USM, PENANG, 14 April 2016 – The El Nino phenomenon is currently causing drastic climate changes which are affecting people’s lives and agriculture, especially in the context of Malaysia.

That was some of the content from the talk organised by the Healthy Campus (‘Kampus Sejahtera’) Secretariat entitled ‘How Climate Change Impacts Agriculture’ presented by Basyirah Al-Iman, Management 3, who was one of the active volunteers.

The talk was held at Dewan Kuliah ‘U’ (DKU) and was attended by approximately 800 students.

The talk focused on the effects and ways of dealing with global climate change in the context of Malaysia, and was aimed to provide greater awareness on how climate change would affect their lives in the future.

“Indications of climate change resulting from global warming could be seen clearly from the extreme conditions which had affected a number of areas in the country. Among the effects were the prevalent haze, an increase in the sea level and reduced water sources due to El Nino at present. Indirectly, such incidences could lead to reduced growth in the agricultural sector and affecting other living things,” she said.

According to Basyirah, globally, extreme climate change would have a detrimental effect on the local populace. In Iraq for instance, in July 2015, its temperature level rose to 74 degrees Celsius, leading to cases of death.

“As a step towards raising the awareness among the students, I would like to urge the campus community to start taking measures to reduce global warming based on the four steps from the National Climate Change Policy which are Sustainable development, Environmental conservation, Integrated implementation, and Effective involvement.”

“All the steps could be used as guidelines in safeguarding agriculture in the future from the effects of extreme climate change,” she said after asserting that the awareness among students too is important to ensure that those steps could be implemented.

Translation: Mazlan Hanafi Basharudin

Text: Nur ‘Izzah ‘Atira bt Muhamad Nazmi (USM Internship Student)