Historicising Malaysia’s Environmental Memory:
The CETDEM Archival Project
Since 1985, the Centre for Environment, Technology and Development (CETDEM) has been at the forefront of Malaysia’s environmental activism and policy making. Its role in shaping sustainable development strategies has made CETDEM a critical actor in linking environmental concerns with broader social movements. Today, CETDEM’s extensive
archival materials represent an invaluable record of these struggles and strategies, yet they remain largely inaccessible to the wider public.
In collaboration with Pusat Sejarah Rakyat (PSR), the archival project provide a critical possibility to activate and preserve CETDEM’s repositories. The initiative situates CETDEM’s repositories and PSR’s archival praxis, which comprise plethora of items across multiple forms of repositories consisting of organisational reports, meeting minutes,
pamphlets, newspaper clippings, and rare publications from now-defunct independent presses like Watan and Echo, as well as Borneo-based news publications. These
materials not only document environmental advocacy but also map the intersections between CETDEM and wider emerging social movements since the 1980s.
The Project Principal Investigator is Zikri Rahman and Lead Archivist, Nadia Nasaruddin
CETDEM’s Collection
Comprises of digital images of 20 multi-page publications and 15,000 thematic press clippings from various sources, the repository provide an interesting and critical overview of CETDEM’s environmental activisms from the 80s. Multiple issues and events, ranging from CETDEM’s long term advocacy on “brown environmental issues” can be accessed below:
CETDEM’s Archival Highlights
In contextualising the archival collection with PSR’s archival focus on social movements and people’s struggles, the team highlights multiple themes on momentous events such as the mobilisation against 1982 Bukit Merah radioactive pollution in Perak, rampant deforestations throughout Malaysia, mass detention of activists during Ops Lalang to multiple creative production in the form of cartoon strips: