Max Han on climate justice, decolonisation and indigenous knowledge
When I met Max, he was in the midst of dicing garlic and onions in his kitchen. “I’m making tom yam bee hoon”, he said. It’s a classic Malaysian dish inspired by Thai cuisine – a fusion likely catalysed by the shared border between the two countries. In a way, the dish is an apt metaphor for the nature of his work, which sees him collaborating with people across Southeast Asia to advance environmental and climate goals.
Max Han is the co-founder of the Malaysian nonprofit Youths United For Earth (YUFE), which mobilises youth for climate action through advocacy, storytelling and campaigns. At a national level, YUFE is one of the advisors to the Malaysian Ministry of Environment, working with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to campaign against environmentally destructive projects that displace local communities. He has also been named a Future Nobel Laureate Scholar, and was recently selected by the National Geographic Society as one of their Young Explorers of the Year.
To start with, I ask how he first got involved with environmental work and climate activism. “During high school, I volunteered with coastal communities like ones in Langkawi and the Perhentian Islands. During the day, I’d work with young kids and teach them about plastic pollution. During the night, I would go into the forests and do research on this endangered nocturnal mammal called a colugo. That’s where I realised how much I didn’t know about my own local biodiversity.” He soon discovered a love for working with children and teaching about environmentalism, which motivated him to start a small project with his co-founder to engage young people on environmental issues.
Over the years, this has grown into YUFE’s flagship programme – its youth mentorship scheme which connects youths from different parts of Malaysia with industry professionals within the environmental sector. Apart from this, YUFE also runs digital campaigns to share the stories of young people carrying out environmental work in Malaysia.
On storytelling as a method of advocacy, Max says:
We can’t exactly do activism in the same way as it is done in Europe. Southeast Asia remains one of the most dangerous places in the world for environmental activism, or activism in general. It’s a place where you can get threatened, slapped with a lawsuit, killed or murdered for it. In some countries, it’s dangerous to do things like protesting and organising.
Because of this, YUFE has been working with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to draft Southeast Asia’s first environmental rights declaration, which Max hopes will be passed at the ASEAN summit in October this year. The inclusion of indigenous people and the recognition of Environmental Human Rights Defenders (EHRDs) are two important issues in the declaration. “What we aim to fight for are environmental rights – for the right to voice concerns about environmental issues, the right to participate in environmental decision-making, and the right to have a safe, clean and healthy environment. We forget that our very existence depends on our environment, and so that right underpins all our other rights.”
The draft took over two years to materialise, and involved working with diplomats, United Nations (UN) bodies, and NGOs. Negotiations were not an easy process.
Politicians are not always receptive to the comments that we make. Because the topic of human rights comes with a lot of sensitivity, there’s definitely a lot of pushback; at times even intimidation and threats. It’s a very difficult thing that we have to navigate.
A particularly sticky issue relates to the inclusion of indigenous people in environmental democracy. “The term ‘indigeneity’ carries a lot of contention, partly because we are a postcolonial region that’s still grappling with the effects of colonisation today.”
On what climate justice means, Max says it’s about “acknowledging that not everyone bears the benefits and burdens of climate change equally. The West has historically contributed the most climate emissions for their developmental and colonial projects. But climate impacts manifest more visibly and urgently in the Global South, even though they have done so little to cause it. Climate justice is about understanding this inequality that persists, and recognising that the solutions must be reparative.”
Max acknowledges that he’s really lucky to be at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar but, like the Rhodes Scholarship, the university has its own troubling colonial history to confront.
I think Oxford can do much more to decolonise. People often forget that Geography is a discipline that was founded from the colonial project.” For Max, the tie between the fundamentals of geography to colonisation is something that needs to be taught at and acknowledged in Oxford.
He also thinks that a positive step forward requires us to stop looking at environmental issues from a purely Eurocentric lens, and to recognise environmental histories in other cultures. “There is often this assumption that we have to go to the West to learn technical information, then bring that knowledge back home to Southeast Asia.” Max doesn’t think that’s always true. “In Southeast Asia, we’ve always used banana leaves to package and wrap our food… people always forget that we have a lot of solutions. There’s so much knowledge from the Global South that needs to be amplified and made mainstream.”
Having worked closely with indigenous groups, Max speaks about indigenous knowledge and traditions with great respect. He tells me that for many indigenous groups, trees are not just trees, but kin; family members. Some tribes in Malaysia believe that when you pass away, your form goes into the trees. “Imagine logging companies cutting down those trees – it’s traumatic… it’s not just land – it’s home, it’s spirituality, it’s your whole identity, tied to a place. Indigenous people have thousands of years of tried and tested ways of coexisting with nature and protecting it such that it doesn’t run out.”
When I ask him what he’s learned from his work in climate advocacy, he has two main insights. First, “that the perspectives of young people are really important, and that we need to be meaningfully included”. “The second lesson is to always be engaged with and grounded in community. When we deal with climate justice and vulnerable people, we need to come in with a mindset of solidarity. We shouldn’t just see vulnerable communities as helpless – these communities are full of hope and have their own unique solutions to everything.”
Finally, I ask him what his favourite plant is in Malaysia. “Ooh, that’s a really good question. Maybe the torch ginger flower, because it’s used in so much of our food, like laksa – a very umami, five-flavoured kind of dish. It’s good for spice, but it’s also very beautiful. It just reminds me of home.”