Flood-prone Ipoh Seeks To Go Back To Nature

A three-year-old toddles up a plastic slide before shrieking with delight on her way down. Nearby, her grandfather, 64-year-old Ahmad Ramli Razali, sits watching attentively, his posture relaxed. Beyond them, the long grass ripples in the warm breeze.

Visit earlier in the morning or later in the evening, and the scene changes. Dozens of people jog or stroll along the roughly two-kilometre loop encircling the flood retention pond at Taman Rekreasi MADANI Kolam Takungan Sungai Pinji, also known as the Sungai Pinji Sponge Basin.

But at this hour on a weekday, the park belongs mostly to flighty insects and cacophonous birds,save for a few dedicated joggers. 

Ahmad Ramli loves the park, which opened early last year. But the grass, he said, shaking his head slightly, was too much.  

“I like hearing the birds and seeing butterflies — that’s nice. But if the grass is this long, who would want to come?” he told Bernama.

His concern is familiar to two people closely involved in the park’s design and planning: Meor Abdullah Zaidi Meor Razali, a researcher at the Institute of Landscape Architects Malaysia (ILAM), and Ivan Fong Jeng Jong, owner of Hijau Biru Landscape Architecture and a landscape architect on the project. 

For them, the overgrown grass is not a sign of neglect.

“Public expect everything to be neat — trimmed lawns and orderly landscapes. But for this kind of concept, we allow the grass to grow taller, as naturally as possible,” Meor Zaidi said as he walked slowly along the jogging trail.

The concept is Nature-based Solutions (NbS), using natural processes to work with the climate, including preventing and mitigating floods. 

That decision puts them at odds with many visitors accustomed to manicured greenery. It also places the park at the centre of a larger, more urgent question facing Ipoh and other Malaysian cities: how to convince the people that going back to nature works best even when its benefits are not immediately visible.

 

Once a tin mine that was later converted into a retention pond, the lake now functions as living infrastructure that doubles as a sponge basin -- to manage stormwater --and a community park. It is also one of Ipoh’s green lungs, serving both the city and its surrounding areas.

“Ipoh is running out of green spaces due to development pressure, (as) people want to use land for other purposes,” said Meor Zaidi.

As Perak’s first floodable park, the Sungai Pinji Sponge Basin lies in the Kinta Valley, a low-lying basin cradled between the Titiwangsa and Keledang mountain ranges.

Its geography makes the valley prone to heat and heavy rainfall. When storms hit, steep gradients in the surrounding hills funnel rainwater rapidly downhill. Environmentalists say this funnel effect allows the water in Kinta River and its tributaries to rise alarmingly fast, turning heavy rain into flash floods within hours.

Historically, authorities have responded with measures that once seemed logical, such as concrete drains, straightened channels and deeper riverbeds. The idea is to move water away as quickly as possible.

While these interventions offered moderate short-term relief, they created new problems over time.

Environmentalist Hafizudin Nasarudin told Bernama that river dredging does not solve the flooding problem because it disturbs and changes the riverbed for the worse. 

“There’s turbulence in natural rivers because of the rocks. When water hits these obstacles, it slows down, and that’s good. If the water is too calm, it usually means the riverbed is mainly sand and sediment,” he said.

“The rocks help prevent the river from flowing too fast.”

He explained that deepening and straightening channels accelerate water flow, reducing opportunities for rivers to overflow naturally and for surrounding soil to absorb excess water. Faster currents also erode riverbanks, sending more sediment downstream, which can choke drainage systems further along.

NbS take a different approach. Instead of rushing water away, they try to slow it down. Tall grass, for example, helps anchor the soil and reduces erosion during floods.

“(If erosion happens,) there is another cost. You have to build retaining walls and so on. This is the way of nature, a nature-based solution. Let nature -through plants - hold the earth," Meor Zaidi  said. 

Another benefit of going natural is the low maintenance costs, which experts say are crucial for long-term sustainability.

“We expect this to be more sustainable in terms of reduced maintenance. That’s a very important distinction between conventional engineering solutions and NbS,” said Associate Professor Dr Sapura Mohamad, an ethnobotanist at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in Johor.

She added another aspect of NbS is having as many native trees and plants in the park to help mitigate heat, a growing concern as global temperatures rise.

According to Berkeley Earth, global temperatures have been climbing steadily, with 2025 coming in as the third hottest year on record since 1850. The hottest was 2024, which saw a global mean temperature of 1.62 degrees Celsius, followed by 2023 at 1.54 degrees. The numbers are compared to average temperatures in the pre-industrial period from 1850 to 1900. 

Sapura, who is also the deputy dean of the Built Environment and Surveying Faculty, cautioned such parks need an interconnected green network to fulfil its purpose. 

Against this backdrop, the Sungai Pinji retention pond is intended to be more than a standalone project.

“Most green areas in Malaysian cities are isolated. That’s why we are proposing to connect parks and green spaces,” said Fong, with the aim of creating a continuous green-and-blue corridor running through Ipoh.

 

Success stories of using NbS for flood mitigation include Bangkok’s Benjakitti Forest Park and Hoboken in New Jersey, US. In 2022, when Bangkok faced a "10-year rainfall event," the park absorbed the surge, keeping the surrounding central business district dry while other parts of the city flooded.  

Fong told Bernama he often visited the Sg Pinji Sponge Basin the day after heavy rainfall to see how the sponge basin was holding up. 

“The floodable part is already in effect. So far, after heavy rain, we see the water seeping through the ground,” he said.

Yet despite mounting evidence and repeated government pledges toward sustainability, the Sungai Pinji Sponge Basin risks becoming what planners call stranded infrastructure - a promising idea that never reaches its full potential. 

Phase Two of the project is slated for completion by 2030, but work has yet to begin. 

“(The sponge basin is not reducing floods in other areas) because it's not connected yet,” said Fong, adding funding has become a challenge.  

Without further investment, the basin is unlikely to utilise its storage capacity or fully integrate with the surrounding river system. The park risks remaining an isolated intervention within a catchment area that continues to urbanise upstream. 

Sandra Ng, the Perak Exco member in charge of local authorities, was not immediately available for comment. 

Ipoh City Council (MBI) told Bernama via WhatsApp that development using NbS was not a priority currently.  

“For your information, MBI’s current implementation still lacks NbS elements.

“The existing development scope focuses more on addressing public complaints and applications.”

The Ipoh City Council added that these methods were usually the province of private companies and NGOs. 

Community engagement and public awareness have been limited. Walking through the park at different times of the day and week, bits of trash can be found scattered along paths and near the water’s edge. A spent tire lies in the water. Near the playground where Ahmad Ramli is watching his granddaughter, a swing seat hangs from one chain, the other chain broken.

“Once the park was built, within few days, the vandalism started,” said Fong.

As Meor and Fong discussed public complaints, a large monitor lizard emerged from the undergrowth. It lumbered across the path, its movements unhurried, before sliding smoothly into the retention pond. For a moment, it looked like a miniature Komodo dragon passing through a suburban park. 

“People love nature but they tend to want only the pretty parts,” added Fong. 

Sapura agreed. 

“(With NbS), we need to select the right plants. That creates biodiversity — butterflies will be there, bees will be there. But Malaysians sometimes dislike this kind of wildlife,” she said.

The tension is familiar to anyone who has worked on urban green spaces. Residents want cooler temperatures, cleaner air and protection from floods — but not snakes, lizards, long grass or insects. And not enough appreciate public facilities.

Hafizudin, who is also the secretary at Persatuan Aktivis Sahabat Alam Malaysia (KUASA), said community engagement is crucial if projects like Sungai Pinji are to succeed. People need to understand not just what the park is, but why it looks the way it does and why they should take pride in it.

He suggested installing informative signboards explaining the park’s features and the function of the pond and sponge basin, including how water enters, is stored and released, and how animals, plants and soil contribute to the process.

“Don’t just say ‘Don’t’. Tell people ‘Why’,” he said, casting a wry glance at a sign warning visitors against inappropriate behaviour in public spaces.

(This story was produced as part of the PANAS! Climate Change Stories in Malaysia initiative by Science Media Centre Malaysia, in collaboration with WWF-Malaysia, and supported by the British Council Alumni UK Climate Action Grant.)