The development of an environmental resilience index for Selangor, Malaysia

Over the years, rapid urbanisation aided by advanced technologies and population increment has significantly altered the natural environment into concrete jungles resulting in adverse environmental degradation. In order to mould a sustainable, resilient and green future, global efforts and directives have been introduced, such as the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, low-carbon cities, and others at international and local levels. Nevertheless, grassroots initiatives and actions are crucial in producing results. Presently, there is no mechanism to measure the relevant environmental components into a comprehensive system indicating Malaysia’s level of environmental resilience. Though the local governments have to report their development performance via MURNINET, a system developed by PLANMalaysia, this system does not include environmental resilience. As such, this study on the Environmental Resilience Index (ERI) was embarked on, proposing five environmental components that can be used by local authorities to assess environmental resilience. ERI covers environmental resources, built environment, climate conditions, natural disasters and environmental issues. On the other hand, this paper shares an ERI pilot analysis of the environmental resources of the study area, Selangor, Malaysia, consisting of 9 districts. The data used to analyse are majorly secondary data from official reports of responsible technical departments and agencies in Malaysia to ensure the validity and reliability of data. The output of this analysis was generated using ArcGIS software as it relates to the weightage of different components and sub-components. The results show that most districts in Selangor have an ERI level of moderate level, while three districts, namely Sabak Bernam, Sepang and Petaling, are categorised as having low ERI levels.


Introduction
Over the years, rapid urbanisation aided by advanced technologies and population increment has altered the natural environment into concrete jungles resulting in significant environmental degradation.The 1970s have brought forward a new paradigm in urban planning that emphasises balancing the economy and the environment, enabling man to enjoy the present and future resources.Rapid urbanisation, economic boom, and technologies have eased and created comfort in meeting daily needs; it accentuates environmental degradation.This paper aims to introduce the research on the Environmental Resilience 1306 (2024) 012029 IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/1306/1/012029 2 Index (ERI), ERI framework, research methodology, and a pilot analysis of environmental resources components with two mappings for the districts in Selangor and a composite map of ERI for Selangor.

Research background
The relationship between the environment and man is very closely knitted.Man receives means of living in a shelter, food, economic resources and everyday living basis from the environment.However, excessive human actions that change the natural environment into a built environment have significantly affected the environment for centuries after.To name a few environmental degradations that can be observed are global warming, natural disasters, air pollution, water pollution, increased sea level and an increase in extinct and endangered species.Nevertheless, man altering the natural environment could impact lives either negatively or positively [1].The importance of environmental protection has very much existed for centuries ago.For instance, King Asoka of India (252 B.C) announced the protection of wildlife and forest habitat, Prophet Muhammad P.B.U.H (524-534 A.D) declared conservation areas around the city of Madinah, and King William the First (1084 A.D) summoned the provision of The Domesday Book which is a land inventory [2].These indicate that all the great rulers emphasised environmental conservation and protection regardless of their differences in belief, ideology, and religion.
With that, the 1980s brings a new shift in the planning paradigm by introducing the buzzword sustainability.Bruntland Commission 1987 (as cited by [3]) reported sustainability is defined as 'development that meets the needs of the future without compromising the ability of the future generation to meet their needs.Along with another buzzword is resilience.In contrast to sustainability, resilience does not have a standard definition.Lhomme (2013) defined resilience in the field of earth sciences as 'the ability of a city to absorb disturbance and recover its function after a disturbance' (as cited by [4]).
From the introduction of sustainable development during the Bruntland Commission 1987, more international frameworks and commitments have been formulated to strengthen the need towards a greener future through United Nations.As a United Nations member, Malaysia also enforces these global commitments in national plans, policies, and guidelines.Though there is a presence of national plans and policies, there are no mechanisms to measure the environmental resilience suitable to Malaysia's environmental and planning landscape.
Hence, this research is undertaken to develop a methodological framework to measure the level of resilience, named Environmental Resilience Index (ERI) for towns in Malaysia, that could be used by stakeholders, especially local planning authorities, to assess the municipal's environmental resilience level.The objectives of this research are (1) to identify key environmental indicators for ERI; (2) to generate the ERI results to understand the spatial distribution pattern; and (3) to produce a model of environmental resilience index in the Geographic Information System (GIS) database.
Herewith, the state of Selangor has been chosen as the study area due to several factors.Selangor is the third largest state in peninsular Malaysia, with the states of Perak, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang bordering the state from the north, south and east, respectively.Selangor has nine districts, namely Sabak Bernam, Kuala Selangor, Hulu Selangor, Klang, Petaling Gombak Kuala Langat, Hulu Langat and Sepang.Each district has different economic activities and rates of urbanisation that could impact the level of environmental resilience (Table 1).Selangor being a state that holds the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya, also affects the rate of urbanisation in districts bordering these federal territories.

International commitments and national policies
According to the Oxford dictionary, a policy is a plan of action, a statement of ideas proposed or adopted by a government, political party, business, or organisation.On the other hand, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) (2018) has underlined the importance of policy.Policy layout guidance, consistency, efficiency and clarity on how an organisation operates.In emphasising environmental protection, Malaysia has undertaken various international commitments and formulated numerous plans and policies that reflect those at the international level to be implemented nationally.This section will tabulate those plans and policies.Being a member of the United Nations, Malaysia has agreed to commit to a long-term development agenda, such as Sustainable Development Goals and New Urban Agenda.The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030) has also played a part for stakeholders and institutions in assessing the nation's ability to face disasters.Table 2 lists international plans and a summary of the contents.
Table 2. Summary of international policies.

Local Agenda 21 (1992)
A policy that includes voluntary participation in creating local policies and programmes to achieve sustainable development.

Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015)
The successor of Hyogo Framework that underlines strategies in tackling disaster risk management for man-made and natural disasters.

Sustainable Development Goals (2015)
A long-term development agenda that is a blueprint in achieving peace and prosperity for people and the planet.

The New Urban Agenda (2016)
A policy that focuses on shaping urban systems and physical forms as solutions for cities towards sustainability.

National Water Resource Policy
Policy A policy outlines comprehensive strategies and action plans in tackling issues and challenges regarding water resources management in Malaysia.

National Policy on Biological Diversity
Policy A revised policy aiming to conserve Malaysia's biological diversity, promote sustainable use and ensure fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilisation of biological resources.

Policy
This policy is consolidated of different state policies on forestry.It ensures firmer forest management and development for social, environmental, and economic benefits that protect forest functions.

National Policy on Environment
Policy Formulates strategies to ensure continued economic, social, and cultural progress in enhancing people's quality of life through sound and sustainable development with clean, safe, healthy, and productive environments.

Policy
A policy that provides a framework to reduce carbon emissions for sustainable development.

Low Carbon Cities Framework & Assessments Systems
Policy A policy aims to ensure climate-resilient development to fulfil national aspirations for sustainability through wise resource management.

Policy
This guideline aims to guide state and local authorities on allowable land use activities at environmentally sensitive areas consisting of shoreline, water catchment areas, flood-prone areas, mineral reserves, solid waste disposal sites, agriculture areas, wildlife reserves, and forest and cultural areas.
Sources: [9]- [23] The listed laws, plans, policies, and guidelines highlight the main components of developing the Environmental Resilience Index.

Mechanism for measuring environmental components
Though policies direct the development scenario by providing strategies and action, it does not provide a mechanism for local authorities to measure the policy's level of commitment, which leaves the policy to more of a 'decorative' purpose.On the other hand, PLANMalaysia has developed the Malaysian Urban-Rural Indicators Network for Sustainable Development (MURNINets).It is a tool used by all local authorities in Malaysia that assess the performance of sustainability in their respective municipals.In addition, this tool collects, stores, evaluates and manages data relating to sustainability to be shared at the state and national levels.Overall, the improved MURNINets 2.0 consist of 5 strategies covering six dimensions which are competitive economy, sustainable environmental quality, healthy communities, land use and optimal natural resources, adequate infrastructure and transport, and effective governance [24].
Considering sustainable environmental quality, this dimension mainly focuses on environmental quality, risk management, and environmental management.Here, there is a missing piece regarding environmental resources that are very important as it influences the other components of environmental resilience.Therefore, this research on the Environmental Resilience Index (ERI) will fill the gap by developing a holistic framework to measure or assess environmental resilience.

Framework for Environmental Resilience Index
The Environmental Resilience Index (ERI) is formulated by considering the planning scenario in Malaysia, components of environmental degradation, international and national plans and policies, and the framework of MURNINets.In addition, from a literature review by authors such as [25]- [28], the components of the environment could be further identified with common indicators between these authors, such as water availability, land-use diversity, climate, forest cover and natural disasters.
On the other hand, studies on existing indexes have been analysed to further identified environmental components for the resilient cities index, such as the Climate Disaster Resilience Index [29] and Sustainable Cities Index [30] of resilient towns indexes as well as environmental performance index such as Environmental Performance Index [31].Environmental Vulnerability Index [32] and Environmental Sustainability Index [33].The ERI framework is finalised through this process consisting of 5 components, 21 sub-components and 41 indicators (Figure 2).

Methodological approach
The section on methodology could be divided into two phases: data collection and data analysis.In general, this study is based on quantitative data.Due to time constraints, most data collected are secondary data from authorised departments, authorities and local governments in annual reports, compendiums and journals.This research is an assessment for ERI in Selangor state for 2019; all data collected are based on 2019 to ensure the validity and reliability of data [34].However, specific survey reports are not conducted annually, such as the survey on endangered species by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks Peninsular Malaysia (PERHILITAN).As for this scenario, the data from the latest published report (2018) is accepted.
In addition, land use data in the form of a Geographic Information System (GIS) is retrieved from the Department of Town and Country Planning (PLANMalaysia) for 2017 and 2019 to find the changes in land use acreage as forest cover.This data is vital for this study, as it becomes the base for ERI model mapping as part of the research objective.Next, LANDSAT image analysis is also used to collect data on beaches, an indicator for the sub-component coastal areas.Table 4 lists the department or agencies referred to for data collection.Based on the literature reviews, it directs to the data analysis phase, whereby it can be identified various ways to analyse indexes that are in the form of mathematical equations [28], weightage/ percentage of every indicator [30], [31], [33] and in the form of ranking and classification [32].This research applies the ranking and classification method as the basis of data analysis that is closely related to that of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI) as this method is more manageable and friendlier for stakeholders to apply in their municipal system.In contrast to EVI, with a scale from one to seven (from less vulnerable to very vulnerable), ERI is categorised as nil, low resilience, moderate resilience, and high resilience.Each category is then given a score of 0, 1, 2 and 3, respectively.The score of each indicator will be summed up to generate a composite ERI index for Selangor.The figure below shows a detail on the scoring system for an indicator (Figure 3).

ERI pilot analysis on environmental resources
This section discusses an ERI pilot analysis conducted for the districts in Selangor for the component environmental resources.The calculations for this assessment produce two maps: (1) environmental resources analysis for the districts and (2) composite environmental resources analysis for Selangor (Table 5).The difference between these two maps is that the composite analysis map is an average based on the sum of districts in Selangor.As this pilot analysis is only based on a single component, the scoring system is based on the figure below; each category is also coloured differently to have a clear marking on the output maps.It is also important to clarify that the score for each component is different from the total number of indicators in a component.

Findings and conclusion
This section analyses the findings from the above ERI analysis as well as the conclusion for this paper.The analysis focuses on reasoning the districts with low ERI levels: Sepang, Sabak Bernam and Petaling.The district of Sepang, bordering Negeri Sembilan, has a cumulative ERI score of 26, categorising the district as a low resilience district.As this district is the aero-polis and aerospace, industrial cluster [21], most forest areas are being cleared to make room for the main economic activity, simultaneously reducing the number of wildlife and flora in the district.This condition contributes to the low score for the sub-component of forest (ER 1) and wildlife (ER 2).In addition, 100% of the landform in this state is of flat areas (elevation of fewer than 150 meters above sea level), making the district prone to disasters such as floods contributing to a low score for the sub-component ER 5.Moreover, the unavailability of mineral reserves in the Sepang (ER 9) district contributes to the score of zero, reducing the overall ERI score for this district.
Next, Sabak Bernam is categorised as a low resilience district with a cumulative score of 24.However, about 38% of the district is forested areas.The acreage changes between 2012 and 2019 are negative, contributing to the low score for the sub-component ER 1, which simultaneously affects the sub-component ER 2, as explained earlier.In addition, having a flat landform (elevation of fewer than 150 meters above sea level) affects the overall ERI score for the district of Sabak Bernam.
Last but not least, the district of Petaling possesses the lowest ERI score of 18, categorising it as a low resilience district.Being one of the landlocked districts in Selangor and one of the urbanised and populated districts contributes to the low ERI score.The characteristic of this district, being landlocked, gives it a score of zero (nil) for the sub-component ER 4 and ER 6.On the other hand, the unavailability of mineral reserves also provides the district with a score of zero (ER 9) slashes many ERI scores for the district.Petaling being the hub for economy and services, does not focus on fisheries and also contributes to the low score for sub-component ER 7, making this district one of the least resilient districts in Selangor.
Finally, this paper can conclude that the ERI analysis enables stakeholders, particularly local planning authorities, to understand the overall environmental resilience performance.Next, this study gives a clearer picture of the interrelations between anthropogenic and natural factors on environmental performance.Lastly, by undertaking the ERI analysis, local planning authorities enable local planning authorities to identify and improve the components or sub-component with a lower score (lower performance) to enhance environmental resilience in line with the Sustainable Development Goals initiatives.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Framework for Environmental Resilience Index.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Example of a detailed ERI scoring system for an indicator.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Overall ERI scoring and marking system.

Table 1 .
Main economic activities in Selangor.

Table 3 .
lists those plans, policies and guidelines.Here, statutory plans are plans which are required by the Town and Country Planning Act (Act 172).Summary of national laws, plans, policies and guideline.

Table 4 .
List of departments or agencies referred for data collection.

Table 5 .
Calculation table for environmental resources component 10 Map 1. ERI results for 9 districts in Selangor.Map 2. Composite ERI results for Selangor.