The environmental quality bill

Abstract

The Background and Social Justification Ralph Nader has pointed out that while it is an offence to urinate in the street, officialdom seems to condone the dumping of industrial waste into the environ- ment. One could add that in Malaysia great official indignation has been vented over social pollution - about foreign and domestic hippies stripping themselves and running around our beaches. It might be more to the point to look into the foreign and domestic concerns and industrialists who strip us off our beaches, who denude our forests, who despoil our rivers. The foregoing could be met with one of two possible hostile rebuttals. The first one, sometimes expressed by national leaders in the under-developed coun- tries, is that in order to progress one needs to industrialise. Pollution is the neces- sary price one has to pay for this. Moreover, as they quickly point out, the pollu- tion problem here is not as bad as in the West. Happily, there is some indication that this view is lessening in Malaysia. For example, while declaring this seminar open the Hon'ble the Deputy Minister of Information pointed out that anti- pollution programmes do not mean that industrial progress is hindered. I was struck by the apt analogy he used of a "wealthy cancer patient" to describe industrialisation in the midst of unchecked pollution. It is encouraging to note that he considered that any loss of natural resources and disturbance of the ecology is a loss to the nation as a whole.