On 16th January 2021, a webinar was organized by a group of 7 students from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) while fundraising for Klima Action Malaysia (KAMY). The main goal of the program is to raise awareness about the climate crisis locally among university students “mahasiswa” while providing a platform for students to gain information about the climate crisis on a grassroots level.
This program was conducted under the “Graduate Success Attribute - UHMT1012'' course as for their final project. The whole program was led by Heong Yi Qing as the director of the “UTM: YAC'' which stands for “Youth Against Climate Crisis”, and run by Nabiel Izzuddin as the communicator in the team. We had the chance to collaborate with Aroe Ajoeni, the Lead Researcher & Technical Officer in KAMY and Amna Batrisha as UTM representative. The highly anticipated program also highlighted the importance of conversations about the climate crisis among university students.
The webinar was conducted virtually via Facebook live on UTM: YAC page. The live stream titled “Not Gonna Lie, Earth is Dying!” has accumulated 400 views from both the students and the public. The Facebook livestream has also successfully fundraised RM500 for KAMY to support the climate justice movement in Malaysia.
Aroe speaks about the vital role of youth especially university students to keep conversing about the climate crisis on a daily basis. Additionally, she urged mahasiswa to think outside of the box and find ways to creatively address climate issues in or outside campus. In the forum, various concerns related to the climate crisis in Malaysia were discussed. According to Aroe, climate action must be rooted in PEOPLE & PLANET BEFORE PROFIT. The greedy exploitation of nature by humans has exacerbated this crisis. She also briefly mentioned about the Kuala Langat Forest Reserve, a 8,000 year-old peat swamp forest that is facing the threat of degazettement. This forest serves as a natural 'sponge' and also a place to store water in the Selangor area. If this forest is exploited for development, it will threaten our clean water source, flood mitigation, and release a lot of carbon dioxide.
The topic of climate change is no longer alienated in Malaysia. The effects of climate change can indeed be felt in the form of heatwaves as well as the current flood disasters. That is why, everyone should consider climate crisis as a CRISIS and take immediate action.
While being in the same boat, Amna Batrisha who participated as the speaker on the webinar also speaks about the importance of social media and how it plays a role in raising awareness about urgent issues. She pointed out that social media influences youth in a wide and variety of aspects. Hence, this is a good possibility for students to converse about the climate crisis in Malaysia publicly on social media. Amna also stressed that the climate issues in Malaysia are not communicated well enough and does not grab much attention among youth. She encouraged all university students to keep the conversation going, even through social media, as long as it reaches the community out there.
With all the topics discussed in the webinar “Not Gonna Lie, Earth is Dying”, we hope to inspire all the students in universities, especially local universities and other educational institutions to urge their students to keep converse about the importance of against the climate crisis among youth in Malaysia.
This blog post is contributed by Nabiel Izzuddin, one of the organizers in this project and the spokesperson for UTM:YAC.