Marine cadastre issue and conceptual for implementation in Malaysia / Ashraf Abdullah, Zakaria Mat Arof and Jamil Tajam

In Malaysia, there are various activities in marine environment such as fishing, heritage area, aquaculture, tourism attraction, oil and gas exploration and Marine Park itself, which requires proper administration and management. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) institute a comprehensive jurisdictional regime where Malaysia can claim, manage and utilize its maritime territories (United Nations, 1983). The law and regulations for a marine area is indistinct till today despite the implementation of Marine Spatial Planning for administrating and managing. This is due to the issue on the boundary description which is vague, inaccurate, or incorrectly presented on a map. Therefore, effective regulations dealing with marine spatial issue are yet to fully implement in marine organizations and administration. Serious actions need to be taken in adopting a new mechanism for successful management. This paper aims to examine marine legal in Malaysia from the context of marine spatial, investigates its procedure and data besides providing some inputs for marine legal draft in Malaysian marine cadastre scope. The methodology used in this study includes direct interview and discussion on legal issues associated with marine rights. Conflict of area in marine institutional governance at Langkawi Island is used as the study case. Finally, this research is expected to develop a marine cadastre model and conceptual as proposed in the official guideline for particulars agency especially to marine institutions in Malaysia

Determination of the sediment contamination level in Dangli Waters of Langkawi UNESCO Global Geopark, Kedah, Malaysia

Dangli Waters ecosystem is located at the north of Langkawi UNESCO Global Geopark. Apparently, this area is currently experiencing a significant deterioration of marine habitat. Therefore, 14 stations were set up in this study area to investigate the sediment for metal contents discharged into Dangli Waters using the ecological risk assessment. The sediment samples were collected during four seasons, namely South West Monsoon, First Inter Monsoon, North East Monsoon and Second Inter Monsoon. The spatial distribution pattern of heavy metals in sediment was properly determined as well as the seasonal variation of the contamination. From the results obtained, the average concentration of each heavy metal distributed in the surface sediment of Dangli Waters can be written in decreasing order as Fe>Cr>As>Co>Cd. From the observation, heavy metal concentrations of As was recorded the most higher profiles near to the cement plant production area. Meanwhile, for the pattern of seasonal changes, FIM season was defined as the season with higher concentrations of all metals in the surface sediment compared to other seasons. This is due to highly rainfall distribution and water runoff during this period, leading an increase of sediment deposition into the Dangli Waters. According to the contamination factor (Cf) for each metal, it was shown that some heavy metals such as As were at a risky level with the Cf value was higher than 6 (Cf >6). However, the degree of contamination (Cd) for each station was classified as moderate (7 ≤ Cd < 14), except for ST2 which showed a low degree of contamination

A performance of hybrid biosorbent ‘M-Bios’ of Pb(II) and Cu(II) in aqueous solutions

‘M-bios’ biosorbent is a hybrid of mangrove wasted bark from charcoal industry at Perak, Malaysia and green algae from Sabah to remove heavy metals. This biosorbent is subjected to FTIR and ICP-MS. ‘M-Bios’ contain N – H (3421.89 cm-1, 3465.90 cm-1), C = O (1728.72 cm-1) and – OH (3531.37 cm-1, 3722.01 cm-1, 3768.36 cm-1) functional groups (weak groups) that that easily replaced by metal ions. The adsorption performances were fitted by pseudo-kinetic, Langmuir and Freundlich study. The plots obey both adsorption isotherm models, Langmuir and Freundlich by R2 values. A good agreement between experimental and theoretical qe for contact time data suggested that adsorption reaction happen in aqueous solution was a rate determination of chemisorption process(pseudo second-order kinetic)

Achieving sustainable coastal environment in Langkawi, Malaysia

Despite many good policies and institutions, the coastal environment of Langkawi continues to deteriorate. This could be due to lack of effective governance as well as unregulated waste discharge. Evidences collected from the literature during 1996 to 2013 also revealed a significant increase in the concentrations of Zn (R2 = 0.78) and Pb (R2 = 0.12) in the sediment. This appears to be the result of large volume of terrestrial runoff that brings these metals originating from extensive anthropogenic activities. It is a vital indicator of coastal pollution. It is a matter of concern that in many cases Pb concentration in the sediment exceeded the world average value 20 µg/g as well as Canadian Interim Sediment Quality Standard of 35 µg/g for the coastal areas. Similarly, the metal pollution index (MPI) measured over a period of 2007 to 2009 in fish also indicated an increasing trend of pollution in Langkawi. The maximum MPI value (4.87) was recorded in Spanish mackerel. Since pollution of coastal environment has serious implications for marine biodiversity and health of seafood consumers, measures are required to address this problem. Use of constructed wetland might be effective in reducing the coastal pollution as this will filter the effluent and waste before their mixing with the coastal water. Furthermore, enabling the stakeholders to play the environmental stewardship role will ensure better governance of coastal ecosystem and effective implementation of policies, envisaging an improved monitoring of waste/effluent discharge into the coastal marine environment. These measures are among the actions necessary for achieving a sustainable coastal environment of Langkawi