By Vincent D’Silva

ISKANDAR PUTERI: Beneath the bright lights of the Asia Centre Media Hub, a quieter urgency filled the room as activists, scholars and community workers gathered for a roundtable on Climate Disinformation in Malaysia: Appropriating Indigenous Peoples’ Entitlements.

The discussion was not merely academic. It was grounded in lived realities — of forests shrinking, coastlines changing, and communities struggling to be heard.

Four speakers opened the session with perspectives that cut across law, history, media and grassroots work, each revealing how misinformation around climate and development continues to marginalise Indigenous peoples.

Environmental activist and writer Shakila Zen, a media officer with Persatuan Aktivis Sahabat Alam (KUASA), framed the issue through the lens of environmental democracy, arguing that access to truthful information, public participation and justice remains out of reach for many Indigenous communities.

Historian and researcher Wan Khuzairey Wan Mohtar followed with a stark reminder that ancestral land is not a commodity but a living archive of culture and identity, now increasingly threatened by industrial encroachment and distorted development narratives.

The human cost was powerfully underscored by Rhema Seng, who shared lessons from eight years of working alongside Orang Asli and coastal Indigenous communities in Kampung Orang Asli Sungai Temon, where well-intentioned aid often fails to translate into lasting empowerment.

In his session, Professor Andrew Harding of the University of Reading placed these struggles within a legal framework, highlighting gaps in protection and the urgent need for laws that genuinely safeguard Indigenous rights.

Together, the voices formed a compelling call: without truth, justice and inclusion, climate discourse risks becoming yet another tool of dispossession.

Environmental democracy, first articulated at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, remains a vital yet underrealised framework for Indigenous communities in Malaysia to counter climate misinformation and reclaim decision-making power over their ancestral lands, said Shakila Zen at the recent roundtable discussion.

She argued that as misinformation around climate change and development projects grows, environmental democracy offers Indigenous peoples a way to demand transparency, participation and justice.

Shakila outlined its three pillars: access to transparent information, meaningful public participation, and access to justice that prioritises people over investors.

While these rights exist in principle, she noted that many Orang Asli communities still lack basic information about projects affecting their customary lands, leaving them vulnerable to misinformation and unfairly portrayed as obstructive.

She stressed that participation must occur early and be genuinely inclusive, not reduced to token consultations.

Shakila also challenged the tendency to privilege formal scientific expertise over Indigenous knowledge, emphasising that Orang Asli environmental wisdom, built over generations, is essential for sustainable land management and climate resilience.

Access to justice, she said, remains the weakest pillar, as legal systems often favour well-funded investors. Without justice, transparency and participation lose meaning.

Shakila urged policymakers, civil society and the media to strengthen environmental democracy, concluding that empowering Indigenous communities is both a practical necessity and a moral imperative.

Industrial development is steadily encroaching on ancestral lands, placing indigenous traditions, livelihoods and cultural identity at serious risk, Wan Noor Khuzairey Wan Mohtar warned at a recent public address on heritage preservation.

Speaking on the theme “Preserving Tradition: Challenges Posed by Industrial Encroachment on Ancestral Lands,” he said ancestral land must never be viewed purely as an economic asset, but as a living space carrying historical meaning, collective identity and cultural continuity.

Wan Noor Khuzairey said corporate takeovers for plantations, mining and infrastructure projects often cause deep and lasting harm. Traditional livelihoods such as small-scale farming, fishing and customary practices are usually the first to disappear.

“When people lose their land, they lose more than income,” he said, warning that social structures, cultural practices and intergenerational knowledge also erode.

He cautioned that once communities are displaced, traditions, language use and ecological knowledge are difficult to restore.

Calling for a fairer development model, Wan Noor Khuzairey said economic growth must respect indigenous rights and cultural dignity, while safeguarding Malaysia’s shared heritage.

Eight years of welfare work with the Orang Asli Seletar community have led church volunteer Rhema Seng to confront what she calls an “uncomfortable but necessary” truth about Indigenous poverty in Malaysia.

“After generations of assistance, why are many Orang Asli communities still not seeing real improvement in their quality of life?” she asked during a recent public sharing, drawing on firsthand experience from Kampung Orang Asli Sungai Temun.

Seng said the problem is not a lack of effort or resilience within the community, but “structural conditions that quietly dismantle Indigenous self-sufficiency, often hidden behind development and climate narratives.”

She cited land-filling activities that have devastated marine life. “Mussels that once took three months to grow now take more than six. Fish and crabs are disappearing,” she said, warning that for a coastal community, such losses threaten “food security, income and daily survival.”

Yet these impacts, Seng noted, are rarely framed as environmental injustice. “Disinformation often looks like silence — when harm is minimised or normalised as the price of progress.”

Proposed relocation to inland Ulu Tiram, she added, risks severing the community from the sea — “their livelihood, food system and cultural identity.”

“When survival systems are removed, welfare becomes necessary,” Seng said. “Silence is mistaken for consent, but often it reflects powerlessness.”

Climate disinformation is quietly eroding the legal and constitutional protections of Malaysia’s Indigenous Peoples, warned constitutional law expert Professor Dr Andrew Harding at the launch of a new report examining climate narratives and Indigenous rights.

The report documents how misleading claims about environmental protection and development have been used to justify dispossession, habitat loss and exclusion of Indigenous communities from decisions affecting their ancestral lands.

“Disinformation has become a defining problem of the 21st century,” Harding said, “but when it distorts climate and environmental impacts on Indigenous peoples, the consequences are especially grave.”

Harding noted that Malaysian courts have, over time, increasingly recognised the constitutional rights of Indigenous peoples, who make up about 11 per cent of the population and largely live in climate-vulnerable forest regions.

However, he stressed that legal progress must deepen. “What is needed now is further development of this trend and a broader recognition of Indigenous rights and interests,” he said.

A key safeguard, Harding argued, lies in reinforcing the fiduciary duty owed by the government to Indigenous communities. Such a duty would require accurate representation of Indigenous concerns and meaningful consultation on matters affecting their primary interests. “This duty ensures the state acts as a trustee, not a taker,” he said.

The report links climate disinformation to greenwashing, denial of deforestation and false climate solutions that legitimise extractive projects. These narratives, amplified by digital media, have enabled forced evictions, criminalisation of dissent and cultural erosion.

Addressing climate disinformation, Harding concluded, is essential.

Dr. James Gomes, Regional Director, Asia Centre in closing remarks said that Asia Centre is a civil society research institute with Special Consultative Status at the UN ECOSOC, focused on advancing democracy and human rights.

He added that its work spans research, training, advocacy and media, prioritising four core freedoms under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Centre collaborates widely with local and international partners and operates hubs across Thailand, Malaysia and Cambodia.