1,300 KM OF MALAYSIA'S COASTAL AREAS SAID TO BE FACING SERIOUS EROSION

KUALA LUMPUR, June 22 (Bernama) -- A total of 1,300 km or 29 per cent of the country's 4,800 km of coastal areas are already facing serious problems of erosion, Deputy Secretary General 1 of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Aziyah Mohamed, said Monday.

As such, Malaysia needed to know sea-level rise projections to enable it to
plan coastal developments as well as adapt to climate change, she said.

Speaking at the opening of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) workshop here, she said the projections were needed urgently to enable
the country to assess future impacts of sea-level rise on coastal areas as well
as the sustainability of coastal settlements in the decades to come.

The IPCC had reported that there has been an increasing trend of significant
wave heights for the South China Sea and eastern parts of the Andaman Sea in
which Malaysian coasts have been directly impacted for the last 50 years.

The significant wave heights may be the result of increasing storm
activities in this region.


Aziyah was representing Minister of Natural Resources and Environment
Douglas Uggah Embas at the four-day workshop on sea-level rise and ice
sheet instabilities at a hotel here.

Some 100 leading world experts on all issues related to sea-level rise,
including the field of ice-sheet dynamics and ice-sheet instabilities are
attending the workshop.

Aziyah said sea-level rise itself was a complex issue with several factors
contributing to it, including the thermal expansion of oceans, the melting of
ice glaciers, the melting of Greenland and Antarctica, changes of the ocean
circulations and also changes in the water storage over land.

Malaysia is a maritime country with coastlines of up to 4,800 km long and,
as such, will certainly face the effects of sea-level rise as shown by the study
conducted by the Drainage and Irrigation Department.

In welcoming the delegates, who will deliberate on the latest findings to
help understand the status of sea-level rise and ice-sheet instabilities,
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), a public university, Vice Chancellor Prof
Dr Sharifah Hapsah Syed Hasan Shahabudin said the findings and resolutions of
the workshop were very important to the IPCC Fifth Assessments Report which was
currently going on and was expected to be completed in 2013.

Studies on climate change, she said, were one of the eight priority research
areas at UKM, and it was encouraging partnerships and collaboration with public
and private institutions, both local and foreign.

"We believe that the scientific findings that we generate are not only
important for Malaysia but also for the region, where knowledge gaps are still
significantly large," she said.

-- BERNAMA