Spilling tears for Penang's southern coast
I have been living in Penang, the famous UNESCO-inscribed island on the north-western coast of Malaysia, since 2009, but as I travel a lot, sometimes it takes me a while before I can return to familiar places.
Last weekend, I decided to revisit one of what I consider among the island's best hiking spots: Permatang Damar Laut, a lovely stretch of palm-fringed coast backed by three contiguous hills peppered with World War II defensive bunkers.
With a sea-facing Chinese shrine dedicated to Tua Pek Kong and possibly the best beach left on ever-developing Penang, the area of Pantai Esen (Esen Beach) was amazing because, notwithstanding its beauty, it always stayed well off tourists' radars.
I hadn't been there in a while because of too many guidebook assignments to far-flung destinations in Europe and the Americas. But when I arrived at the trailhead on an early Saturday morning, the first thing I wanted to do was cry. A newborn, in-the-making sand monster, topped by ever-moving cranes and lorries, has taken the place of what once was one of north-west Malaysia's most crucial fishing seaboards.
This Frankenstein of 'progress' is nothing new, but I had never seen it live before.
Some of you may be familiar with the controversial Penang South Reclamation (PSR) project. First approved in 2015, it was conceived to fund the larger Penang Transport Master Plan (PTMP) aimed at developing new highways, a cross-channel motor tunnel (even when there are already two of Asia's longest bridges connecting Penang island to the mainland, where the remaining two thirds of the state, named Seberang Perai, are), and light rail transportation systems to solve the island's traffic congestion problem. After much debate, it finally went on in mid-2024.
The PSR's initial and gargantuan idea (which would have taken something between 30 and 50 years to complete) was to recover 1821 hectares of land to build three man-made islands separated by a 250 metre-wide sea channel from the south of Penang island. The rationale was that the PSR would create some 300,000 jobs over the next 30 years, reducing brain drain and guaranteeing a better future for Penang's next generations. And somehow (which was never explained) also help to solve Penang's ever-increasing traffic problems.
For a decade, this project has been a very controversial one, with local fishermen and several NGOs campaigning against it on one hand, and many local folks who are pro-development and 'Singaporeisation' of Penang, including the then ruling Democratic Action Party, on the other.
The main concern raised by local NGOs and fishermen was that these three islands — almost ironically named BiodiverCity — would bury the state's richest fishery and most biodiverse sea under the equivalent of 76,000 Olympic-size swimming pools of sand.
Penang State Government has kept claiming that there is no more land left to develop on the island — as most of it is Penang Hill, a cordon of central and northwestern hills that were bestowed a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve title in 2021, without said government's proper plan to promote it to attract a diverse type of nature-focused tourism. But also remember that the largely flat Seberang Perai on the Malaysian mainland, which is slightly bigger than the whole of Singapore and roughly two and a half times the size of the hilly Penang island, is pretty much all undeveloped paddy fields.
The fisher folks and NGOs managed to halt the PSR several times until last year. Under the approval of the Malaysian PM Anwar Ibrahim, a man from Penang state, the project was again given the final green light, albeit with a 50 per cent scaling down in scope from a dreary three to only one horrible Penang Silicon Island — a nod to the Californian tech success story and a tremendous lack of imagination. In July 2024, the Penang High Court dismissed one last application by the opposing NGOs for judicial review, with which they sought to lawfully challenge the planning permission granted to the Penang State Government by the State Town and Country Planning Department.
And now, almost a year later, the damage done to a certain present for the sake of a very uncertain future — consider how the region is increasingly becoming prone to flood damage — cannot be reversed. Maybe it could be abandoned, like the infamous Melaka Gateway Project, of which 33km of unfinished land reclamation is an under-utilised eyesore off the coast of the Malaysian southern state of Melaka.
But in South-East Asia, like in many other parts of the world, what counts is not natural balance and preserving culture and tradition — only greed and development.
No matter what any supporter of the PSR may tell me, it doesn't take a scientist to see that the problems have just started. With no direct access to real waves any longer, I saw how the once beautiful Pantai Esen and Permatang Damar Laut's coast have turned brackish. The sandy beach has become more muddy and eroded than ever before. Fishermen can no longer find the mussels they used to scour from the shore.
For this reason, even tourism has been spoiled: the many people who, since the COVID-19 lockdowns — when Pantai Esen was first 'discovered' — used to come here in droves for hiking and relaxing on the beach have gone, and the hiking trails are in a state of disrepair. Of the three historical World War II bungalows set atop the steep Sea Mountain, an advanced hiking trail accessible from the area's south-easternmost corner, the first is now completely covered by fallen trees and undergrowth, and may soon disappear. Something to ponder and remember of an island whose heritage conservation and tourism bodies make the most of their branding selling 'heritage' experiences.
It may not even be casual that around the same time as the beginning of the reclamation, even the beautiful cascading roots of an ancient fig tree found halfway to the Tua Pek Tong temple fell off after being struck by lightning. Was it some sort of warning from above?
The example of Permatang Damar Laut is, unfortunately, one that's found in many areas of the developing world — how much of it do we really need, when half of the real estate that's built on it remains unsold because its constantly overpriced? How much will the children of today and tomorrow be better off because of the greed of today? Will they ever miss experiencing clean, pristine environments, or will they even care because that type of 'old world' will be one that's entirely alien to their own?
I hope that someone, someday, may make better decisions while the scars of human greed remain as examples of what we should not do. The Melaka Gateway Project apparently was not enough for Penang.
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