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IS Sabah Truly Ready for Climate Change? Climate Change Is No Longer a Future Problem

Climate change is no longer a distant environmental issue that Sabah can afford to discuss as though its consequences belong to some far-off future generation.

The reality is that the state is already experiencing the effects of a changing climate through increasingly severe floods, more frequent landslides, prolonged droughts and recurring disruptions to water and electricity supply. Communities across Sabah now live with growing uncertainty whenever heavy rain arrives or dry periods intensify, while infrastructure systems that already struggle under ordinary conditions are being placed under even greater stress.

Despite these warning signs, climate-related challenges in Sabah are still too often approached as isolated events requiring temporary responses rather than as symptoms of a much larger structural vulnerability that will continue intensifying over time. Floods are frequently treated as drainage problems, droughts as temporary water shortages and landslides as localised engineering failures, when in reality these events are becoming increasingly interconnected manifestations of broader climate instability.

The central issue facing Sabah is therefore not whether climate change is occurring, but whether the state’s governance systems, infrastructure planning and long-term resilience strategies are evolving quickly enough to cope with the scale of the threat that is emerging.

A Super El Niño Could Push Sabah Beyond Its Current Limits

What makes the situation even more concerning is the growing possibility that the region may experience another strong, or even “super”, El Niño event within the foreseeable future. Sabah has already experienced the effects of previous El Niño cycles, during which rivers dried up, reservoir levels declined significantly, agricultural productivity weakened, forest and peat fires intensified and many rural communities experienced serious water shortages. Even under those earlier conditions, existing infrastructure systems struggled to cope with the pressure.

The concern today is that Sabah may enter the next major El Niño cycle carrying even greater vulnerabilities than before. Water infrastructure remains fragile in many districts, food security continues to depend heavily on external supply chains, rural connectivity remains highly vulnerable to floods and landslides, and long-term climate adaptation planning still appears fragmented across multiple agencies and departments.

If prolonged drought conditions were to occur simultaneously across multiple districts, Sabah could face severe pressure on water supply systems, agricultural production, food availability and electricity infrastructure at the same time. Reservoirs may fall to critically low levels, rivers may shrink substantially and rural gravity-fed water systems could become unreliable for extended periods.

Agricultural output may decline while food prices rise sharply due to both local disruptions and wider regional climate impacts affecting supply chains beyond Sabah itself.

The issue is therefore not simply whether Sabah can survive another severe climate event, but whether the state has adequately prepared for a prolonged and interconnected climate emergency before it occurs. At present, there appears to be little evidence of a fully integrated resilience framework capable of coordinating food security, water management, infrastructure resilience, disaster response and long-term climate adaptation into a single coherent strategy.

Climate stress does not affect one sector at a time. A prolonged drought affects water supply, agriculture, public health, electricity generation, logistics and economic stability simultaneously, while major floods disrupt transport networks, schools, clinics, telecommunications and emergency response systems all at once.

Climate change therefore exposes weaknesses across governance systems in highly interconnected ways, and Sabah may soon find itself facing a level of environmental stress that exceeds what existing systems were originally designed to handle.

Sabah May Be Malaysia’s Most Climate-Vulnerable State

Sabah’s exposure to climate risk is fundamentally different from many other parts of Malaysia because of its geography, terrain and dependence on natural systems for both economic activity and daily life.

The state sits within a highly exposed tropical zone surrounded by the South China Sea, the Sulu Sea and the Celebes Sea, while also possessing long coastlines, mountainous interiors, extensive river systems and large rural populations spread across difficult terrain. This combination creates a level of climate vulnerability that is uniquely challenging within the Malaysian context.

Unlike more urbanised and densely connected regions in Peninsular Malaysia, many communities in Sabah remain highly dependent on rivers, forests and surrounding ecosystems for transport, water access, agriculture and livelihoods. Rivers are not merely environmental features but essential transport corridors and lifelines for many settlements, while forests continue to influence rainfall patterns, water systems and ecological stability in ways that directly affect surrounding communities.

Sabah’s geography also creates major challenges for disaster response and infrastructure resilience.

Entire districts can become isolated quickly when roads collapse, bridges fail or landslides cut off access routes during severe weather conditions. Delivering food, fuel, medicine and emergency assistance across mountainous and rural terrain during major floods or prolonged droughts is considerably more difficult than in heavily urbanised regions with denser infrastructure networks.

At the same time, the threats confronting Sabah are increasingly converging. Rising sea levels threaten coastal communities and infrastructure, heavier rainfall increases flood and landslide risks, prolonged dry periods intensify drought vulnerability and stronger climate variability places mounting pressure on already fragile infrastructure systems.

For these reasons, Sabah may ultimately become Malaysia’s first true climate stress test, where the combined effects of geography, infrastructure vulnerability and climate instability converge more severely and more visibly than elsewhere in the country.

Sabah Has Already Seen the Warning Signs

Sabah does not need to speculate about what climate stress might look like in the future because many of the warning signs are already visible throughout the state today.

Flooding has repeatedly affected districts such as Penampang, Kota Belud and parts of the west coast, disrupting homes, businesses and transportation networks.

Landslides and damaged roads regularly isolate interior communities during periods of severe weather, while recurring water disruptions continue affecting multiple districts even without a full-scale climate emergency. Rural communities dependent on gravity-fed water systems remain particularly vulnerable during prolonged dry periods.

At the same time, Sabah continues to depend heavily on imported food from outside the state, meaning that disruptions to shipping, transport routes or regional agricultural production could quickly affect local food availability and prices.

These developments should not be viewed as isolated incidents occurring independently of one another. Rather, they increasingly resemble interconnected signs of how vulnerable systems behave under mounting environmental stress.

The danger lies in continuing to treat each disruption as a separate issue requiring only short-term responses instead of recognising that they may collectively reflect a broader climate-related vulnerability that is gradually intensifying across the state.

Sabah Still Governs Climate Risks in Silos

Despite the scale and interconnected nature of the threat, climate-related governance in Sabah still often operates through fragmented institutional structures.

Flood management, agriculture, water supply, infrastructure planning, disaster response and energy security frequently remain separated across different agencies and departments, even though climate-related disruptions increasingly affect all these sectors simultaneously.

A major flood can damage roads, disrupt food supply chains, interrupt electricity distribution, affect schools and clinics and impair telecommunications at the same time, while prolonged droughts can simultaneously affect agriculture, public health, water systems and electricity generation.

Yet governance responses still too often remain compartmentalised within administrative boundaries that are poorly suited for managing interconnected crises.

Sabah therefore urgently requires a genuine state-wide climate resilience framework that integrates food security, water management, energy resilience, infrastructure adaptation, disaster preparedness, agricultural strategy and land-use planning into a coordinated long-term policy structure.

Without such integration, the state risks continuing to respond to climate-related disruptions individually while the deeper structural vulnerabilities underlying those disruptions remain unresolved.

The views expressed here are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of the Daily Express. If you have something to share, write to us at: Forum@dailyexpress.com.my