CHAPTER 5

The Legal Industry Response to Climate Change in Malaysia

Olivia Tan Swee Leng

Introduction

The extensive growth and technology advancements which is brought by industrial revolution are the two tremendous tolls for natural resources (Callen and Thomas 1996). Transport rubbish, manufacturing process, telecommunication, and synthetic chemicals are considered products from essential human consumption and they are the causes of environmental degradation. Science and technology recognizes that there is a trade-off between these two issues, which without each other, there are not enough resources. Developing countries desire their governments to be ethically responsible for the next generation and their citizens to keep the environment safe. Hence, these countries require them to think about the causes of these environmental problems and the solutions to solve them. Human factors have contributed to climate change such as: human built factories, conducting open burning and the use of man-made vehicles, which release harmful gas. The release of large quantities of carbon emission “eats up” the ozone layer. When the ozone layer diminishes, more of the sun’s rays enter earth’s atmosphere with less restriction and therefore causes the climate to become hotter.

We cannot expect to design a model where the earth has perfectly clean air, 100 percent pure water, nor should we continue to progress economically without respect to the future and the next generation. This scenario is impossible and incites the following questions:

In short, which is the best design or plan to adjust environmental policy and better develop the economy?

Environmental Issues

Based on economic theory (Macro Economics), the author analyzed the environmental problems such as the causes and how decision makers are able to solve the problem. In the case of pollution or resource depletion, two categories of today’s society (households and firms) have direct responsibility. There are many questions arising here and the answers to them can solve the problems faced by the decision makers. For instance, consumption and production not only need to use resources, but also produce different types of pollution.

There is no person in the world who disagrees with preserving the environment. According to ZhongXiang (2009), there is no decision maker who without analyses of environmental impacts on economics of countries will make any decision. In this case, the direct relationship between environmental policy and economic growth is clear. In developing countries, because of environmental pollution, control policies for (air, water, noise, and mental) pollution increases as well (Andrew 2008; Jaafar, Al-Amin, and Siwar 2008).

As a result of the increased pollution and its global impact, the international agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol, were initiated by the United Nations (UNFCCC 2014). The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement between 37 industrialized countries and also European community to protect the climate and especially to prevent the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. The agreement asked all countries under this agreement to keep the GHG emission amount up to the 5 percent level of 1992 in 2008–2012. In 2015, 196 then parties to the convention came together for the meeting in Paris on November 30–December 12, 2015 and adopted by consensus the Paris Agreement, aimed at limiting global warming to less than 2°C, and pursue efforts to limit the rise to 1.5°C. The Paris Agreement is to be signed in 2016 and will enter into force upon ratification by 55 countries representing over 55 percent of GHG emissions (Paris Convention 2015).

In 1972, the movement to solve the earth’s environmental problems began and a conference was set up in Stockholm to find the solution. Subsequent to this conference, the next conference took place 20 years later in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro also known as the Earth Summit. The Rio Conference initiated the start of solving the environmental problems faced by human society. The important product of this conference was the FCCC (Framework Convention on Climate Change), which was signed by 154 countries (Meaken 1992).

The important policies in the FCCC were:

Following these policies, the Paris Agreement was adopted, which is within the framework of the UNFCCC dealing with GHGs emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance starting in the year 2020. An agreement on the language of the treaty was negotiated by representatives of 195 countries at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris and adopted by consensus on December 12, 2015. It was opened for signature on April 22, 2016 (Earth Day) in a ceremony in New York City. As of September 2016, 180 UNFCCC members have signed the treaty, 26 of which have ratified it, which is not enough for the treaty to enter into force (Paris Agreement 2016).

Prior to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change 2015, in December 1997, the Kyoto Protocol took place after two COPs in Berlin and Geneva. According to the Kyoto Protocol, the members decided to:

In the Kyoto Protocol, the responsibility and commitment of all countries is not the same. Based on historical data, developed countries are more responsible as in the case of producing GHG. In the recent Paris Agreement 2016, the aim of the convention is described in Article 2, “enhancing the implementation” of the UNFCCC through:

Countries furthermore aim to reach “global peaking of GHGGHG emissions as soon as possible.” The Paris Deal is the world’s first comprehensive climate agreement (United States and China announce steps to join the Paris accord that set nation-by-nation targets for cutting carbon emissions, CBS News, September 3, 2016).

Control Policies

Control policies are applicable laws, decisions, and regulations authorized by the government to endeavor to prevent any business activities from making pollution for air, water, and total human environment. Control policies are always associated with economic and technological tools of each country.

Subsequent to the industrial revolution and the rise of demand to keep the environment safe, the Malaysia government tried to publish new laws to prevent increasing pollution, such as control policies. Today, there are many alternatives, both legal (carbon and sulphur tax, green tax, energy tax, out-put tax, etc.) and nonlegal instruments, to not only decrease the harmful emission such as carbon dioxide or sulphur dioxide, but also try to keep them at the minimum level (Bolbol, Fatheldin, and Omran 2005). Malaysia is well on track to hit its target of cutting the carbon emissions intensity of the country’s GDP by 40 percent by 2020 (The Sun Daily, September 24, 2014).

These control policies are aimed to:

Unfortunately, because of different abilities of different countries to implement such control policies and also lack of the same interest among countries to follow these control policies, GHG emission abatement targets is still so far from the goal set in the Kyoto Protocol (Matsumoto and Masui 2011; Matsumoto 2007). Malaysia, with a forest land covering 56.4 percent of its territory, is a key player in the global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The new commitment, however, is subject to technology transfer and new additional funding from developed nations. Malaysia is also among the few developing countries that have met all the eight targets of the Millennium Development Goals, and renewed its commitment to strike a balance between environmental conservation and sustainable development (New Straits Times 2013).

Malaysia Economics

Malaysia is a developing country having great growth since the last three decades. The most effective determinants of economic growth of Malaysia are export manufacturing of electronics, crude petroleum, palm oil, and processed timber. This is important when all these manufacturing aspects cause the movement in economic growth of Malaysia.

After the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–1998, Malaysia’s government tried to improve the country’s broken economy. Exporting of oil, palm, rubber industries; attempting to be one of the educational cores in Asia; and attracting the attention of tourists to Malaysia are among other ways to improve Malaysia’s economy (Deesomsak, Paudyal, and Pescetto 2004). Malaysia’s economy improved with growth rates averaging 5.5 percent per year from 2000–2008 (World Bank 2016). In 2009, the Global Financial Crisis affected Malaysia, but the country recovered immediately in 2009 posting growth rates averaging 5.7 percent in 2010 (World Bank 2016).

The Roots of the Problem

Malaysia is one of the countries which improved their economy after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–1998. All the macroeconomic variables, such as GDP, unemployment, investment, net export, government expenditure, show that the Malaysian government invested wisely.

Achievement of this goal requires the need to understand all the barriers and limitations. Developed countries are associated with using more resources and particularly those, which produce gas emission (GHG emission). Although economic development is significant for all countries, governments are also concerned with resources and to keep the environment safe and pure (ZhongXiang 2009).

Government and decision makers should bear in mind while they follow the positive profit project, whether they adhere to environmental policy or not. This question forces decision makers to understand the past experiences of countries, such as implementation of carbon taxes and also recognize the barriers and opportunities when they ignore or accept any project.

This chapter attempts to analyze the limitation and problems faced by the decision makers in Malaysia to implement certain policies to manage climate change and the impact of such policies on the economy of Malaysia.

Addressing the Questions and Objectives of Climate Change in Malaysia

Implementing certain policies such as carbon tax for each country needs understanding of economic situations, social situations, and lifestyle of the people. As stated and explained in the afore-mentioned articles, any tax can be disadvantageous for people and particularly for the middle class and the poor. Therefore, there are two questions to address:

Human commitment to the environment is required for keeping the environment safe for the next generation. Decision makers should take note about the sensitivity of any threat for human life, food and also energy despite the fact that, keeping the environment safe for humans is one of the significant things. These policies must not affect food or threaten the lifestyle of the people.

In this case, the objective of this chapter is:

This chapter can assist the government of Malaysia in decision making for human life, the economy, and also the environment. Climate change plays a prominent role in the lifestyle of a household, and also climate change affects the credibility and economy of the country. The economic importance is that climate change affects the export and import of countries around the world. As for society, the importance is because any policy such as carbon tax imposed will have significant effect on the country. All these reasons mentioned earlier makes this chapter significant for the government, legal industries, and cooperation among other members of society in responding to the climate change issues.

Malaysia’s international trade has a significant role in boosting the economy of Malaysia. Malaysia is one of the third largest producers of tin, rubber, and also palm oil in the world. Manufacturing firms contribute to the growing economy of the country. Malaysia’s banking system is also the largest Islamic and financial system in the world.

The result of the progress described, leads to consumption of more energy and particularly fossil fuels. Based on the referred literature, there is a direct link between consuming energy (high intensive Carbon Producer) and also the economic development of one country. In this case, Malaysia becoming an industrialized country and at the same time keeping the earth clean with environmental policies, has become a pertinent study in this chapter.

Effect of Carbon Taxes and Environmental Policies

Several articles as stated below show that any tax such as carbon tax and all other environmental policies will affect the macroeconomic variable. The degree of differences of their effect is completely different. For instance, GDP reduces by implementing carbon tax, but carbon tax effects GDP for each country differently.

The government of Malaysia should strike a balance between the degree of pressure, which is imposed by implementing any policy to curb climate change to middle and low-income households. If implementation is done without considering its effect on the society, it can cause many problems, in particular for the poor families.

Lin and Li (2011) analyzed 17 countries of EU (Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, and Norway). For their measurement, they provided data from 1981 to 2008. In their methodology, they used Panel Data regression because of the great amount of data (Time and Variable). The author also mentioned that, in comparison with others, they used DID (difference in difference) because in previous studies they were more focused on the theoretical section of carbon tax, but this article is more focused on real mitigation of carbon tax. After their investigation, they found that the increase in GDP per capita is positively related with increase of CO₂ emission, which means increase in GDP has a sharp and positive effect on CO₂ emission. The second result indicates that urbanization does have significant effect on CO₂ emission. The last result of this study shows that effect of carbon tax in different countries is completely different because of different carbon tax rates in these countries and different levels of tax exemption and different usage of carbon tax revenue (Lin and Li 2011).

Shree Raj Shakya, Kumar, and Shrestha (2011) analyzed the effect of carbon tax on a country utilizing hydropower, such as Nepal. Their sample size was between 2005 and 2050. In their analyses, they attempted to determine the relationship between carbon tax with energy mix, environmental emissions energy supply security, energy efficiency, energy system cost, and employment benefit. After their investigation, they proved that increase in carbon tax ($13 per CO₂ in 2015 to $50 per CO₂ in 2050) causes reduction in amount of emission of GHGs. They mentioned that local pollutants (SO₂, NO_x, NMVOC) were reduced by applying the carbon tax policy in 2050. In the case of imported energy, they show the negative relationship, which means applying the carbon tax policy caused reduction in imported energy. For the last policy, they showed that carbon tax caused increase in new generation of employment, which is associated with hydropower requirement (Shakya, Kumar, and Shrestha 2011).

Wang et al. (2011) analyzed the impact of carbon tax on competitiveness of China’s sector in the short term. The reasons for using short-term data is because of carbon tax’s effect on a short-term variable could be different and also short-term analyses can complete the accuracy of long term for computing the carbon tax impact on the economy. This study contained 36 sectors; from those the important ones are electricity and heat, ferrous metal, gas production, and textile, among other sectors. Data for this study were for input-output table from 2007. There are two assumptions here. The first one assumes that from the entire merchandise which import, there is no carbon tax for them instead of fossil fuel. The second assumption is for export goods there is no refund of carbon tax. As a result for this study, the author mentioned that electricity and heat are the most affected sectors by carbon tax, but because of the absence of foreign firms, competitiveness is not as high as expected. The short-term effect of carbon tax on imports is not significant. In China, because most of the export products are the final goods, therefore competitive effects of carbon tax decrease. From other results, the study indicates that if carbon tax is low, competitiveness effect is not important. From another view, if carbon tax is high, each sector needs to use compensatory measure, and also in this competitiveness effect is high. One of the limitations were the non-existing CO₂ emission statistical data, which forced the author to use the sectoral total energy consumption data. The second problem was because of absence of data, they ignored to use industrial process emission.

Zhao (2011) investigated the effect of carbon tax on the world’s competitiveness between OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries during 1992–2008. The countries among this sample size are: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Hungry, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. The first question by the author is their reasons to choose OECD countries as their sample size. First of all, these countries implement the carbon tax, therefore all the data are available for the authors. Second, there are many factors which affect the competitiveness of countries besides carbon tax in these countries, such as labor, political stability, and technology, among others. However, quantitative measure of these factors is not easy and the benefit of choosing these countries is that they are close to each other in all these cases. These countries also have an energy price system. Therefore, the countries’ variables except carbon tax are the same or close to each other and the effects are negligible. As their method in this study they use two models, which are gravity model and panel data regression method. Competitiveness in industries of each country is measured by share of international market and profitability. In this case, increase in share brings more intensive competitiveness. They indicate that when only the imported countries implement carbon tax, it has negative effect on resource-based industries and non resource-based industries. These countries have strict tariffs, which impose the high price to all energy intensive products. The control policy of environment is strict and it causes these countries to change the location of their factories to another country, where there is no commitment on carbon tax. As a result of this study, the author shows that competitiveness of these countries makes a problem for their export. Because of the increase of price due to carbon tariffs, it causes weakness in their competitive advantage, Zhao mentions that if both imported and exported countries implement the control policy (carbon tax) it offsets their effect (Zhao 2011).

Massetti (2011) tried to design a target emission for China and India, both of which are industrial countries. They indicate that increase in carbon tax from $10 per ton of CO₂, in India has better effect in GHG because of 30 percent reduction in CO₂ emission. Although they show that emission of GHG increased in India, China still is among the top countries, which produce the most CO₂ in the world.

Hwang (2011) investigated emission reduction in Taiwan. This study was conducted from 1990 to 2007. After his investigation, he announced that Taiwan maintained its economic growth by using variety (renewable, coal, petroleum, hydropower, natural gas). He also explained that in Taiwan, energy consumption and GDP has a positive relationship with each other. Among energy, industrial, transportation, agricultural service, and the residential sectors, the industry sector consumes the highest energy. The main issues for reducing GHG are twofold. The first of these issues is that there is no blueprint to reducing greenhouse emission because the regulations are new for preventing carbon dioxide. The second issue is limitation of tools (joint implementation, clean development mechanism, emission trade) in reducing GHG emission. The important part of this study shows that because of not having economies of scale for using clean technology, investors do not choose to invest in clean and friendly environment technology (Hwang 2011).

Matsumoto and Masuri (2011) analyzed the long-term impact of carbon tax on the environment and economy. They used AIM and CGE models to measure their works. After their investigation, they announced that CO₂ abatement between the two different types of taxes, CCT (Common Carbon Tax) and ICT (International Carbon Tax), is almost the same. They indicated that although two different taxes have almost the same result, the economic impact result of such policies is different. They showed that the negative impact of CCT between developed countries is small, but in the case of ICT, the negative impact between developing countries is small. Their findings show that because of worldwide introduction of CO₂ and also decreasing the border of developing countries to implement the carbon tax policies, ICT is more flexible than CCT (Matsumoto and Masui 2011).

Table 5.1 refers to other authors’ findings on analyses that affected carbon tax in the respective countries.

Table 5.1 Other authors’ findings

Author	Year	Focus	Findings
Lin and Li	2011	European countries	•  GDP is positively related to emission of carbon and GHG emission. •  Urbanization does not have any significant effect.
Shree Raj Shakya, Kumar, and Shrestha	2011	The effect of carbon tax	•  Carbon tax causes reduction in imported energy. •  Carbon tax can make new job opportunities for industries which is related to low carbon production such as using hydropower.
Wang et al.	2011	Impact of carbon tax on competitiveness of China’s sector in short term	•  Short-term result of carbon tax is not significant. •  Low rate of carbon tax does not have significant effect on competitiveness of companies.
Hwang	2011	Investigates the different alternative ways to reduce GHG emission in Taiwan	•  In Taiwan energy consumption and GDP have a positive relationship with each other. •  Between all the sectors (industry, transportation, household, and service, among others), industry and manufacturing have the first rank for consuming of energy.
Masseti	2011	Consider to design an essential model for China and India, to mitigate their emission	•  Change in carbon tax rate has better effect on carbon emission in India. •  They show that, although China tries to prevent carbon emissions action, it is still the highest carbon producer in the world.
Zhao	2011	Investigate the effect of carbon tax on a world competitiveness between OECD	•  Carbon tax can cause difficulties for exporting of these countries. •  If both import and export countries implement carbon tax, it is nice for both of them, and offsets any negative effect for exporting countries.

Environmental Policies and Framework

The articles from the year 2011 to 2012 are relevant for the government of Malaysia to refer to when implementing policies in response to tackle climate change issues in the country. The more recent literature review will be discussed on the government’s responses or actions taken for this matter. Based on this, a theoretical framework is designed for easy reference (Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1 Policies framework that contributed to economic growth

Source: Leng

Approaches to Examine Climate Change and the Legal Industry

The study in this chapter is a social-legal case study on the legal industry response to climate change in Malaysia. The author opted for a qualitative research approach and made analyses based on documented materials, books, journals, online materials, field work via interviews, and observations via legal industry response to climate change in Malaysia. The author used case study design to understand thoroughly the issue of climate change in Malaysia. The in-depth understanding of legal industry response to climate change is an end in itself to establish the causes and implication of climate change response in Malaysia.

These methods are used to study some of the significant aspects in the field of climate change and legal industry response such as:

The author uses case study design to draw data from selected legal industries that are the gate keepers or organization administrators for climate change in Malaysia such as legal industry factories or corporations situated in Malaysia and the climate change steering committees in Malaysia as stated below.

Table 5.2 Organization administrators for climate change in Malaysia

At present, climate change-related concerns are addressed through various sectors such as energy, forestry and natural resource management, land-use planning, agriculture, solid waste, and drainage and irrigation. Often, actions taken in the realm of “climate change” are guided by Malaysia’s international obligations and commitments, namely three conventions:

In 1994, the National Steering Committee on Climate Change (NSCCC) was established under the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment (MoSTE). Subsequently, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (NRE) was established on March 27, 2004, following the formation of a new cabinet by the prime minister. Note that the secretary general of the NRE chairs the NSCCC, which also acts as the focal point for the UNFCCC.

Policies and Regulations Addressing Climate Change in Malaysia

For Malaysia, climate change is cross-sectoral in nature, involving more than merely environmental issues, but also affecting economic growth and human well-being (Pereira and Subramaniam 2007). For example, the conservation of natural resources and biological diversity is carried out through the implementation of various sectoral laws and regulations such as the Protection of Wildlife Act (1972), Environmental Quality Act (1974), Scoping Assessment on Climate Change Adaptation National Forestry Act (1984), and Fisheries Act (1985). The conservation of biodiversity is also addressed in the five-year Malaysia Plan, as well as policies such as the National Policy on Biological Diversity (1998), National Policy on the Environment (2002), National Wetlands Policy (2004), National Physical Plan (2005), and National Urbanisation Plan (2006). These and sectoral laws and regulations have provided a foundation on which climate change relation policies and regulations could support sectoral actions.

Climate Change Projection Programs

Malaysia government has conducted several programs and activities to study the impact on climate change in Malaysia, the “Study of the Impact of Climate Change on the Hydrologic Regime and Water Resources in Sabah and Sarawak (2007–2010)”; the development of the Hydro-Climate Projection Downscaling for Malaysia Using Hadley Centre PRECIS Model (2009–2010); and the extension of research on the Impact of Climate Change on the Malaysian Water Resources (2011–2015).

Water resources program includes Integrated Flood Management Program for Pahang and Muar River Basin in Peninsular Malaysia; updating the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) relationship to maintain design standards; integrated rainfall and flood forecasting, warning and response system for Johor, Pahang, Kelantan River Basin which aims to increase lead time forecast to 72 hours and reduce any severe flood impact; The formulation of the climate change impact on design flood; development of a National Water Resources Policy and Law in Malaysia; and the Sarawak Integrated Water Resources Master Plan (mid-2010).

In 2008, Malaysia adopted the climate change policy and the key features of the policy are:

The key policy instruments for this matter are:

Despite the activities and programs stated earlier, Malaysia is far behind in the adaptation of the policies and in particular in measures taken to protect its land, water, and coastal resources. This is critical, as the first cost of climate change is often born through floods, droughts, extreme weather events, and of course sea level rises among many other impacts. In part, the reasons for inadequate adaptation measures often result from the lack of awareness, insufficient information and knowledge on the detail of the impact of climate change, and uncoordinated and unilateral management of the individual subsectors. Yet, positive action has begun, for example, the recent UN Climate Summit in New York on September 23, 2014, whereby Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, the Prime Minister of Malaysia has recently reiterated Malaysia’s commitment toward reducing its carbon intensity by 40 percent by 2020.

The prime minister informed that Malaysia is meeting its targets to reduce its carbon emission intensity of its GDP by 40 percent by 2020, compared to its 2005 levels. The target was originally declared by Malaysia during the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark, conditional to receiving assistance in the form of technology transfer and financing from developed countries (UN Climate Summit 2014).

Recent policy changes have reflected Malaysia’s commitments toward the carbon emissions reduction pledge. In 2011, the introduction of the Renewable Energy Act, through its incentives (such as the improved Feed in Tariff [FiT] rates for renewable energy producers) and the Green Technology Financing Scheme (GTFS) enabling financial assistance has boosted the development of the local renewable energy industry.

The Malaysian palm oil industry plays a vital role in meeting the 40 percent reduction target. Oil palm, with just over 5 million hectares planted in Malaysia is the country’s second largest CO₂ sink (after its permanent forest reserves) that absorb 80 mt of CO₂ from our atmosphere. Its biomass, comprising empty fruit bunches, fronds, and so on, is still largely untapped at the moment and have the potential to generate more than 1,300 MW of renewable energy per year through the combustion of palm biomass in power plants and methane capture facilities at the mills.

Conclusions and Recommendations

As mentioned in previous sections, much of Malaysia’s efforts in building climate change adaptation knowledge is centered on learning “what Malaysia is adapting to,” that is, the condition, whereas how to adapt has for the most part taken second stage. There is no doubt that Malaysia has the base knowledge and capacity needed to begin mainstreaming climate change adaptation within its development framework, as mentioned in the activities and programs created by the government, yet, complacency toward real actions on the ground are very evident. This could well be Malaysia’s number one challenge in relation to climate change adaptation. Malaysia’s environmental sustainability efforts are robust; yet they only address the environmental change threat and not specifically the climate change threat. This is of concern for numerous living animals and humans within very climate sensitive habitats, that is, climate variations may exceed environmental thresholds where habitats and ecosystems could not recover to existing equilibrium and stable conditions.

This situation is not unique to Malaysia and a change that many countries will have to accept. Reflecting a little on the water resources sector in Malaysia, actions within exemplify points of integration and knowledge building, thus setting the direction for national cooperation and problem solving on climate change adaptation—a shared responsibility among the ministries. Conversely, considering agriculture, in action toward adaptation is largely driven by the presence of unknown future factors or knowledge needed to devise climate change adaptation responses economically and efficiently, at the least, prepare the sector for some degree of productivity losses. These unknowns range from understanding the past climate record with confidence, to local policy issues on micro-scales, for example, rural livelihoods and how “localized adaptation” can be engaged to reduce vulnerabilities respective of small farm holdings—key to food security among the most vulnerable to climate change and climate variability.

Unfortunately, there is no perfect framework for Malaysia, and for some time, expected is that climate change adaptation will remain in a reactive mode rather than proactive. Policy making and the climate change steering committees for climate change adaptation is heavily dependent upon external assistance, and in many cases, building adaptive capacities involve dealing with uncertainties. The uncertainties have strong implications on both national and local level policy development and vis-à-vis, the government policies such as implementation of carbon tax to curb carbon emission on some legal industry and the response from the legal industry to climate change. No doubt this is positively received by many legal industries such as some renown housing developers, yet this remains as evident as the current plunge of global oil price may affect the environment sustainability and corporate responsibilities in the long run. Another recent climate change effect was the flash flood in the states of Perak, Pahang, Terengganu, and Kelantan (2014–2015). The East Coast (Pantai Timur) floods in Malaysia showed a number of evacuees on the rise. The Star (2014) on December 28, 2014, stated that the number of evacuees was up by more than 40,000 to over 160,000 as the floods worsened due to bad weather. In February 2016, The Strait Times Online reported that Melaka Tengah district had the highest number of flood victims with 1,530, followed by Alor Gajah (1,480 victims) and Jasin (82 victims).

In view of this, it is further suggested that Malaysia must adopt the climate change policies rather than just depend on external assistance. A proactive role is pertinent here rather than a reactive role. Mother Nature compromises with no man. Malaysia must ensure that the adopted climate change policy in year 2008 and the key features of the policy such as the following are to be implemented:

Malaysia has forwarded its climate change action plan to the United Nations for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris in November 2015. In a document hosted on the UN website, the plan said Malaysia planned to reduce GHG emissions intensity by 45 percent by 2030. The document can be viewed on the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change website (http://newsroom.unfccc.int/).

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Further Reading

Aasness, J., T. Bye, and H.T. Mysen. 1996. “Welfare Effects of Emission Taxes in Norway.” Energy Economics 18, no. 4, pp. 335–46.

Allsopp, V. 1995. Understanding Economics. London and New York, NY: Routledge.

Andrés, A.R., and R.K. Goel. 2012. “Does Software Piracy Affect Economic Growth? Evidence Across Countries.” Journal of Policy Modeling 34, no. 2, pp. 284–95.

Andrew, P. 2008. Four Kind of Pollution, Why Riding a Bie Makes Green Sense [Online].

Bach, S., M. Kohlhaas, and B. Praetorius. 1994. “Ecological Tax Reform Even if Germany has to Go it Alone.” Economic Bulletin 31, no. 7, pp. 3–10.

Baranzini, A., J. Goldemberg, and S. Speck. 2000. “A Future for Carbon Taxes.” Ecological Economics 32, no. 3, pp. 395–412.

Barker, T. 1995. “Taxing Pollution Instead of Employment: Greenhouse Gas Abatement Through Fiscal Policy in the UK.” Energy & Environment 6, no. 1, pp. 1–29.

Barnes, P., and M. Breslow. 2003. “The Sky Trust: The Battle for Atmospheric Scarcity Rent.” In Natural Assets: Democratizing Environmental Ownership, eds. K. James and B.G. Shelley, 135–49. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Bruvoll, A., and B.M. Larsen. 2004. “Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Norway: Do Carbon Taxes Work?” Energy Policy 32, no. 4, pp. 493–505.

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