from latitudes 0o 60' N to 6o 40' N and from longitudes 99o 35' E to 119o 25' E. Malaysia is a humid tropical country and its climate is characterized by maritime monsoon winds which are subject to interference by mountains in Peninsula Malaysia, Borneo and Sumatra.

The average annual rainfall is about 2,420 mm/yr in the peninsular, 2,630 mm/yr in Sabah and 3850 mm/yr in Sarawak. However, the annual rainfall is more than 4,000 mm/yr in mountainous areas of Sarawak, and more than 3,000 mm/yr in the northern half of Peninsular Malaysia and the coastal areas of Sabah and Sarawak.

The monthly mean air temperature is 25oC to 28oC in the coastal lowlands and monthly relative humidity is between 75 to 90%.

Agriculture in Malaysia contributes about 3.6% of GNP and at least a third of the country’s population depends to the agriculture sector for their livelihood. Thus, significant climate change definitely affects the agriculture sector in term of production as well as the impacting socio economics problem to the people involved in the sector and the nation as a whole.

CLIMATIC CHANGE IN MALAYSIA

Climate change or global warming is the most serious environmental threats of the 21st centuries. Extreme or severe weather is simply really bad weather or weather on larger, more serious and devastating scale, creating a natural disaster. A disaster caused by climate change could be defined as a serious disruption to the functioning of a community or a society causes widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.

In Malaysia, forecast have been made on climate modeling using 14 GCM’s (Global Climate Models) which shows that Malaysia could experience temperature changes from 0.7 to 2.6 degree Celsius and precipitation changes ranging from -30% to 30%. There are many factors identified to cause and influence climate change. These factors could be global, national and localized factors. Global warming, open burning (haze) are some of the good examples of global factor that are trans- border in nature whilst industrialization, clearing of land for agriculture, encroachment of fragile ecosystem are examples of national and localized causal factors.

In general, Malaysia could be considered as a free zone from climate related disaster. However, mild climate related disasters are quite frequent to happen lately. These refer to the occurrence of floods and droughts that caused significant socio-economic impacts to the nation while the occurrence of landslides due to excessive rainfall and strong winds happened at the hilly and the latter, at the coastal areas caused minimal damage.

In agriculture, one of the matters that affected continuously is flood. Flooding can be defined as any area of land covered by water which is normally dry. Sometimes water levels can rise slowly and unnoticed. Other time, flooded can be rapid, sudden and unexpected.

The floods incidence happened in the southern states of Malaysia, involving Negeri Sembilan, Melaka, Johor and Pahang. Johor was the worst affected. It was reported that the warming effect in Siberia lead to a heavy rainfall in Southern Malaysia, compliments with poor drainage systems, thus exaggerate the floods.

Without adequate measures, occurrence of floods could cause displacement of people, damaged infrastructures and losses of agricultural production from eroded/inundated lands. In general, about 9% of the land area in Malaysia (2.97 million ha) is flood prone and as many as 3.5 million people have become victims. Monetarily, it is difficult to estimate the quantum but a conservative figure of RM 100 million has been used to estimate the average flood damage per year.

Second matter related to extreme climate change is droughts. A drought can be defined as a continuous and long period in which rainfall is significantly below the average expected for a region at that time of year.

One of the well remembered but localised incidence was the 1991 drought in Malacca that caused the drying up of Durian Tunggal Dam and resulted in prolonged water rationing in most parts of the state.

There have been numerous drought occurrences in the past, but the most significant one was the 1997/98 El Nino related drought which caused extensive impact to environment and social activities across the whole nation. Many parts of the nation including the state of Selangor, Sarawak and Sabah were threatened by extensive wild forest fire due to prolong dry weather condition. The local situation coupled with that happened in the neighbouring country had resulted in months of hazy atmosphere that threatened the health of every citizen.

Sabah was perhaps the most affected state by the 1998 drought. All the Divisions suffered extremely high rainfall deficits (some as low as 90% of long term mean) for a period ranging from 4 to 9 months, affecting more than 2,797 km2 and 170,000 people. About 1580 km2 was engulfed in wild fire, of which more than 100 km2 were agricultural lands. More than 7,200 farmers were affected with an estimated loss of about RM 7 million. A number of districts had to go for water rationing to ease off the situation. In few villages, their hill padi crops were totally wiped out prompting the authority to send in food supply to the affected areas. Similar situation was experienced in the North Eastern part of Sarawak near Miri region. The prolonged and extremely dry spells had resulted rampant wild fire that had destroyed a sizable area of agricultural crops.

IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON AGRICULTURE

The impact of climate change affects several sectors in Malaysia mainly agriculture, forestry, public health, energy sector and water & coastal resources. Agriculture is one of the sectors greatly affected by extreme climate change. Physical damage, lost of crop harvest, drop in productivity, vigor and others related to crop potentials are examples of direct and indirect effect of the extreme climate change.

In Malaysia, at least one third of the country’s population depends on the agriculture sector for their livelihood, with some 14% working in farms and plantations. From the land use perspective, about 39.2% of total land use or about 5.18 million hectares are planted with tree crops like rubber, oil palm, cocoa, coconut, fruits and vegetables.

Thus, occurrence of disaster due extreme climate change such as floods, could impact damaging effect on the economy, social and psychology of the people affected. Recent floods in Johor had displaced 110,000 people, damaging an estimate of RM 0.35 billion worth of infrastructures and RM 2.4 billion of economics losses. An estimate of RM 84 million worth of agriculture produce were damaged or losses affecting 7000 farmers.

The sustainability of food supply could also be affected by climate change. According to official projections, increasing in temperature and changes in rainfall pattern could affect yields directly. Increased in temperature and changes in rainfall pattern could fasten the spread of fungus and diseases directly or indirectly ( e.g Phytopthora sp in rubber plantation), thus affecting yield. States that most vulnerable to these changes are the northern Peninsular Malaysia as well as the coastal of Sabah and Sarawak. Changing climate affects the agriculture industry. Based on agricultural cycle, increasing in rainfall is not good for rubber. Rubber plantations could suffer due to lost of tapping days and crop washouts.

Some crops like oil palm could flourish with higher rainfall. However, excessive rainfall is detrimental as yield is significantly affected. It was reported that flood related problems in southern Malaysia had decreased the production of crude palm oil to 1.1 million metric ton or 26.3% in December 2006

The impacts on agricultural differ from one to the other. Climate change signifies by decrease in rainfall will affected crops that need wet conditions such as paddy, vegetables and others. Rice grain yields also may decline by 9 to 10% for each 1 degree Celsius rise. Prolonged droughts make it impossible to sustain the flooded rice ecosystem and it will jeopardize security of food supply. Prolonged rainfall will also affect the sunshine hours. Thus, affecting yield of crop (e.g. rice grain filling).

Meanwhile, the rising in sea level due to climate change could force the abandoning of low-lying planted areas such as paddy, corn, coconut and others.

TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE -ADAPTATION MEASURES IN AGRICULTURE SECTOR

In general, Malaysia adopts ‘precautionary principles’ to mitigate ad adapt to climate change, even though there are still scientific uncertainties. At the national level, Malaysia has formed a National Climate Committee to formulate and implement strategies on climate change. The strategies drawn include policies on energy usage, public awareness on climate change, food supply and effective forest and coastal management to mitigate deforestation and the rising of sea level.

Apart from the national policies implemented, specific adaptation measures are necessary to manage sectoral impacts due to climate change. In the agriculture sector, adaptation measures are vital to ensure sustainability of the agriculture activities. These measures include:

The use of Agroclimatic Classification in agricultural planning.

The Department of Agriculture drafted an agroclimatic map of Peninsular Malaysia based on the agriculture rainfall index (ARI) in 1990. Ten agroclimatic (ARI) zones were identified according to the number of consecutive dry and consecutive wet months. The agroclimatic maps defined the various regions according to the variations in environmental requirements of different crops as well as on the regional differences of the natural environment, particularly climate and soils. The use of Soil Suitability Criteria for crop production.

Physical and chemical properties of the soil affect crop production. Soil depth, texture, clay fraction, soil structure, bulk density and available soil moisture are among the major soil physical properties that affect crop production. Soil reaction, cation exchange capacity and nutrient composition are the soil chemical properties, important in crop production. By considering these properties in soil suitability classification, the success of a crop production endeavour can be ensured with a reasonable margin of safety.

Others adaptation measures include

-Develop plant varieties that are tolerant to high temperatures and high water use efficiency

-Preserve Permanent Forest Reserves and water catchment areas to ensure adequate water supply for agriculture

-Strengthen agricultural extension services ( soil conservation measure and production efficiency)

-Strengthen Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and biocontrol procedures to deal incidences of pest and diseases

-Improve regional and international cooperation on agriculture- climate change related issues

-Introduce agriculture insurance to minimize risk related to climate change

CONCLUSION

Climate change is a trans-border issue and its occurrence in Malaysia is evitable. In managing climate change, Malaysia has drawn and implemented policies and strategies on climate change to minimize impacts on our economy.

Agriculture sector is an important sector in Malaysia. However, agriculture is the most vulnerable sector to the extreme climate change. Floods and droughts are the most common phenomena or disaster on the extreme side.

Floods and droughts need to be managed holistically as its impact is enormous, economically, socially and psychologically to the people and to the nation. More importantly, it could affect the sustainability of food supply of the nation. In addressing adverse effect of climate change on agriculture, specific adaptation measures to manage climate change is necessary.