"People facing the river look away from the river. We are trying to create a better space for people to come back," Wyn Hee, the program director of the Klang River Festival, explained in a video posted on TikTok by Patrick Lee (@patricklee_msia).
The Alliance of River Three (ART!) is an environmental conservation group founded in 2018 that conserves, protects, and rehabilitates the Klang River in Malaysia. In the TikTok video, the Klang River Festival and Tropical Rainforest Conservation and Research Centre teamed up to clean an underserved area along the Klang River. The river flows through a population of over 4 million people, making it heavily polluted by both people and industry.
@patricklee_msia Most people avoid Malaysian rivers in the cities. A lot of times, the waterways smell bad, are full of garbage and their banks are full of weeds and mosquitoes. What do the rivers near your house or office look like? Have you been down any riverside in Malaysia lately? Many thanks to Alliance of River Three @artrivercpr, Klang River Festival and Tropical Rainforest Conservation and Research Centre for helping to put this together, and for their continued action involving Malaysia's rivers, in this case, the Sungai Klang. Did you know that rivers are covered under the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)? For more info on this, check out SDG6. #malaysiarivers #klangriver #critical2 #sungaikelang #dirtyrivers #rejuvenaterivers #rejuvenateklangriver #sdg6 #sustainabledevelopmentgoals ♬ original sound - Patrick Lee
According to the Department of Environment, urbanization and modernization have led to severe river water pollution, adversely impacting the sustainability of water resources. Polluted water can cause dangerous impacts on people's health, extreme harm to wildlife, and ecosystem damage.
"Spaces along many Malaysian rivers are neglected," Hee said in the video. "We are trying to change that."
But the river bank wasn't always like this. ART! founder Kennedy Micheal told Our Better World of his memories growing up near a pristine Klang River: "We'd walk on the pipes behind our house to get to the base of the dam, and that's where we'd picnic — lots of memories of this place especially during the school holidays."
At the time of the video, the Klang River Festival held a tree-planting workshop to show people the importance of planting trees at the riverside. Hopea odorata, a native tree species from the forest, was chosen to grow in the area to benefit the soil and strengthen the banks.
Environmental action like this is crucial to cultivating a better, safer community. With the tree-planting workshop, the Klang River Festival is growing numerous native plants, allowing the ecosystem to rebalance itself after the damage done by waste.
The group mainly hopes that in revitalizing the space, citizens will be encouraged to enjoy it, take care of it, and establish change within their own communities.
"As you can see this is not a very pleasant area," the program director said. "There are a lot of weeds around."
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Definitely 👍 The area used to be a means of transport from Port Klang to Kuala Lumpur. Now, with the highways, it has been neglected.
It's now become the "biggest drain" in the city, but the Klang River Festival and ART! are determined to change people's mindsets.
"We are hoping to start here to create a model as an example to encourage the community to appreciate the riverside and then to rejuvenate the riverside," Hee said. They intend to build a strong community near Old Klang Road so that other communities can follow.
Citizens are proud of the movement. One commenter on TikTok put it frankly: "Thank you for doing this."
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