Water Security and the Development of Kedah Rubber City in Padang Terap, Kedah, Malaysia

(Keselamatan Air dan Perkembangan Kedah Rubber City di Padang Terap, Kedah, Malaysia)    

Abstract

This article examines Padang Terap, Kedah, as an emerging site of zero-reserve industrialisation: the pursuit of resource-intensive industrial development within a state water system reported to have no secure treated-water reserve margin. Focusing on Kedah Rubber City (KRC), the article analyses how a largely rural and upstream district is being repositioned as an industrial water frontier, where new demands for water, energy and infrastructure intersect with unresolved questions of domestic water security. Based on qualitative analysis of policy documents, investment materials, infrastructure reports and public statements, the article argues that KRC’s projected industrial water demand cannot be treated as a neutral utility requirement. Rather, it must be understood within Kedah’s wider development trajectory, in which rubber-based industrialisation, border economic zones and AI-ready digital infrastructure are expanding alongside fragile water-system capacity. The article actively bridges this Malaysian case with wider global debates on the political ecology of infrastructure, water security, resource frontiers and the hidden material costs of industrial and digital capitalism. Although Padang Terap is not itself a data-centre site, its transformation reveals how the pressures of digital-industrial expansion are redistributed across wider hydrological and infrastructural systems. The article contributes the concept of zero-reserve industrialisation to explain how states pursue investment-led growth in contexts where domestic water systems lack sufficient operational buffers. It shows that industrial development in water-constrained regions cannot be evaluated solely through investment value, land availability or employment creation, but must also be assessed through treated-water reserves, treatment capacity, distribution resilience and the prioritisation of household users. By foregrounding Padang Terap, the article demonstrates how peripheral upstream districts are increasingly enrolled into global circuits of industrial and digital expansion.