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Home > Home > Activities > ProSPER.Net Leadership Programme > 2014
ProSPER.Net Leadership Programme > Communities Struggle for Sustainable
Rural Development in the Cameron Highlands
Communities Struggle For Sustainable Rural Development In The Cameron
Highlands
Ruchira Ghosh, Suruchi Singh, Devon Ronald Dublin, Chanthy Sam, Nurrohman
Wijaya, Benchawan Teerakul, Yasuhito Koike, Mohd Zulkefeli bin Mat Jusoh, Razali
Bin Hassan

Figure 2: Tea garden, farmlands, evergreen forest and orchards in mountainous

landscape of Cameron

Figure 1: Map of Malaysia showing position of Cameron Highland*

An exotic hill station in Malaysia, Cameron Highlands is located in northwestern
part of the state of Pahang (about 290 kilometres from Kuala Lumpur or 90
kilometers from Ipoh, the capital of Perak), with its boundaries stretching from
Kelatan in the North to Perak in the West (Figure 1). The geography of the
highlands is characterized by tropical rainforest serving as a habitat for several
rare species of flora and fauna. Tropical rainforests are some of the oldest,
biologically diverse and most productive types of forests in the world. The soil
binding feature of Highland forests in particular is unique and helps to prevent
landslides and floods in low lying areas. The forest also contributes to resisting
microclimate changes in the highlands, due to climate extremes. Apart from the

rainforest, Cameron Highlands is also known for its Tea Estate, farmlands,
nurseries and orchards (Figure 2). The area is situated 1,200 metres above sealevel with temperatures ranging from 16oC to 22oC. Peninsular Malaysia depends
largely on the water supply from these highland forests, which in turn supports a
number of waterfalls. The cloud stripping effect of these provides plenty of rain
and fresh, clean water to its population comprising of Malay, Chinese, Indian and
other ethnicities. Their livelihood depends mainly on the tea estate, the
farmlands (strawberry farms, butterfly farms, and apiculture), the orchards, and
general vegetable farming.
Changing Cameron
The beautiful hill station is experiencing a development boom due to the suitable
climate it currently holds for agriculture, matching the governments commitment
to raise food production and security in the country. Cameron Highlands meet
40% of todays need for vegetables in Malaysia and also exports part of its
production to neighboring countries, such as Singapore. The incentives for
agriculture increased in parallel to unequal prosperity, economic development
and environmental degradation. Aiming to enhance the living standards of the
rural population, green valleys are being replaced by multi-storied commercial
buildings and pitched roads. In the midst of all this, cultural values are getting
lost, enterprises are taking over household farming that employ high yield variety
seeds and chemical fertilizers to enhance farming throughout the year. Villagers
are changing their traditional bamboo houses to concrete houses with television
(Figure 3(a)), refrigerators, two or four wheelers for transportation instead of the
traditional travel mode. With this transition from rural to urban life, deep cultural
values are being lost in the Cameron villages.
Modern life certainly brings benefits, but the introduction of electronic goods such
as mobile phones, television and commodities for example packaged food,
bottled water and drinks, shampoo and others have increased the per capita
waste generation. The lack of information about sustainable waste management
practices results in environmental degradation through waste accumulation and
pollution. These changes are accompanied by a related loss of traditional ways of
living, farming, production of handicrafts and hunting. All these combined lead to
loss of soil fertility, either because of pollution or extensive cropping, loosening of
mountain soil triggering landslides, and deforestation resulting in less water
storage and less rain (Figure 3(b)). It can be concluded that development can
indeed be a good thing, but without providing ways to preserve local cultural
heritage, native species and natural habitat, the rural structure and way of life
that originally conserved a Functioning Ecosystem not only for the highlands but
also for low-lying areas, are destroyed, affecting far more communities than
expected.

Figure 3 (a): Types of houses showing the change in Cameron

Figure 3 (b): Wordle showing issues of rural Cameron

Challenges to develop rural Cameron in sustainable ways

Development in rural Cameron is a challenge for local and national governments.
This is due to the lack of an effective linkage between various stakeholders, that
in a rural scenario would include the local and national governments, community
leaders, villagers, the private sector as well as industrial partners, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). All these stakeholders play an important role
in local development, but often act in isolation and pursue conflicting goals. In
this scenario, effective and coherent decision making is usually a challenge
(Figure 4). For instance, government and private groups plan development
schemes for economic security but as these plans do not reflect the real needs of
the community, there is a general sense of rejection and challenges in
implementation. Similarly, NGOs look into cultural and environmental security
and misses the economic factor that could support and sustain development. The
result is disconnected development schemes that prove to be unsustainable over
time.

Figure 4: Network model showing linkages between stakeholders with binders

required to strengthen links (red line shows weak links and black shows strong
links; orange blubbles act as binding agents to strengthen links)
As sustainable development requires economic, cultural, social and
environmental development that is socially accepted and technologically feasible
from a long term perspective, it cannot be achieved with stakeholders performing
fragmented and disconnected functions. A holistic approach and inclusive
practices to consider all stakeholders voices, including local people, are vital for
successful interventions. In the case of the Cameron Highlands, businesses
flourished in the area and migrant workers had found a steady income. However,
we identified there was no connection between economic development and
emotional and cultural mindset of indigenous people who always lived in the
region and had been relocated from their traditional land to facilitate agricultural
development and raise the lands revenue. In some cases, due to construction of
tall buildings, these communities had to forcefully leave their land as the
construction triggered landslides as happened with the Semai community in
Songaikabok and Kampung Lerya. With modern housing schemes and increasing
employment in tourism, the preservation of local traditions and culture of housing
and occupation in farming and handicrafts was being lost.
Currently, farmers in the Cameron Highlands work under pressure to increase
yields while limiting costs and coping with unstable vegetable prices. The use of
excessive fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals results in loss of soil fertility
and loss of habitable land due to encroachment of fragile land (Figure 5). Also the
lack of proper information had lead to severe sanitation issues contributing to
the degradation. For instance, the use of chlorine treatment for disinfection
without proper knowledge of residual chlorine, results in increased health risks as
it is reactive to organic compounds in water. Moreover, uncontrolled use of
agrochemicals results in soil and water pollution through surface runoff
eutrophication in the catchment area in the Sungai Tirla river which is the main
source of drinking water for the Cameron Highlands.

Figure 5: Unsustainable practices in Cameron Highlands

Several laws have been enacted to protect the highland ecosystem like the Land
Conservation Act (1960) for the conservation of hill land and the protection of soil
from erosion and silt inroad. But their non-compliance led to the northern
gateway of the Cameron Highlands known as Kampung Raja to attain its eroded
form. In addition, other laws and policies such as the Designated Development
Area (DDA), National Land Code, River Enactment, Temporary Occupation
Licence, Local Development Planning proposes important concepts, although the
rules could be more prescriptive. Also, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
must be made mandatory before every construction and demolition activity to
secure effective environmental protection with socio-economic feasibility of the
work contributing towards sustainable development. As far as we were able to
verify, there is only one EIA submitted for one hydroelectric power project, which
could have even been replicated for other activities. EIA helps in environmental
protection and social acceptance of projects through appropriate selection and
optimum use of technologies/ methodologies assessing viability and feasibility of
the proposed activities. And such assessment can be strengthened by the use of
a monitoring tool like Geographical Information System (GIS) through modelling
and simulation. These will allow mutualism between socio-economic and
environment in evolving from pure traditional to scientific approach based
livelihood. For example, promoting and conserving traditional land use with
capacity building for enhanced farming or market incentives to cover losses.
In this sense, innovative economic instruments such as subsidies, incentives,
taxes and privatisation can prove helpful in motivating local people to actively
participate in developmental activities with socio-economic, cultural,
pshychological, and environmental security. Further, the public-private
partnership can enhance capacity buiding, strengthen knowledge transfer and
optimize infrastructural deliveries which can lead to durability of developmental
activities with technology acceptance across environmental and social diversity.
Also, sustainbale development would not only uplift socio-economic strata of local
people but lush green valley along with appropriate technology penetration which
can further fortify tourism, environmental protection and prevention from natural
calamities, therefore conserving the natural habitat. Thus, through these
approaches, development actions can lead to sustainability with equity in
generation and ecology, by optimization and conservation, through technologic
interference with social and economic acceptability.

Therefore, government, policy makers, NGOs and private groups, indigenous

people and local leaders need to pursue common efforts through joint venture.
This could be implemented through increased community participation and
public-private partnership. This can also include support from universities and
research institutions, so that wide stakeholders network can contribute and share
responsibilities for sustainable rural development in the Cameron Highlands and
beyond.
Leadership and the way forward
Leadership presupposes a cultural and emotional connection to ignite common
interests of team members, such as businesses, a village, even a whole country,
encouraging all of them to play their roles in a complementary way. Leadership
style can be explained in two major forms, namely transformational and
transactional. Transformational leadership offers a vision for the organization
where leaders widen their scope to raise employees interests to make them
more aware and inspire them towards common interest of the group. Here,
individual problems are considered raising the aspiration to identify the problem
and to build up confidence to find a solution. In transactional leadership, leaders
recognize the needs of their followers/employees, defining relevant exchange
processes to satisfy these needs and the leaders expectation. Further, the
transactional style involves incentives influencing the motivation of its followers,
enforces rules to prevent mistakes and actively monitors the employees
performance to avoid problems. The management waits for problems to occur to
take remedial actions based on the leader-follower transaction results. Therefore,
a challenge to effective leadership is the lack of connectivism in binding people
and delivering resources to fulfill the needs. Because of that, a combination of
transactional and transformational leadership is required to strengthen
connectivism.
In addition, utilizing transdisciplinary knowledge to minimize risks may help to
accommodate different views and solve complications while improving synergies,
especially regarding the stakeholders participation. Sustainability requires
greater trust, transparency and cross-functional collaborations within and
between organizations. This certainly includes sharing the roles and
responsibilities among ministries, policy makers, and facilitators like self-help
groups, the private sector and communities.
While the Cameron Highlands may appear to have several problems, there are
successful stories and many lessons learnt that can help in designing a
sustainable future. For example, the establishment of a tea garden in 1933 in
Kuala Terla has provided the Cameron Highlands with a source of employment in
and around Cameron and has shown huge acceptance and sustainability. Other
examples include changes in land use pattern in 1970 with planned agricultural
and infrastructural development like livestock farming, housing projects, power
plants, and other. A research center was also developed in 1971 to ensure the
quality of vegetables, tea, and fruits grown and subject to marketing from the
Highland as a feedback mechanism to facilitate continuous improvement. Thus,
these sequencial developmental activities brought social, cultural and
psychological revolution with their technologic, economic and operational
acceptability along with environmental sensitization. But the random and
unsystematic developmental activities undertaken in Cameron has lead to

habitat loss, deforestation, soil erosion, landslides, both surface and ground water
pollution, and rising solid waste.
Understanding the past will help to predict the future, and past-present scenarios
may be used as a blueprint for the times ahead, considering that the future is not
necessarily a true reflection of the past but a road map to move ahead. As a tool
for foresight, trio of creativity-evidence-interaction must be taken into account.
Nevertheless, participation and networking must always be included, as they
serve as key pillars for a firm base to jointly build a more sustainable future. A
paradigm shift from short-term goals to long-term gains is a challenge to be
engrained among current leaders in Cameron Highlands.
* Figure
1 source: http://www.etawau.com/Geography/WestMalaysia/KualaLumpur/KualaLu
mpurMap/Peninsula/MalaysiaMap1.jpg

ProSPER.Net Secretariat
United Nations University
Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability
5-53-70 Jingumae,
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-8925
Japan
5. Recommendations
To help REACH improve their organization, following recommendations are made:

Build a shelter on the reforestation site on Gunung Brinchang

Reforestation projects have been carried out frequently the last few
months.During this time the equipment necessary for sample planting activities
was leftunprotected on the site. This reduces the lifespan of the spades
drastically.Another problem on the reforestation site are the dry seasons in which
samplescannot survive without water. A rainwater vessel should be placed next
to theshelter for the spades. This makes it possible to water the samples in dry
periodsto give them chances to survive.

Efforts to run activities should be divided more equally on committeemembers

At this moment some committee members spend more time than others
inmanaging activities. The difference in efforts is alarming and poses a real
threatto the future of REACH. Committee members can be trained to become
moreknowledgeable, which gives them the opportunity to run activities

themselves.When everything is more equally divided, REACH can run more

activities at thesame time. The latter will speed up the process of increasing
awareness andgives Cameron Highlands a better chance to be saved.

Current R.E.A.C.H. members should be stimulated

Losing members will be bad for the organization. To keep members interested
toextend their membership the next year, only environmental motivation from
theirside is not enough. Members should be stimulated to join activities or to
suggestnew ones. Keeping them posted on progress of REACH and activities can
do this.

Volunteers should be encouraged to come back

For example the IKEA and Mind Science group have more than one
timevolunteered for REACH reforestation projects. Other volunteer groups should
beencouraged to come back for any kind of activity. Keeping them informed
onpossibilities in activities is the key.

Become more scientifically orientated

Until now REACH already received several University students to do research
forthem. When REACH becomes more scientifically based, this will attract
moreresearchers. Attracting students can also lighten efforts of committee
membersto run activities because they can help. Students can contribute in
increasingawareness among people by doing research and giving talks about
it.Connections must be made between REACH and Universities in Malaysia
andother countries. Also increasing cooperation between REACH and NGOs
andenvironmental organizations for example can help to attract more students.

Invest in new initiatives

Given the current financial situation, REACH can afford to spend more money
onnew projects to increase awareness. The committee should discuss
possibilitieson this topic.