Key Takeaways
The most commonly mentioned environmental keywords that appeared in parliamentary questions included:
| Environment | Energy | Flood | Climate | Waste | Disaster | Pollution | Sustainability |
| Trash | Aquaculture | Public Transport | Logging |
| Keywords | #No. of parliamentary questions that contained the keyword |
|---|---|
| environment energy flood climate waste disaster pollution sustainability trash aquaculture public transport logging ecosystem monsoon conservation haze recycling tigers landslide waste-to-energy global warming habitat renewable energy single-use plastic carbon emission landfills solar energy greenhouse gas emissions green energy drought coastal reclamation fossil fuel paris agreement air quality sanitation degazette deforestation biodiversity desertification extreme weather water shortage plastic bag circular economy storm tornado garbage plastic straw food insecurity pesticide chemical fertilizer natural resources sand mining endangered species overfishing unreported and unregulated fishing | 742 489 350 292 166 113 111 79 71 61 60 40 21 40 27 26 25 17 18 10 14 12 10 12 9 8 7 7 7 6 5 5 5 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 |
Methodology
- We selected a list of 91 distinct keywords in Malay (and 80 corresponding keywords in English) that are linked to environmental topics relating to climate change, extreme weather, pollution, waste, ecosystem destruction, fossil fuels, deforestation, land use change, water and other environmental issues. See our full list of keywords here.
- Parliamentary Questions: We scraped data from all the federal parliamentary question transcripts (Hansard documents) between 2018 – Oct 2022 to identify which questions were raised by MPs in parliament related to environmental topics (based on our keyword list).
- Public / Media Coverage: We searched media coverage of all federal MPs to identify public statements, commitments, reported actions, and positioning related to climate change and the environment.
- By cross-checking and combining our findings, we have developed a comprehensive database to highlight if and how Malaysian federal MPs are talking about the environment.
Disclaimers
This study scraped parliamentary transcripts (Hansard questions asked by federal MPs) for Environmental Keywords from 2018-2022. It should be noted that mentioning environmental keywords alone does not necessarily indicate a pro-environmental stance.
Our deeper analysis is a work in progress, focused on examining specifically why and how MPs are talking about the environment. We may update with new data findings and ways of filtering & sharing the data.
(Have ideas about how we can further analyse the data? Let us know!)