Media and Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (ENGOs) Roles in Environmental Sustainability Communication in Malaysia

Abstract

Considering the massive environmental problems occurring in Malaysia, the media and the ENGOs are said to play pivotal roles in delivering environmental information to the mass society in order to increase their awareness, knowledge and practices towards the environment and sustainability. This study sought to shed the light on the type of roles can be played by the Malaysian media and the ENGOs in environmental sustainability communication. For the purpose of this study, 24 interviewees encompassing 13 media interviewees from two media organizations, namely Utusan Malaysia and The Star, as well as 11 ENGOs interviewees from two ENGOs organizations, WWF and MNS. The result of this study indicated that although both media and ENGOs seem to have different organizational backgrounds, particularly the media is a profitable organization whilst ENGOs are more non-profit oriented, when it comes to environmental communication, most of them agreed that they share quite similar roles particularly in informing and educating the public about environmental issues and in conducting research on environment and sustainability matters.

Environmental non-governmental organizations and air-pollution governance: Empirical evidence from OECD countries

“…To sum up, there are several ways for ENGOs to participate in Environmental Governance: first, ENGOs can raise their environmental awareness by holding environmental campaigns [ 15 ]; second, if their domestic ENGOs are relatively weak, they can improve their environmental discourse right by cooperating with international ENGOs in other developed countries [ 13 ]; third, in order to better participate in environmental governance, ENGOs take the initiative to establish interactive relations with enterprises and the government, so as to promote the realization of the normal functions of ENGOs [ 16 , 17 ]; fourth, ENGOs cooperate with media organizations to transmit environmental information to the public through the media, and improve the public’s environmental awareness [ 18 ]; fifth, for some countries with relatively small land area, environmental governance needs transnational cooperation, and ENGOs also need to cooperate closely with ENGOs in other countries to jointly deal with cross-border pollution problems [ 16 , 19 – 21 ]; Sixth, ENGOs regularly publish reports on the environmental behavior of the government or enterprises to the public through information disclosure, so as to promote the government and enterprises to adopt more green environmental behavior [ 22 – 25 ]. With the growth of ENGOs, the fields of different ENGOs are constantly subdivided, and the ways to ENGOs participate in environmental governance are constantly changing.…”

“…The United Kingdom, the first industrialized country, was most severely affected by environmental pollution, as evidenced by the smog incident in London in the 1950s [ 26 ]. ENGOs that rise with environmental pollution have developed rapidly in the UK, going through three stages characterized by elitism, populism and strategicism, and played the role of a third-party manager in making up for the failure of the state and the market [ 27 ].…”

The measurement model of geo-education among trainee teachers in Malaysia

“…This situation is due to the lack of specific guidelines and guidance from the environmental care professionals about the right way to protect the environment, and to make things worse; they neglected the ecological aspects of sustainability [3], [11]. As a consequence, the misunderstanding of the concept of sustainable education in the environment had caused a lack of emphasis on this concept in education [12]- [14]. The lack of awareness of information on the implementation of sustainable development in consumer life also affects the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [15].…”

Environmental Ngos Involvement in Dismantling Illegal Plastic Recycling Factory Operations in Malaysia

“…There are times when environmental NGOs able to assert pressure to firms and government agencies to uphold environmental integrity (Nor et al, 2016). In addition, environmental NGOs also are not afraid to use the media to influence the environmental policy in Malaysia (Saleh & Saifudin, 2017). Regarding using media to influence policymakers, environmental NGOs also have a strong influence among universities due to the right image it brings to its partner universities (Hussin & Kunjuraman, 2017).…”