Environmental law for air pollution

As concern of pollution in Malaysia, air pollution gave high impact to the

environment. That’s why government has implemented law and regulations for our
country that specified for environment only. The increasing number of people and
economic activities in urban and suburban have contributed to the problem of air
pollution in the country as well as the growing numbers of agricultural areas, industries
and number of vehicles. It can be confirm when the population of Malaysian currently
increasing about 32 million people. That is a huge number for our little Malaysia.

We know that there are existing law applicable to protect air quality from various
pollution sources but we don’t know how many type of air pollution faced by Malaysia
annually and it namely that of transboundary haze pollution usually occur in June to
early September. With the new knowledge from this subject, we got to know more on
the type of air pollution.

Talking about the pollution when comparing with other sources of air pollution,
the control of haze is more complicated as it can originated both domestically and from
abroad. If such haze derived beyond the Malaysia’s boundary, the international efforts
would then be required to manage it. For example when severe haze has occurs in
2019, the Malaysian, complain that the haze came from forests burn in Indonesia.
Malaysia’s science ministry had urged Indonesia to take immediate action to fight haze,
as Jakarta detected a spike in the number of hot spots indicating worsening forest fires
across the archipelago.

It make us realise more on how we should appreciate our environment if we do

not want any further impact occurs. The air pollution can affect our health as well which
it can make us hardly to breath and get other related disease. For the issues with
Indonesia, it make us to identify and get to know the position of law in Malaysia in
controlling haze across border and make government identify the gaps in the law that
require improvement to avoid this kind of issue arise again in the future. It make us see
on how the Malaysia ministry cope with the kind of problem.

With the impact that had occurred because of the forests burn, it make us reach
out a thought that actually what we do may harm our environment in future. And it is
not a good attitude of a person. We got to know in details about the causes and also
the penalty that could be charged by the authority since in Malaysia we have
Environmental Quality (Prescribed Activities) (Open Burning) Order 2003 enforced by
the government.

By learning this subject, we exposed more towards the law and regulations that
secured our environment in Malaysia that actually exist for a long time but without
grabbing the opportunity of learning new things we might do not know about it at all. As
for the case of forests burn fall under the regulation of Environmental Quality
(Prescribed Activities) (Open Burning) Order 2003. When forest is being burnt, it
becomes a serious threat not only to the forest environment itself, but also to the
quality of the air.

After further reading and learning, we got to know in details about some
agricultural and farming processes especially among the smallholders and subsistence
farmers are still based on the traditional method of using fire. For the policy makers,
these are factors that need to be taken into consideration when formulating a law on
open burning in order to strike a balance between land-use management and
environmental protection. That’s why there are a researcher argues that prescribed
burning, if strictly performed, can help harmonise different interests and help
accomplish the target of forest protection and air pollution control in accordance with
acceptable legal parameters.

We got to know that activities relating to open burning have been identified to be
among the contributors of air pollution and haze phenomenon that are causing a
deteriorating quality of the atmosphere. Because of that, the government strictly
restricted anyone to do open burning anywhere they are. We agreed that, open burning
can harm our air either people do it in small portion or big portion. People should
realise on this matter so that we can help our environment to avoid harm to entire
world. Small contribution that we make today can be followed.

Not just that, actually we can avoid many other pollution if people take serious
on taking care of the environment together. We truly believe that small changes can
help to improve our nature to be in good shape. In order to make it happen, each of
person should believe that what we have today is caused by how we were in the past.
So slightly changes of each person may change the whole world.

However, it really good opportunity to be able to learn this subject because we

got to know the knowledge and information about our environment that actually
important in our daily life. We are the person that should be aware and keep on do the
good thing to our environment so that we will be breathing a healthy air.
References

Reuters. (2019, September 06). Malaysia officially complains over haze as Indonesia
forests burn: New Straits Times. Retrieved June 24, 2020, from
https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2019/09/519267/malaysia-officially-complains-
over-haze-indonesia-forests-burn