Pusat Pengajian Sains Kesihatan, Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Public participation has been recognized as key objectives for local, national and global
environmental programmes and has been propagated through the various policies and
declarations. Public participation means a process that participate the public in the decision
making procedures of an organization. The objective of this paper is to highlight participation of
Malaysian public in the environmental issues in order to achieve sustainable development. The
study was to identify the public participation in environmental issues in Kota Bharu, Kelantan,
Malaysia. The research was based on a set of questionnaire. A total of 200 respondents were
interviewed and filled in questionnaire. From the study, Malaysian public are concerned about
environment, but their concerns do not naturally translate into action. For Malaysian public
participation to be successful, general public should be provided with effective notice of
opportunities to participate in environmental issues, and provided with sufficient information to
enable them to do so effectively
