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Introduction: Several cities in Malaysia have established plans to reduce their CO2 emissions, in addition to Malaysia submitting a Nationally Determined Contribution to reduce its carbon intensity (against GDP) by 45% in 2030 compared to 2005. Meeting these emissions reduction goals will require a joint effort between governments, industries, and corporations at different scales and across sectors. Methods: In collaboration with national and sub-national stakeholders, we developed and used a global integrated assessment model to explore emissions mitigation pathways in Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur. Guided by current climate action plans, we created a suite of scenarios to reflect uncertainties in policy ambition, level of adoption, and implementation for reaching carbon neutrality. Through iterative engagement with all parties, we refined the scenarios and focus of the analysis to best meet the stakeholders' needs. Results: We found that Malaysia can reduce its carbon intensity and reach carbon neutrality by 2050, and that action in Kuala Lumpur can play a significant role. Decarbonization of the power sector paired with extensive electrification, energy efficiency improvements in buildings, transportation, and industry, and the use of advanced technologies such as hydrogen and carbon capture and storage will be major drivers to mitigate emissions, with carbon dioxide removal strategies being key to eliminate residual emissions. Discussion: Our results suggest a hopeful future for Malaysia's ability to meet its climate goals, recognizing that there may be technological, social, and financial challenges along the way. This study highlights the participatory process in which stakeholders contributed to the development of the model and guided the analysis, as well as insights into Malaysia's decarbonization potential and the role of multilevel governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the existing literature regarding institutional influence on traditional commons, there is still a comparative dearth of research that theorises property-rights structure and its impact on contemporary commons. This is particularly true for public open space (POS) governance: its management and utilisation and hence its quality, of which underinvestment and overexploitation leads to increasingly negative externalities and outcomes. An interdisciplinary study is employed here to depict the relationships of diverse property-rights structure attributes – POS title existence, community existence, POS title transfer and POS site handing-over period to local government – with quality of residential POS. A cross-sectional survey via direct structured observation with a POS quality audit tool was conducted to collect a randomly stratified sample of 155 Country Lease (CL) POS and entire 22 Native Title (NT) POS, from the districts of Kota Kinabalu and Penampang, Sabah, respectively. Archival search and document analysis on data of property-rights attributes were executed as well. Next, 2-stage Pearson’s Chi-Square ( c2) and Lambda (λ) with Proportional Reduction Error feature analyses were performed. Results showed that only these three property-rights attributes – title deed existence, community existence and POS site handing-over period to local government- are significantly associated with POS quality at significance level (p≤0.05). It is found that, although POS with title deed and community’s involvement might not contribute to good quality, these attributes were likely to provide better quality. On the other hand, it is found that the more recent the POS site handing over to government, the higher the likelihood of good POS quality and vice versa. Such empirical findings prima facie infer that: (i) current local property-rights structure does matter in contributing to POS condition, particularly the effective management right which likely leads to better POS quality; (ii) the present state-property regime in POS governance is adversarial; and (iii) the importance of an interim privatisation and communal regimes leads to a better POS. Thus, these may provide policy insights by encouraging public officials to consider reengineering the POS market via an adaptive property-rights re-alignment paradigm in the interest of addressing POS quality and sustainability issues, which warrant further research

Empirical social-ecological system (SES) research on neighbourhoods' common property is scarce, especially in unpacking the mediational effects of SES components on residents' collective action performance. By conceptualizing Ostrom's SES framework, this paper aims to explore key institutional-social-ecological factors and mediational effects of the interaction variables that influence residents' collective action performance. To this end, 414 questionnaire data were collected from ten gated communities in Taigu, China. Through the ridge regression model, it is found that nine institutional-social-ecological factors are associated with residents' collective action performance. Next, based on the identified institutional-social-ecological factors, the bootstrapping approach was utilized to study the mediational effects of the interaction variables. The results show that (i) frequency of communication among residents, (ii) conflict among residents, and (iii) residents' investment in community management mediate the relationships between the institutional-social-ecological factors and residents' collective action performance. Lastly, several collective action policies and strategies have been offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The government enacted the Movement Control Order (MCO) to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia, restricting movement and shutting down several commercial enterprises around the nation. The crisis, which lasted over two years and featured a few MCOs, had an impact on Malaysians' mental health. This study aimed to understand the context of using the word "suicide" on Twitter among Malaysians during the pandemic. "Suicide" is a keyword searched for on Twitter when mining data with the NCapture plugin. Using NVivo 12 software, we used the content analysis approach to detect the theme of tweets discussed by tweeps. The tweet content was then analyzed using VADER sentiment analysis to determine if it was positive, negative, or neutral. We conducted a spatial pattern distribution of tweets, revealing high numbers from Kuala Lumpur, Klang, Subang Jaya, Kangar, Alor Setar, Chukai, Kuantan, Johor Bharu, and Kota Kinabalu. Our analysis of tweet content related to the word "suicide" revealed three (3) main themes: (i) criticism of the government of that day (CGD) (N = 218, 55.68%), (ii) awareness related to suicide (AS) (N = 162, 41.44%), and (iii) suicidal feeling or experience (SFE) (N = 12, 2.88%). The word "suicide" conveyed both negative and positive sentiments. Negative tweets expressed frustration and disappointment with the government's response to the pandemic and its economic impact. In contrast, positive tweets spread hope, encouragement, and support for mental health and relationship building. This study highlights the potential of social-media big data to understand the users' virtual behavior in an unprecedented pandemic situation and the importance of considering cultural differences and nuances in sentiment analysis. The spatial pattern information was useful in identifying areas that may require additional resources or interventions to address suicide risk. This study underscores the importance of timely and cost-effective social media data analysis for valuable insights into public opinion and attitudes toward specific topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Within a gated community, management of common property presents great challenges. Therefore, the diagnostic social ecological system (SES) framework proposed by Elinor Ostrom providing a holistic understanding of complex collective action problems in terms of management of commons is used to investigate key institutional-social-ecological factors influencing collective action in the context of gated communities. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) was used to systematically screen and review the relevant literature from 2000 to 2022, where 28 papers were selected for further analysis. Findings: The study systematically identifies and categorises a series of variables related to self-organizing management in the gated community, and consequently a SES-based gated community management framework is developed. Based on the conceptual framework, the paper discusses logical interrelationships of institutional-social-ecological factors and their impacts on collective action performance of gated communities. Research limitations/implications: Apart from requiring empirical validation, the conceptual SES-based gated community management framework is certainly subject to continuous improvement in terms of refinement and addition of other potential determinants of gated community collective action. Originality/value: Not only the review paper provides updates on the latest gated-community collective action research, it also contributes theoretically by conceptualizing the SES framework and its institutional–social–ecological design principles in gated community management. Studying these factors should also be of practical significance because the findings ultimately offer policy insights and management strategies that help policy-makers, property developers and local communities to govern such neighbourhood common resources efficiently and sustainably. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a lack of research on urban sprawl in developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, undergoing significant demographic change. There is an urgent need to conduct more studies on African cities and investigate spatial variations in urban sprawl to fill a knowledge gap in Sub-Saharan Countries (SSC). There have been no studies of urban sprawl in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, a fragile metropolis struggling with the legacy of decades of civil war. This study has two main objectives: (i) to examine sprawl patterns in Mogadishu, Somalia; and (ii) to identify the drivers and impacts of urban sprawl in Mogadishu, Somalia. The study used spatiotemporal imagery from 2006, 2013, and 2021 to identify sprawl patterns. A quantitative method in the form of a cross-sectional survey with 265 participants was then used to identify the drivers and impacts of sprawl, which was then analysed using the structural equation model (SEM). The spatiotemporal analysis results showed sprawl patterns in nine districts and three settlements, mainly scattered and leapfrog patterns. The SEM discovered five significant drivers: low price of land and dwelling (LP), development of transportation infrastructure (DTI), rising income, security reasons, and low commute cost (LCC), in addition to eight significant impacts: less social interaction (LSI), agriculture land and natural habitat loss (AGL NHL), unsafe environment (USE), insufficient health and educational services (IHF IEF), high public services cost (HPSC), insufficient public transport (IPT), less physical activity (LPA), pollution (POL) and mental health issues (MH). Undoubtedly, the impacts found in the study proved that urban sprawl negatively impacted the residents and environment of Mogadishu, which will continue as the security situation in the city improves and more residents are attracted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]