Fikirlah: Spend less money on malls, more on environment

It announced its opening with a huge sale that drew a large crowd.

I was only made aware of its debut while shopping in another shopping complex, just about 3.5 km away. It was rather deserted at the usually crowded shopping complex, so I enquired about the matter to the teenage salesgirl there.

Its the new shopping mall that just opened. Everyone has gone there, she replied.

Her answer made me wonder the necessity of opening another shopping complex so close within the vicinity of another.

We often see shopping malls losing tenants due to the lack of customers because a newer and grander shopping mall had opened nearby.

These premises would then become empty and quiet, sometimes turning into a place for unwanted activities and causing worry for nearby residents.

When a country is as developed as Malaysia is today, it needs to seriously rethink and weigh in on the benefits of each development project it chooses to embark on.

This does not only apply to commercial building projects but also to the construction of highways and housing projects.

Can a project be considered a necessity if it only benefits a sliver of the population?

There are many entrepreneurs out there who dream of owning or at least renting out a shop lot in shopping malls, but the cost is usually prohibitive for many of them.

I believe that instead of focusing on building projects, local authorities should focus more on the conservation of natural resources and the environment.

Preserving our forests will prevent us from experiencing a water crisis, such as those we have experienced in the past due to the wanton clearing of forests and pollution of water resources.

I am not saying that economic activities should be halted altogether, but those in charge should consider developing business centres that are both low-cost and environmentally-friendly.

For example, there is a shopping centre in Seoul, South Korea, that is built from used shipping containers. Known as Common Ground, the pop-up container shopping mall provides business spaces for up-and-coming local entrepreneurs and brands.

Not only is the mall much cheaper to build compared to a conventional shopping centre, it is also environmentally friendly as it is constructed using a recycled medium. This also gives it a unique appearance which has caused it to become a tourist attraction.

A study by the University of Essex in England has shown that greenery can improve mental health. In the study, individuals with depression were divided into two groups.

One group was required to take a 30-minute country walk while the other took a trip to an indoor shopping centre.

The results showed that 71 percent who walked within a route surrounded by the greenery of nature reported decreased levels of depression. Only 45 percent of those who visited a shopping centre said their depression had lifted while 22 percent said they felt worse after the trip.

The link between good health and a green environment is so significant that there has been a field dedicated to it called ecotherapy, which uses nature to improve mental and physical health.

The need to improve mental health is more pressing now than ever as cases of violence start to become a norm in todays society.

What more when the 2015 National Health and Morbidity Survey reported that 29.2 percent of adults in Malaysia have mental illness.

It has become a norm for parents to bring their children to malls during the weekends and holidays. These children grow up dosed with consumerism and are taught that it is normal to while away their time spending money in malls.

They would become preoccupied with acquiring brand names and the latest products. This in turn would fuel the need to acquire more wealth in order to fulfill their material desires.

This sounds like a recipe for creating a generation that is unable to distinguish between their needs and wants, and one that puts wealth as their main priority.

A more serious concern is the lengths such people would go to to acquire their material desires. This is one of the reasons that debts, bribery, scams and robberies are on the rise.

Several years ago, I had the chance to traverse the Pahang River in Taman Negara by boat.

I was recently informed that many parts of the river that I had journeyed across were not dried up.

I was told that the greenery that I had feasted my eyes on while I was there was also gone.

I wondered how we could destroy within a day a tropical rainforest that took millions of years to form. We do it without remorse and for what? Short-term material gain.

We must be wise enough to recognise that such destruction comes at a heavy price, not just to our economy, but our mental and physical health.