By Professor Dr Chris Gibbins
Professor, School of Environmental and Geographical Sciences
University of Nottingham Malaysia
Floods are a common global phenomenon with devastating consequences, particularly for rural communities. Reducing flood risk and helping communities become more resilient is a critical challenge.
In tropical settings like Southeast Asia, many rural communities face threats to their lives and livelihoods from flooding, driven by climate change and land cover changes, especially forest clearance. While it is imperative to assist these communities, the measures adopted must also be ecologically sound, as tropical rivers and their catchments support diverse and globally important ecosystems.
The slogan for this year’s World Environment Day — “Our land. Our future. We are #GenerationRestoration.” — highlights the extent of the environmental challenge at hand. It represents both an existential and generational crisis, underscoring the necessity of large-scale ecosystem conservation to tackle climate change.
Ecological flood management for a greener future
Traditional engineering approaches to dealing with flooding and associated riverbank erosion are now considered to create as many problems as they solve. For instance, canalising river channels — straightening, widening, and deepening them — has been a common method to quickly convey floodwaters downstream. However, this can lead to flooding in downstream areas, merely shifting the problem from one location to another.
Similarly, traditional approaches to reducing riverbank erosion involve protecting banks with concrete. While such measures may protect banks in erosion-prone locations, the hard, smooth surfaces reduce naturalness, negatively impacting river habitats and ecosystems.
To address this, academics at the University of Nottingham Malaysia (UNM) have partnered with WWF-Malaysia to implement a range of ecologically-based flood management practices in the Trusan River, located in a remote part of Sarawak. Communities here heavily depend on rice production for food and livelihoods, but their paddies and crops are increasingly threatened by flooding and associated bank erosion.
Floods deposit fine sediment on the paddies, frequently damaging crops. Due to frequent flooding, some paddies have been abandoned altogether. Bank erosion is severe, with several metres of retreat each year in some locations, causing communities to lose valuable land with each high flow.
The Nottingham-WWF project has been designed to combine local and academic knowledge to find solutions, with a major focus on capacity building. It is crucial for researchers and technologists to be present at the community level, engaging in dialogue with those most directly impacted by environmental issues, understanding their pain points, and including them in the problem-solving process.
We have been testing the suitability of a range of green riverbank protection measures, most of which involve using local tree species to help safeguard the banks from high flows. The goal has been to use local knowledge of the plants to help choose the most appropriate species. At the same time, we have been training local communities on how to install different measures in various locations, as well as testing their suitability for high-energy rivers such as the Trusan. Ideally, we would be able to apply these learnings and roll out the most appropriate measures to other similar areas in Borneo.
At the same time, we have been evaluating opportunities for “managed flooding”. This involves identifying less valuable and/or abandoned areas and allowing them to flood in a controlled way. The idea is to store floodwater in these areas, thereby reducing the likelihood of flooding in more valuable downstream areas. We have been using data obtained from drones to help build hydrological models that simulate floods and assess the potential reduction in flood peaks through managed flooding.
Refreshed approaches to sustainability
Academia has the unique opportunity to ensure that our approach to sustainability is truly sustainable. In addition to stronger technical capabilities, we need to consider more inclusive decision-making and foster greater collaboration to effectively address environmental concerns.
By acknowledging the significant impact of our actions on the environment, we can holistically educate, guide, and support future generations on the importance of sustainability, striving toward a greener future where our land and ecosystems are safeguarded. Let this World Environment Day be a reminder of the urgency of our task at hand: preserving our land, local communities, and ecosystems.
