City & Country's interview with Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow #4

There is concern over rising sea levels with reclamation projects. How will Penang address the environmental impact from the PSI project?

Transcript

00:00 At the beginning of my first term, I basically said we want a balanced development, development

00:22 with environmental sustainability. So climate change, rising sea level is something of concern.

00:35 But I think what we have obtained, approval, went through a very stringent scrutiny by

00:45 the various state and federal agencies. And obtaining that approval is not easy at all.

00:56 Even our first approval, knocked out because of someone took the matter to the appeals

01:06 board and we were knocked out on technical terms. But the second one, a blessing in disguise

01:12 maybe that motivated us to be even more careful in terms of preparing the various reports

01:23 in compliance with the agency's requirement and condition. So even raising the platform

01:33 above the anticipated sea water level that may be higher than currently, that had also

01:44 been taken under consideration by raising the platform level of the island. So we also

01:54 have this ecology offset master plan in that yes, we recognise any development including

02:02 reclamation would have an impact on the environment. But the challenge is how to mitigate that

02:09 impact. Our ecology offset master plan helps to mitigate the environmental impact by enhancing

02:23 marine diversity, planting of mangrove, deploying artificial reef, fish aggregating devices,

02:34 releasing of fish and shrimp flies, building eco shorelines, providing research fund for

02:43 marine ecology, fishery, turtle, coral reef and other relevant study. Even the social

02:51 impact had been taken care of. If you notice that we came up with a very generous social

03:02 impact mitigation programme in that we have registered all fishermen along the project

03:14 site and we have divided them into tier 1 and tier 2 in terms of impact. Tier 1 are

03:23 those immediately fronting the proposed three islands. Although now it has been reduced

03:29 to one, we are still committed to offering them the same ex-gratia incentive. Some of

03:40 them in tier 1 had been offered and given new boats, bigger capacity engine and this

03:50 would benefit the fishing community in that they can travel further out for the activities

04:01 and most of them are happy that they are getting new boats, new engine to continue with their

04:09 traditional activity. We also have offered them ex-gratia payment, although actually

04:19 none of them needs to be resettled because the reclamation happens in the sea and it

04:26 doesn't affect the settlement for that matter. But we are committed to mitigate the social

04:37 impact as well. In my statement today, although we obtained the approval in July, we waited

04:50 until now to announce the commencement because we need to honour our commitment to pay out

05:00 the ex-gratia before we start. So today we are actually making payment via the EFT to

05:09 the various fishermen accounts so they will get the money and that is our commitment.

05:16 We will not start until we pay the 75% of the ex-gratia incentive promised to them.

05:30 So hopefully, yes we recognise any project even on land, on sea, up in the air would

05:38 have an impact on the environment but the challenge is how to mitigate and reduce the

05:45 impact even enhance the environment through the mitigation efforts.

05:49 Thank you.