Beef Noodle Soup

Fantastic Webinar on India-Malaysia relations in the context of ASEAN and its presidency next year. This dialogue organised by Red Lantern Analytica in which the articulate Dr Yanitha Meena Louis and Prof Ayanjit Sen spoke was a masterclass in its true sense.

Old colonial charms at the Colonial Cafe, no decolonial sentiments here over earl grey and sandwiches.

Plantation Capitalism which is uniquely Malaysian.

The deluge of carbon market frameworks and everything climate finance this COP season keeps the wicked problem in our media consumption in the midst of elections in India, Indonesia and the United States this year. There is a recognition that climate events impact capitalism, and without the planet itself there is no capitalism. Hence capitalism is building a carbon globalisation to knit together measures to funnel capital where it is needed the most, the CV20 for example.

The world is being reordered through the triple transition, and it cannot take place by erasing and muting communities on the front line. All the carbon credits make no sense if the forest in which the credit is generated, does not account for the development needs of the frontier community.

There is no climate finance sans the dignity of communities, afforded by the UNGPBHR.

I am an Experienced Environmental Engineer having worked on Environmental and Social Impact Assessments for the past 15 plus years in various transaction contexts from Oil refinery at Duqm to Oman’s National Reuse Master Plan to Oman’s first RAP. I have also worked on policy projects in Singapore and Malaysia including government and UN work. The frontier of Human Rights Impact Assessment and its relationship with technology is a deep intellectual interest which I explored in my research work at the National University of Singapore and with an USAID program in Malaysia in the recent years.

Algorithms are shaping the relationship between workers and the principal employer in ways which are not anticipated in terms of reference which were formed a generation back. In this paper accepted at International Association of Impact Assessment Conference 2025, in a panel on Human Rights Impact Assessment and the Technology Sector I will share my ideas on how social licence to operate be conceptualised in the platform work space, as the sight of the ubiquitous platform worker is the buzz of the urban.

This is my fifth paper acceptance to IAIA in a row. This is a significant development as impact assessment is a fast moving process with a multitude of contexts. This is a sociotechnical process with many moving parts from scientific innovation to geopolitics impacting how risks as assessed for resilience in particular new areas such as the platform sector.