Malaysia poses an exceptionally attractive context to examine sustainability efforts as the nation progresses towards becoming a high-income country by 2024 (The World Bank, 2020). Like many developing countries, economic growth has been accompanied by a lack of commitment towards sustainable practices and social responsibility within companies (Amran & Devi, 2007). There have been noticeable neglected environmental issues despite the existence of environmental policies (Zulkifi & Amran, 2006;Preuss, Barkemeyer, & Glavas, 2016). During the pre-Covid-19 period, Malaysia concentrated on a comprehensive development towards becoming a developed nation by committing to economic development and economic social justice (Mahathir, 2018). Thus, presenting an enticing opportunity to investigate not only sustainability practices but also perception of what sustainability consists of. Furthermore, current sustainability literature that focused on the perspectives of Southeast Asian communities is lacking. Therefore, the Malaysian context offers unique insight whilst also offering a different values system compared to Western values, which are generally based on Judeo-Christian (Idemudia, 2011).
This section presents a chronological list of events to clarify the context of the study in greater detail. On the last day of 2019, a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission reported cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan, China (World Health Organization, 2020). This virus was known as 2019-nCoV then. Whilst the initial outbreak had been primarily contained within China and more specifically Wuhan, the virus had crossed international borders and was spreading rapidly. From the 6th of February onwards, Malaysia imposed a travel ban from Chinese provinces that have been place on lockdown by their government. Due to the severity of the outbreak, the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on the 11th of March 2020. The Prime Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, announced the implementation of Movement Control Order (MCO) lockdown from the 18th of March to restrict movement of people so as to mitigate the alarming spread of the virus. Upon subsequent extensions, the restrictions were revised on the 4th of May and Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) was introduced to revive the economy whilst also taking precautions against a resurgence in the spread of the virus. This study was conducted during this period when MCO and CMCO were in place, where the effect of the virus upon day-to-day life was at its most prominent.
Owing to globalisation, the pandemic has knock-on effects on countries who are not severely affected by the viral infections due to the interdependence between both local and international supply chain partners. Ipsos (2020) conducted a study in which individuals from fourteen countries were asked whether, in the long-term, climate change was as serious as the COVID-19 crisis. The results revealed that from over twenty-eight thousand participants, that 71% of them agreed that climate change was as serious as the COVID-19 crisis. When asked about how much respondents agree that it is important for government to prioritises climate change, China and India represented Asian countries to report 87% and 81% of them agreeing, respectively, and positioned as 1st and 3rd in agreement among the 14 countries included. Ipsos further continued with their study asking, ‘In the economic recovery after Covid-19, it's important that government actions prioritize climate change’ and the average agreement garnered for this statement is 65%. Once again, the two Asian nations claimed the top 3 ranks with India being 1st at 81% and China being 3rd at 80%, while most countries only averaged around 60% in agreeing to the statement. These results suggested that Asian nations are ready to break the business-as-usual practices once the COVID-19 crisis is over. However, following statement, ‘Government should focus on helping the economy to recover first and foremost, even if that means taking some actions that are bad for the environment’ by Ipsos MORI received 63% agreement from Indian participants, whereas a whopping 59% of Chinese participants disagreed to the statement. This suggested likelihood of different economic recovery approaches by Asian nations.
The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has led to many changes which have had positive and negative effects upon life and the pursuit of sustainable development. Some of the positive effects include, but are not limited to;
CO2 reductions – CO2 emissions reduced by an estimate of 6.4% compared to the global total in 2019. Cities and towns across the world undertook lockdown to control virus transmission. The coronavirus crisis records the first ever dip in carbon emission in 2020, more than during any previous economic crisis or period of war (Tollefson, 2021). Further studies suggest daily global CO2 emissions decreased by 17% in early April 2020 compared against 2019, with the peak by individual countries having decreased by an average of 26% (Le Quéré et al., 2020). This reduction was primarily contributed to by the aviation sector where daily activities reduced by − 75%, surface transport activities reduced by − 50% and industry and public sectors activity reduced by − 35% (Le Quéré et al., 2020). There was significant improvement in air quality (Rume & Islam, 2020; Kumari & Toshniwal, 2020). In fact, ASEAN's transboundary haze issue did not make headlines in 2020. Nevertheless, this downward trend appears temporary as countries attempt to revive their economies after extended periods of ‘lockdown’. The battle against COVID-19 impelled change in the management of businesses to accommodate stay-at-home restrictions.
Wildlife Recovery – With national lockdowns reducing human activity, there have been many reports of recovery for the wildlife. As the coronaviruses are zoonotic and can spillover to the human population through wild animals and livestock, Borzee et al. (2020) recommended that government legislations must be effective in protecting wildlife and their habitat, including regulating the wildlife trade. In 2020, dolphins were spotted further up the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey which is normally one of the world's busiest marine routes (BBC News, 2020). In the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia there was more than 70% increase in turtle landings at the sanctuaries compared to the same period in the previous year (Bernama, 2020). With less human interference wildlife appears to be venturing back into domains which were once theirs. The changes in land use for agriculture tipped the balance in the relationship between wildlife-livestock-human. These pre-existing issues and the exploitation of wildlife for trading continues to trigger the onslaught of infectious disease. The COVID-19 pandemic made the world pay attention to the risks of zoonoses.
Some of the negative impacts of the corona virus crisis include but are not limited too;
Global economy – The FTSE, Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nikkei have all seen huge falls since the outbreak began on 31 December 2019. The Dow and the FTSE saw their biggest quarterly drops in the first three months of the year since 1987 (Jones, Palumbo, & Brown, 2020). The prices of gold surged to a record high of USD2,070 per ounce in August 2020 as investors opted for safe-haven investment to hedge against inflation. There are suggestions that the developing nations will be the hardest hit through a combination of the following: a fall in commodities prices (i.e., oil), withdrawal of international investment, increase in foreign debt as local currency is devalued, unable to conduct informal work (i.e., street vendors) or a decline in remittances being sent to home country (Walker, 2020). The Asian Development Bank suggests that developing Asian economies are going to be particularly affected through sharp declines in domestic demand, lower tourism, and business travel and/or supply disruptions (Abiad et al., 2020).
Unemployment – Countries across the world implemented lockdowns or restricted movement to control non-essential travel in effort to contain the COVID-19 outbreak, albeit effective, it takes toll on survival and continuity of businesses. This unprecedented situation led to job loss across many industries. In the United States, the unemployment rate hit a record high where an estimated thirty million people filed for unemployment benefits in six weeks between the middle of March 2020 and the beginning of May (Jones et al., 2020), signalling the end to a decade of job growth for one of the world's largest economy. The Department of Statistics of Malaysia reported that unemployment rate increased to 4.8% as of Dec 2020 and this is significantly higher compared to an average of 3.3% in the last two decades (DoSM, 2020). The number of jobs required by private sector declined by 204,000 when compared to the year before. This could be attributed to some 32,000 SMEs that closed during MCO (Tan, Sivanandam, & Rahim, 2020). In fact, the service industry offers more that 50% of jobs in the market and restriction of movement pose difficulties to business as usual, suggesting that imminent change is required for business continuity.
Plastic waste – Plastic pollution is a challenge even for developed nations. According to a Greenpeace Malaysia report, toxic contamination is evident at numerous plastic recycling or disposal sites used for processing imported plastic waste from Australia, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan and Scandinavian countries. Malaysia generates high plastic waste per capita and poor recycling rate (MESTECC, 2019). Tons of single use plastics (SUPs) are generated throughout the pandemic especially personal protective equipment e.g., gowns, gloves and face masks (Hughes, 2020). Higher demand for virgin plastic is observed with lower oil price. The market for recycled plastic is further exacerbated in Europe and the US, where the plastic industry that has always capitalised on threat of cross-contamination in reusable plastics, have since benefitted from the COVID-19 situation by pushing back the policy to ban SUPs (Scaraboto, Joubert, & Gonzalez-Arcos, 2020). Companies like Starbucks banned reusable mugs temporarily, forcing customers to accept single use mugs (Carey, 2020). In reality, this situation stemmed from inadequate sanitisation system for take-out products.
While the abovementioned issues are non-exhaustive, recovery plans have been unveiled to contain the impact of COVID-19. The International Institute of Sustainable Development (Florizone, 2020) suggested that recovery must consider three key points; that is resilience must be built into the system, economic stimulus needs to be sustainable, and the magnified inequality must be addressed. The following section discussed the methodology that was adopted to explore the impact of COVID-19 upon Malaysia’s sustainability efforts.
METHODOLOGY
This study focused on Malaysians who were born between 1997 to 2003, also known as Gen Z. They are more tech-savvy than the previous generations and have begun to inherit the sustainability and climate change challenges. The idea of capturing the thoughts of Gen Z is alluring because their perceptions of sustainability today will drive the regulative policies of tomorrow.
Concept mapping approach was chosen because the initial phase involved bottom-up exploratory research design where individual ideas are generated via brainstorming based on grounded theory. Subsequently, the concept mapping process progressed with statistically bringing the ideas together by cognitively grouping them to develop a visual conceptualisation. The process of concept mapping involves five stages; create statements, sort statements, run multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) of sorted units, run hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), and label the clusters (Kane & Trochim, 2007). The concept mapping process is a structural conceptualization method designed to organize and represent ideas from an identified group (Rosas & Kane, 2012). Therefore, the method adds structure to diverse and subjective ideas systematically.
Create statements – The Concept System® Global MAX© browser-based software that was used for this study offers an online brainstorming tool which was utilised for the initial collection of statements. An online poster was created to solicit responses from Malaysian Gen Z through various social media outlets. The brainstorming prompt question was ‘The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the world and led to unprecedented change. How do you believe this has impacted, either positively or negatively, the global pursuit of sustainable development?’. The number of statements collected was then reduced based on Keyword In Context (KWIC), followed by thematic analyses to present a list of ideas composing of preferably 80 to 100 statements (Homer, 2021). This process was appraised by both researchers to ensure the statements are shortlisted effectively whilst also reducing any bias.
Sort statements – The software was used to facilitate online sorting with Rosas and Kane (2012) recommending twenty-five to thirty participants for this stage. Sorting statements involved grouping statements into piles that makes sense to the individual. Researchers provide minimal guidance to participants during this stage so that they can express their inherent cognitive relationships amongst the statements. Some guides to enable this process include participants cannot single out any statements, participants cannot put all statements in one pile, and neither can participants form a pile for miscellaneous. Participants are required to name the groups they have formed. Subsequently, they rated the impact (-3: Strong Negative Impact to 3: Strong Positive Impact) and duration (1: Very Short Term to 7: Very Long Term) of each statement.
Run MDS & HCA – The data collected from the sort and rate exercises were analysed by The Concept System® Global MAX©. The software runs MDS to generate a ‘point map’ for all the statements, with statements that are positioned closer together were recurrently sorted into the same pile by participants. Next, the HCA was generated, however there is no definitive solution to the number of clusters that should be rightfully selected. This is a multifaceted decision-making process that needs to consider the research objective, the issue being investigated and the sensibility of the statements belonging together (Kane & Trochim, 2007). Both the clusters and the point maps were carefully reviewed and evaluated between the researchers to mutually agree on the cluster map solution.
Label clusters – Cluster names from individual respondents were collected during the sort statements stage. Thereafter, the Global MAX software generated the top ten most commonly used labels for each cluster and the researchers were given the option to adopt or adapt the most appropriate name upon reviewing the content within respective cluster.