Sabah's Coastline is a Treasure Box:
Sabah boasts Malaysia’s longest coastline, around 1,700 km. If we add the coastlines of its hundreds of islands, the total length exceeds 4,000 km. Our coastline landscape is amazingly diverse and beautiful, from world class sandy beach to mangroves, from headland forest to cliff, from mudflat to mangroves.
Managing such extensive coastline both presents us with unique challenges and valuable opportunities to learn and master the art of sustainable development. At the core of this lie the principle of Build with Nature. When Sabah officially took charge of its own electricity and gas regulation under the present Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) Government in 2023 and 2024, it was a turning point few expected would happen so swiftly.
Build with Nature as She is the “Wisest Engineer” and Our Guardian Against Climate Change:
While human civilization and engineering prowess have been around for only a few thousand years, nature has been engineering and shaping (and reshaping) planet Earth for billions of years.
As advanced as we consider our engineering skills are, we cannot outsmart nature. In fact, a few hundred years after the scientific and industrial revolutions, we have come to realize that building and working with nature is the most viable path toward a sustainable future as we navigate the uncertainties of climate change.
Coastal Erosion and Flooding:
Among the areas most heavily impacted by climate change are coastlines, where land meets sea. As a coastal engineer, let me walk you through the two major risks—coastal erosion and flooding—faced by Sabah’s coastline and how we can collectively and sustainably manage them. Coastal erosion deserves greater public attention, as it is often overshadowed by coastal flooding.
To complicate matters, these two risks “complement” each other: erosion exacerbates flooding, and vice versa.
For the longest time, natural forces—waves, currents, and winds—have been shaping our coastline. These forces vary throughout the years. Erosion (loss of coastline) and accretion (gain of coastline) are part of a natural coastal process governed by these forces and, more recently, human intervention. Coastal flooding is another natural phenomenon affecting our coastline, often occurring due to a combination of high tides, storm surges, wave overtopping, and sea level rise.
As the coastline erodes, higher water levels and larger waves can penetrate further inland, putting more property and lives at risk and intensifying the erosion. Coastal erosion and flooding affect Sabah in various ways, with different levels of severity and associated risks. Often, human activities contribute to worsening these problems, as we fail to “understand and prioritize working with” nature.
Be Resilient or Fail:
We are not resilient enough in combating and managing these risks in the face of climate change. If we fail, our economic and social progress could be undone, along with the potential for an environmental catastrophe. We often heard about the coastal and climate change crisis faced by countries such as Maldives, Fiji, Tuvalu, and Kiribati.
Closer at home, crisis is already brewing along our coastline, for example, at Pulau Mantanani where fish bombing, unsustainable fishing practices, severe erosion and flooding are threatening our communities. In the near future, climate change might affect our hydropower generation, water supply for drinking water, and uprooting towns and cities. The economic lost is unimaginable. To be resilient, we need to innovate.
Traditional Coastal Engineering:
Traditional coastal engineering relies on building structures such as breakwaters, seawalls, and groynes to alter and stabilize coastlines for human development. While this approach meets immediate needs, it often disrupts the overall coastline stability.
For example, groynes and seawalls block the natural movement of sediments along the coast, which are essential for maintaining coastline formation. When sediment supply is disrupted, the downdrift part of the coastline erodes, continuing until it reaches a new equilibrium—by which time significant land, property, and even lives could be at risk.
Building with Nature:
Building with nature emphasizes observing and understanding how nature functions, then designing developments to fit in harmoniously. Instead of fighting natural forces, we work alongside them—and where possible, leverage on them. For example, in areas with the right environmental conditions, mangroves, coral reefs, and seagrasses can be “built” or maintained instead of using hard engineering structures, providing natural protection against waves, currents, and winds.
Nature has, in fact, been protecting us all along. The 2004 tsunami disaster, for instance, showed that communities with dense mangrove forests suffered far less damage, as the mangroves dissipated the energy of the tsunami waves.
By assessing the economic benefits provided by natural protections, we can justify maintaining and enriching these natural assets. Leveraging these resources brings added environmental and social benefits, such as marine biodiversity, fishery stock replenishment, wildlife restoration, and eco-tourism, thereby boosting the development’s image and reputation.
Big Elephant in the Room – Climate Change:
The big, looming issue behind erosion and flooding is climate change. While sea-level rise is a widely discussed consequence, the broader impacts on weather and coastal systems are less understood.
Winds, waves, and rainfall patterns may change further in the coming decades, and our current knowledge and technologies cannot accurately predict the future trends. Drought-stricken areas may experience floods and vice versa, while storms and flooding could become more severe and unpredictable, as we have already witnessed in Sabah and globally. With changing sea states, coastal erosion and flooding trends will also shift. What should our response be?
Climate Change Adaptation and Nature Based Solutions:
Heavily fortifying coastlines against climate change impacts with hard engineering structures, like seawalls, is not a cost-effective nor environmentally friendly approach. Instead, this measure should be reserved for critical and environmentally less sensitive areas. On a larger scale, we should adopt a climate change adaptation approach that encourages innovative planning, designing, and modifying coastal development practices to reduce coastal vulnerability.
Prioritizing building with nature is essential to this adaptation. We can also combine nature-based solutions (mangroves, swamps, wetlands, coral reefs, seagrasses, mudflats) with hard engineering structures to create hybrid solutions. One successful example is integrating natural storage capabilities (like forests and wetlands) with engineering tools (such as pumps and drainage systems) in mitigating urban flooding while also providing environmental and recreational benefits for communities.
Nature-based solutions (NBS) are resilient and adaptable to changing climatic conditions, unlike rigid engineering structures. If habitat removal is unavoidable, offsetting its impact through transplantation or replanting should be a project approval condition.
Adaptation at All Levels of Governance and Investments:
Climate change adaptation should not rest solely on governments, scientists, and engineers. Its success requires the collective effort along with a paradigm shift in how we develop coastlines.
Sabah is on the right track, with initiatives from the state, municipalities, and communities, such as the Sabah Maju Jaya’s Blue Economy Agenda, the formation of the Sabah Climate Action Council (SCAC), Kota Kinabalu City Hall (DBKK)’s Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Report for Climate Change Actions (2024–2030), and Pulau Banggi’s Climate Change Adaptation Action Committee. However, these efforts are not sufficient.
Our strategies must be forward-thinking and innovative—from education and public awareness to policy development, from talent development to R&D and investment in green technology. Climate change adaptation strategies should be integrated into the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for evaluating government agencies, government-linked companies (GLCs), local authorities, education institutions, private businesses, and NGOs.
The KPIs shall cover the tri-dimensions of economic, environmental, and socio. Major investment decisions and project development must evaluate the consequences of climate change and implement adaptation measures.
Leave No One Behind:
More importantly, it is high time now that climate change adaptation and nature preservation to be listed in the manifesto of all political parties. We, the voters, shall made this applicable and accountable to all current and future leaders.
With time running out, our climate change adaptation and build-with-nature initiatives must accelerate and expand across all sectors, regions, and demographics. No one should be left behind in our collective mission to adapt to climate change and live in harmony with nature.
As a coastal engineer, Jack has spent the last 15 years looking at our coastline. He is the Country Manager at DHI Water & Environment, an international water and environmental consultant originating from Denmark which set foot in Sabah 25 years ago.
SABAH FORWARD is SYBIL’s dynamic platform for young business and industry leaders to share innovative and transformative ideas to shape the future of Sabah’s economy. Watch the Author speak on Youtube – search for Sybil Sabah.
Full article on Daily Express website.