KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia will see more severe floods like those that displaced more than 100,000 people in Kelantan recently due to a combination of global warming, deforestation and the lack of enforcement.

This was the conclusion of experts at a forum in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday night to discuss the Kelantan floods. They argued that all three factors turned what is an annual occurrence into a national disaster.

The extraordinary rainfall that Kelantan experienced in the span of three to four days, said meteorology expert Dr Liew Ju Neng, was due to a tropical climate element called the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO).

The MJO originates from the Indian Ocean and passes through Malaysia four times a year, said Liew, who is from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

When it comes in contact with the northeast monsoon that hits the peninsula at the end of the year, it will cause more than usual rain, he said at the forum titled “Kelantan floods: Coincidence or fate?”

The MJO increases the amount of easterly winds which carry more moisture and this leads to the monsoon dumping more rain than usual when it passes through the peninsula.

On Jan 4, Kelantan Deputy Menteri Besar Datuk Mohd Amar Nik Abdullah said that during the height of the floods, there were two days when the amount of rain was equivalent to the total that Kelantan experienced for a month last year.

Liew said although the MJO travels through Malaysia four times a year, extreme storms only happen when they hit other climate phenomena such as the monsoon.

“Since the 1970s, MJOs are becoming more active. Due to global warming, MJOs have increased by 40% to 50%. So in the next 30 to 40 years, we will see the MJO passing through six times a year.”

The increased frequency of MJOs will lead to more extreme storms, which can cause floods to be more severe. The massive floods in Johor in 2006 and 2007 which had been caused by extraordinary rainfall were also due to the MJO, said Liew.

The forum was organised by youth group Solidariti Anak Muda Malaysia (SAMM), one of the many non-governmental organisations which have helped collect and deliver aid to flood-hit areas in Kelantan.

Rantau Panjang MP Siti Zailah Mohd Yusoff said it is estimated that the floods caused RM2 billion in damages while 2,500 houses were destroyed in Kelantan alone. Twelve lives were lost.

The floods that also hit Perak, Terengganu and Pahang at the end of last year collectively affected 200,000 residents.

Both Putrajaya and the Kelantan government have been blamed for not being adequately prepared for relief operations, as seen in how whole communities were cut off for days without food, clothes and the possibility of rescue.

Sharmila Ariffin of environmental group Sahabat Alam Malaysia explained that another factor which worsened floods was the clear-cutting of forests to establish plantations. She said Kelantan was losing its forests at the highest rate in the peninsula. 

The high rate of deforestation was due to the creation of timber plantations within permanent forest reserves in Kelantan. In 2014 alone, the state had about 162,000ha of land classified as timber plantations.

Although Kelantan has the highest growth rate of timber plantations in the peninsula, said Sharmila, the federal government also has a policy of encouraging plantations all over the country.

The problem with clear-cutting forests, said drainage expert Datuk Fuad Abdul Rahman, is that it exposes topsoil, which runs off and chokes rivers with sediment.

“When you lose topsoil and ground vegetation, the land is not able to absorb rain,” said Fuad, who is former deputy director-general of the drainage and irrigation department.

The floods in Kelantan, said forum moderator Badrul Hisham Shahrin, was an opportunity for the country to reflect and become aware of how such a disaster happened and how to prevent it from recurring.

The lessons from Kelantan could be applied to the whole country. As a SAMM volunteer from the audience put it: “God should not be blamed for these floods.”— The Malaysian Insider

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on January 29, 2015.