The indigenous people of Peninsular Malaysia, the Orang Asli, remain a largely marginalized and impoverished minority group to this day. One could attribute this to the legacy effects of a policy instituted by the British during its administration in Malaya. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the fundamental needs of the Orang Asli are being met by examining their poverty levels in relation to their subsistence and understanding. The programs and policies currently implemented by the government development authority that has been tasked with reducing the poverty among Orang Asli communities were also reviewed. A mixed-method approach was used by collecting data from 325 respondents composed of both adults and young people from the Orang Asli. Based on our results from the analysis of one sub-ethnic group in the state of Terengganu, this study concluded that the socioeconomic needs of the Orang Asli do not appear to have been addressed sufficiently under the current schemes of the development authority, which continues to pursue a colonial legacy materialization goal. In order to improve the wellbeing of the Orang Asli and other indigenous communities, this research recommends an urgent review of policies implemented by the current government administration, which would greatly reduce the negative impacts of a legacy of colonialism.

Both the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds have a shared commitment to mitigate environmental degradation and repair already degraded areas. However, not much has been said about the good environmental performance of the affluent states of the Muslim world. This study uses the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) produced by the University of Yale to analyse how to design better strategies for the upper-middle income (UMIE) and high-income Muslim countries (HIE) when dealing with their environmental performance. This study proposes that the choice of strategy should depend on the environmental and political economy of the countries, the status and ranking of their environmental performance, and an openness to learning from the successes of the environmental foreign policy successes of other affluent Muslim countries. Keywords: Environmental performance, Environmental degradation, Environmental foreign policy, Energy JEL Classifications: O13, Q, Q56 DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.7788

Journal of Anthropology and Archaeology is a peer-reviewed international journal, which publishes original papers promoting theoretical, methodological and empirical developments in the discipline of socio-cultural anthropology.

This study examines how cultural heritage and gender roles shape achievement motivation among 12 women entrepreneurs in the batik and songket industries in Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu and Kota Bharu, Kelantan, East Coast Malaysia, using McClelland’s theory of needs as a conceptual framework. The study operationalizes the constructs of need for achievement (nAch), power (nPow), and affiliation (nAff) to analyze how family attitudes, socialization, inherited skills, and personal interests influence entrepreneurial motivation in heritage business contexts. A qualitative case study design was employed, with participants selected through purposive and snowball sampling from a population of 458 registered entrepreneurs. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews and analyzed thematically to identify patterns linking cultural and gender factors to motivational drives. Findings show that intrinsic achievement motivation (nAch) predominates over profit motives, while nAff and nPow are expressed through collaborative networks and leadership in business operations. The study’s original contribution lies in linking family heritage and gender roles with McClelland’s motivational constructs, providing a framework to support women-led heritage entrepreneurship and preserve Malaysia’s cultural crafts.

According to mainstream literature, Muslim countries often lag behind in terms of environmental sustainability despite their beingfully compliant with global environmental regulations. This raises the question of whether this applies to all aspects of environmentalconservation. Therefore, this paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation efforts in countries that are members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and determine whether a consistent growth trend in biodiversity conservation can be identified. The study employs semi-quantitative and policy-science methods, analysing data from Yale University’s Biodiversity and Habitat Protection Index from 2010 to 2020. The findings show a significant increase in biodiversity conservation performance over the ten-year study period. Interestingly, low-income countries outperformed their wealthier OIC counterparts in terms of biodiversity conservation, despite having the lowest economic development status. This positive trend highlights the effectiveness of essential biodiversity policies and measures adopted in these Muslim countries. Furthermore, these results align with Stern’s approach, which argues that economic expansion can have diverse impacts on environmental quality, leading to the rejection of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis in the context of biodiversity conservation in Muslim countries. The study emphasises the need for further research into the nature of biodiversity policies among low-income nations. The policy ideas and solutions from these countries can provide valuable insights for combating biodiversity loss within OIC countries and globally, contributing to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Additionally, it has the potential to enhance the capacity of OIC countries in biodiversity conservation and their role in supporting fellow Muslim nations in achieving the SDGs.