One of humanity's most significant problems in the twenty-first century revolves around how to balance the mitigation of environmental pollution while achieving sustainable economic development. Despite increased awareness and dedication to climate change, the planet is still seeing a drastic decrease in the volume of pollutant emissions. This study explores the long-run and causal impact of economic growth, financial development, urbanization, and gross capital formation on Malaysia's CO2 emissions based on the STIRPAT framework. The current paper employs recently developed econometric techniques such as Maki co-integration, auto-regressive distribution lag (ARDL), fully modified OLS (FMOLS), dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS), and wavelet coherence and gradual shift causality tests to investigate these interconnections. The advantage of the gradual shift causality test is that it can capture the causality in the presence of a structural break(s). The findings from the Maki co-integration and ARDL bounds tests reveal evidence of cointegration among the variables. The ARDL test reveals that economic growth, gross capital formation, and urbanization exert a positive impact on CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the wavelet coherence test reveals that there is a significant dependency between CO2 emissions and economic growth, gross capital formation, and urbanization. The Toda Yamamoto and Gradual shift causality tests reveal that there is a (a) unidirectional causality from urbanization to CO2 emissions, (b) unidirectional causality from economic growth to CO2 emissions, and (c) unidirectional causality from gross capital formation to CO2 emissions.
The application of organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs) increased gradually because of the rise in global food demand that triggered the agriculture sector to increase the production, leading to OPP residues in the surface water. This study elucidated the presence of OPPs and estimated its ecological risk in the riverine ecosystem of the urbanised Linggi River, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. The OPP concentration in surface water was determined using solid-phase extraction method and high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array detection. Further, the ecological risk was estimated by using the risk quotient (RQ) method. The three OPPs, i.e. chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and quinalphos were detected with mean concentrations of 0.0275 µg/L, 0.0328 µg/L, and 0.0362 µg/L, respectively. The OPPs were at high risk (in general and worst cases) under acute exposure. The estimated risk of diazinon was observed as medium for general (RQm = 0.5857) and high for worst cases (RQex = 4.4678). Notably, the estimated risk for chlorpyrifos was high for both general and worst cases (RQm = 1.9643 and RQex = 11.5643) towards the aquatic ecosystem of the Linggi River. Chronic risk of quinalphos remains unknown because of the absence of toxicity endpoints. This study presented clear knowledge regarding OPP contamination and possible risk for aquatic ecosystems. Hence, OPPs should be listed as one of the main priority contaminants in pesticide mitigation management in the future.
The fast-growing urbanization has contributed to the construction sector be- coming one of the major sectors traded in the world stock market. In general, non- stationarity is highly related to most of the stock market price pattern. Even though stationarity transformation is a common approach, yet this may prompt to originality loss of the data. Hence, the non-transformation technique using a generalized dynamic principal component (GDPC) were considered for this study. Comparison of GDPC was performed with two transformed principal component techniques. This is pertinent as to observe a larger perspective of both techniques. Thus, the latest weekly two-years observations of nine constructions stock market price from seven different countries were applied. The data was tested for stationarity before performing the analysis. As a re- sult, the mean squared error in the non-transformed technique shows eight lowest values. Similarly, eight construction stock market prices had the highest percentage of explained variance. In conclusion, a non-transformed technique can also present a better result outcome without the stationarity transformation.
Urbanization has made tremendous contributions to China's economic development since its economic reforms and opening up. At the same time, population agglomeration has aggravated environmental pollution and posed serious challenges to China's environment. This article empirically investigates the impacts of China's urbanization on eco-efficiency, comprehensively reflecting economic growth, resource input, and waste discharge. We first measured the provincial eco-efficiency in China from 2005 to 2015 using the Super Slack-Based model (Super-SBM). We then constructed a spatial model to empirically analyze the effects of urbanization on eco-efficiency at the national level, and at four regional levels. The results indicated that the regional eco-efficiency in China has fluctuated, but is generally improving, and that a gap between regions was evident, with a trend toward further gap expansion. We observed an effect of spatial spillover in eco-efficiency, which was significant and positive for the whole country, except for the western region. The influence of urbanization on China's eco-efficiency exhibited a U-curve relationship. The changing trend in the eastern, central, and western regions was the same as that in the whole country; however, the trend exhibited an inverted U-curve relationship in the northeastern region. To the best of our knowledge, covering a time period of 2005-2015, this article is the first of its kind to study the impact of urbanization on eco-efficiency in China at both the national and regional levels. This study may help policy-makers to create sustainable policies that could be helpful in balancing urbanization and the ecological environment.
With climate change and urbanization, flood disasters have significantly affected urban development worldwide. In this study, we developed a paradigm to assess flood economic vulnerability and risk at the urban mesoscale, focusing on urban land use. A hydrological simulation was used to evaluate flood hazards through inundation analyses, and a hazard-vulnerability matrix was applied to assess flood risk, enhancing the economic vulnerability assessment by quantifying the differing economic value and flood losses associated with different land types. The case study of Wangchengpo, Changsha, China, found average total economic losses of 126.94 USD/m2, with the highest risk in the settlement core. Residential areas had the highest flood hazard, vulnerability, and losses (61.10% of the total loss); transportation areas accounted for 27.87% of the total economic losses due to their high flooding depth. Despite low inundation, industrial land showed greater economic vulnerability due to higher overall economic value (10.52% of the total). Our findings highlight the influence of land types and industry differences on flood vulnerability and the effectiveness of land-use inclusion in urban-mesoscale analyses of spatial flood characteristics. We identify critical areas with hazard and economic vulnerability for urban land and disaster prevention management and planning, helping to offer targeted flood control strategies to enhance urban resilience.
Malaysia, like many aspiring developing countries, is undergoing a health transition that has seen the concomitant decrease in communicable diseases and increase in chronic diseases due to urbanization, modernization and ageing population. Health in the Malaysian society will thus increasingly focus on emerging problems that are both chronic and infectious in nature, such as, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, mental health, hepatitis and HIV/AIDS. Re-emerging diseases previously well-controlled, such as, tuberculosis for instance is another addition to these immediate health issues facing Malaysian society today. Despite the tremendous health gains and above average health status that Malaysians now enjoy, we are compelled to take stock of these urgent issues as well as to anticipate and handle serious challenges to our health in the 21st century. In this paper, we review the changing trends and discuss related challenges in disease pattern, environmental health, demographic impacts on health, migration influxes and health, effects of globalization on health, mental health and wellness as well as fundamental access and equality in health care. Being proactive, resilient and innovative, Malaysian society would forge ahead towards our Vision for Health in this new era. KEYWORDS: Society and health, health trends and issues, Vision for Health, Malaysia
The ubiquitous occurrences of microplastics in the environment have raised much concern and resulted in voluminous studies related to microplastics. Studies on microplastics pollution of the marine environment have received significantly higher attention compared to those of the freshwater and terrestrial environments. With the impetus to better understand microplastics in the freshwater and terrestrial environments, this review elucidates the findings of >100 articles related to the prevalence, fates and impacts of microplastics therein and the sustainable solutions, mostly in the past 10 years. This review shows the interconnection between terrestrial and freshwater microplastics with wastewater and sewage treatment plants as the most significant contributors of environmental microplastics via sludge and effluent discharges. Microplastics in both ecosystems comprise the primary and secondary forms with the latter resulted from weathering of the former. Besides retaining in soil and infiltrating with rainwater underground, terrestrial microplastics also enter the freshwater environment. The environmental microplastics interact with the biotic and abiotic components resulting in entrainment, settlement, biofouling, degradation, fragmentation and entry into the food chain, with subsequent transfer across the food chain. The abundance of environmental microplastics is attributed to population density and urbanization though tidal cycle, storms, floods and human activities can affect their distribution. The leaching of additives from microplastics poses major health concern and sustainable solutions target at reduction of plastics use and disposal, substitution with bioplastics and wastewater treatment innovations. Further studies on classification, detection, characterization and toxicity of microplastics are necessary to permit more effective formulation of solutions.
Arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) are important causes of human disease nearly worldwide. All arboviruses circulate among wild animals, and many cause disease after spillover transmission to humans and agriculturally important domestic animals that are incidental or dead-end hosts. Viruses such as dengue (DENV) and chikungunya (CHIKV) that have lost the requirement for enzootic amplification now produce extensive epidemics in tropical urban centers. Many arboviruses recently have increased in importance as human and veterinary pathogens using a variety of mechanisms. Beginning in 1999, West Nile virus (WNV) underwent a dramatic geographic expansion into the Americas. High amplification associated with avian virulence coupled with adaptation for replication at higher temperatures in mosquito vectors, has caused the largest epidemic of arboviral encephalitis ever reported in the Americas. Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), the most frequent arboviral cause of encephalitis worldwide, has spread throughout most of Asia and as far south as Australia from its putative origin in Indonesia and Malaysia. JEV has caused major epidemics as it invaded new areas, often enabled by rice culture and amplification in domesticated swine. Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV), another arbovirus that infects humans after amplification in domesticated animals, undergoes epizootic transmission during wet years following droughts. Warming of the Indian Ocean, linked to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation in the Pacific, leads to heavy rainfall in east Africa inundating surface pools and vertically infected mosquito eggs laid during previous seasons. Like WNV, JEV and RVFV could become epizootic and epidemic in the Americas if introduced unintentionally via commerce or intentionally for nefarious purposes. Climate warming also could facilitate the expansion of the distributions of many arboviruses, as documented for bluetongue viruses (BTV), major pathogens of ruminants. BTV, especially BTV-8, invaded Europe after climate warming and enabled the major midge vector to expand is distribution northward into southern Europe, extending the transmission season and vectorial capacity of local midge species. Perhaps the greatest health risk of arboviral emergence comes from extensive tropical urbanization and the colonization of this expanding habitat by the highly anthropophilic (attracted to humans) mosquito, Aedes aegypti. These factors led to the emergence of permanent endemic cycles of urban DENV and CHIKV, as well as seasonal interhuman transmission of yellow fever virus. The recent invasion into the Americas, Europe and Africa by Aedes albopictus, an important CHIKV and secondary DENV vector, could enhance urban transmission of these viruses in tropical as well as temperate regions. The minimal requirements for sustained endemic arbovirus transmission, adequate human viremia and vector competence of Ae. aegypti and/or Ae. albopictus, may be met by two other viruses with the potential to become major human pathogens: Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, already an important cause of neurological disease in humans and equids throughout the Americas, and Mayaro virus, a close relative of CHIKV that produces a comparably debilitating arthralgic disease in South America. Further research is needed to understand the potential of these and other arboviruses to emerge in the future, invade new geographic areas, and become important public and veterinary health problems.
Global climate change and rapid urbanization, mainly driven by anthropogenic activities, lead to urban flood vulnerability and uncertainty in sustainable stormwater management. This study projected the temporal and spatial variation in urban flood susceptibility during the period 2020-2050 on the basis of shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). A case study in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) was conducted for verifying the feasibility and applicability of this approach. GBA is predicted to encounter the increase in extreme precipitation with high intensity and frequency, along with rapid expansion of constructed areas, resulting in exacerbating of urban flood susceptibility. The areas with medium and high flood susceptibility will be expected to increase continuously from 2020 to 2050, by 9.5 %, 12.0 %, and 14.4 % under SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5 scenarios, respectively. In terms of the assessment of spatial-temporal flooding pattern, the areas with high flood susceptibility are overlapped with that in the populated urban center in GBA, surrounding the existing risk areas, which is consistent with the tendency of construction land expansion. The approach in the present study will provide comprehensive insights into the reliable and accurate assessment of urban flooding susceptibility in response to climate change and urbanization.
With the population growth, urbanization and industrialization, China has become a hotspot of atmospheric deposition nitrogen (ADN), which is a threat to ecosystem and food safety. However, the impacts of increased ADN on rice growth and grain metal content are little studied. Based on previous long-term ADN studies, greenhouse experiment was conducted with four simulated ADN rates of 0, 30, 60 and 90 kg N ha-1 yr-1 (CK, N1, N2 and N3 as δ15N, respectively) to assess rice growth and metal uptake in a red soil ecosystem of southeast China during 2016-2017. Results showed that simulated ADN could promote rice growth and increase yields by 15.68-24.41% (except N2) and accumulations of cadmium (Cd) or copper (Cu) in organs. However, there was no linear relationship between ADN rate and rice growth or Cd or Cu uptake. The 15N-ADN was mainly accumulated in roots (21.31-67.86%) and grains (25.26-49.35%), while Cd and Cu were primarily accumulated in roots (78.86-93.44% and 90.00-96.24%, respectively). 15N-ADN and Cd accumulations in roots were significantly different between the two growing seasons (p
In the last decade slope failure intensity and frequency has increased. This article investigates slope failure distribution and trend change and the tendency of spatial direction of slope failures in the Klang Valley Region (KVR) of Malaysia. The change in land cover especially for urbanization and population pressure has notably influenced spatial and temporal variations in slope failure occurrences in the KVR. This study recognized two significant impacts of slope failures: increase in intensity and frequency of slope failures from 1991 to November 2011 and spatial direction of slope failures in the KVR. Both of these effects create severe stresses on the population of the KVR. The study observed that the temporal and spatial advances of slope failures would continue to increase in intensity and frequency in the not so distant future as the environment would become more stressful as a result of urbanization. The knowledge generated from the work would be valuable to all stakeholders affected by slope failures in the KVR and lead the way towards achieving a more sustainable slope development planning in the future.
Multiethnic Malaysia provides a unique case study of divergence in population aging of different sociocultural subgroups within a country. Malaysia represents 3 major ethnicities in Asia-the Malay, Chinese, and Indian. The 3 ethnic groups are at different stages of population aging, as they have undergone demographic transition at different pace amidst rapid social and economic changes. Between 1991 and 2010, the Malaysian population aged 60 and over has more than doubled from about 1 million to 2.2 million, and this is projected to rise to about 7 million or 17.6% of the projected population of 40 million by 2040. In 2010, the aging index ranged from 22.8% among the Bumiputera (Malays and other indigenous groups), to 31.4% among the Indians and 55.0% among the Chinese. Population aging provides great challenges for Malaysia's social and economic development. The increasing prevalence of noncommunicable diseases in older adults, coupled with the erosion of the traditional family support system has increased demands on health care services with an overwhelming need for multidisciplinary and specialized geriatric care. Following the adoption of the National Policy for the Elderly in 1995, issues of population aging have gained increasing attention, especially among researchers. There is an urgent need to increase public awareness, develop infrastructure, as well as support action oriented research that will directly translate to comprehensive and cohesive social strategies, policies, and legislation to protect not just the current older Malaysians but the future of all Malaysians.
Urban areas are quickly established, and the overwhelming population pressure is triggering heat stress in the metropolitan cities. Climate change impact is the key aspect for maintaining the urban areas and building proper urban planning because spreading of the urban area destroyed the vegetated land and increased heat variation. Remote sensing-based on Landsat images are used for investigating the vegetation circumstances, thermal variation, urban expansion, and surface urban heat island or SUHI in the three megacities of Iraq like Baghdad, Erbil, and Basrah. Four satellite imageries are used aimed at land use and land cover (LULC) study from 1990 to 2020, which indicate the land transformation of those three major cities in Iraq. The average annually temperature is increased during 30 years like Baghdad (0.16 °C), Basrah (0.44 °C), and Erbil (0.32 °C). The built-up area is increased 147.1 km2 (Erbil), 217.86 km2 (Baghdad), and 294.43 km2 (Erbil), which indicated the SUHI affects the entire area of the three cities. The bare land is increased in Baghdad city, which indicated the local climatic condition and affected the livelihood. Basrah City is affected by anthropogenic activities and most areas of Basrah were converted into built-up land in the last 30 years. In Erbil, agricultural land (295.81 km2) is increased. The SUHI study results indicated the climate change effect in those three cities in Iraq. This study's results are more useful for planning, management, and sustainable development of urban areas.
Introduction: In Klang, a district in the state of Selangor in Peninsular Malaysia, the effects of westernization and urbanization in recent years have had an impact on infant feeding. The objective of this study was to evaluate the practice, knowledge and attitude to breastfeeding and to assess factors associated with breastfeeding among women in Klang, Malaysia. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out between June and October 2006 involving 220 women with infants aged six months from two randomly selected health clinics were selected and interviewed. Data on socio-demographic, infant factors, infant feeding in the first six months of life, knowledge and attitude towards breastfeeding were collected. Results: Exclusive breastfeeding was reported by 32.8%, mixed feeding was reported by 14.5% and infant formula feeding was reported by 52.7% of the respondents. Chinese women were more likely not to practice exclusive breastfeeding compared to Malay women (odds ratio 18.27, 95% CI: 3.95, 84.54) while working women were more likely not to practice exclusive breastfeeding compared to non working women (odds ratio 3.75, 95% CI: 1.64 , 8.55). Positive association with not exclusive breastfeeding included women with high household income and women with male infants. Malaysian women had a positive attitude but work place and short maternity leave had a negative impact on breastfeeding. Conclusion: Women of Chinese ethnicity, working, from high family income and with male infants were less likely to exclusively breastfeed. Adopting facilitatory measures at hospitals and work place could increase the rate of exclusive breastfeeding.
One of the main characteristics of urbanization in Asia is the very rapid increase in population movement from rural to urban centers. This phenomenon has led to changing population structure, its composition and lifestyles in the cities and its fringes. As a consequent of population pressure on urban system and infrastructure, compounded by the nature of the composition of the in-migrant population, the urban concentrates are faced with several social and socio-economic problems. Although there has been a lot of interests among researchers to study the causes and effects or urbanization, there is a vacuum in the area of health implications. Planners and administrators usually give priority to the physical aspects of the urban and urbanities. Social problems and health implications thereof receives very little attention either at the level of administration or research. This paper therefore is a brave attempt to focus and draw some attention to this neglected area by looking at selected social problems and the health consequences.
Rapid urbanisation in Malaysian cities poses risks to the health of residents. This study aims to estimate the relative risk (RR) of major air pollutants on cardiovascular and respiratory hospitalisations in Kuala Lumpur. Daily hospitalisations due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases from 2010 to 2014 were obtained from the Hospital Canselor Tuanku Muhriz (HCTM). The trace gases, PM10 and weather variables were obtained from the Department of Environment (DOE) Malaysia in consistent with the hospitalisation data. The RR was estimated using a Generalised Additive Model (GAM) based on Poisson regression. A "lag" concept was used where the analysis was segregated into risks of immediate exposure (lag 0) until exposure after 5 days (lag 5). The results showed that the gases could pose significant risks towards cardiovascular and respiratory hospitalisations. However, the RR value of PM10 was not significant in this study. Immediate effects on cardiovascular hospitalisations were observed for NO2 and O3 but no immediate effect was found on respiratory hospitalisations. Delayed effects on cardiovascular and respiratory hospitalisations were found with SO2 and NO2. The highest RR value was observed at lag 4 for respiratory admissions with SO2 (RR = 1.123, 95% CI = 1.045-1.207), followed by NO2 at lag 5 for cardiovascular admissions (RR = 1.025, 95% CI = 1.005-1.046). For the multi-pollutant model, NO2 at lag 5 showed the highest risks towards cardiovascular hospitalisations after controlling for O3 8 h mean lag 1 (RR = 1.026, 95% CI = 1.006-1.047), while SO2 at lag 4 showed highest risks towards respiratory hospitalisations after controlling for NO2 lag 3 (RR = 1.132, 95% CI = 1.053-1.216). This study indicated that exposure to trace gases in Kuala Lumpur could lead to both immediate and delayed effects on cardiovascular and respiratory hospitalisations.