Strengthening Ecological Literacy through Forest-Themed National Literature: Conservation-Oriented Awareness in Rural Malaysia

This study examines how Malaysian national literature with forest themes may strengthen ecological literacy, conservation ethics, and restoration-oriented consciousness in rural education. Responding to the ecological orientation of Forest and Society, the article shifts the emphasis from literacy restoration as an educational outcome to ecological literacy as a cultural and pedagogical pathway for cultivating environmental awareness, stewardship, and responsibility toward forest environments. Using a descriptive qualitative design and an ecologically oriented literary text analysis approach, the study analyses two Malaysian novels, Seorang Tua di Kaki Gunung by Azizi Haji Abdullah and Kudup Hijau Tropika by Husna Nazri. These texts were selected because they portray forests not merely as narrative backgrounds, but as cultural, ecological, spiritual, and knowledge-bearing spaces. Data were obtained through close reading of the selected texts and supported by secondary sources on literacy, ecological education, human-forest relations, and socio-ecological change. The analysis is guided by four frameworks: Literacy as Social Practice, Multiliteracies Pedagogy, Critical Literacy, and Ecological Literacy. The findings identify four refined ecological themes: human-forest relations and ecological interdependence; traditional ecological knowledge, cultural memory, and spiritual ethics; ecological identity, emotional attachment, and stewardship; and ecological critique, development conflict, and restoration-oriented learning. The study clarifies that the novels do not provide direct empirical documentation of specific degraded ecological sites. Rather, they are interpreted as cultural responses to broader Malaysian forest-society pressures, including land conversion, plantation agriculture, biodiversity loss, development expansion, rural modernisation, and the marginalisation of traditional ecological knowledge. The article argues that forest-themed literature can support conservation-oriented awareness indirectly by cultivating ecological understanding, critical consciousness, emotional attachment to place, and community responsibility. It therefore proposes literature-based ecological literacy as a conceptual and pedagogical pathway for strengthening environmental stewardship and restoration-oriented consciousness in Malaysia.