Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong arrives today at Copenhagen to attend the high-level negotiation at the UNFCCC COP15. Civil society participation at COP15 has been reduced to meagre 1,000 today. By friday, the number would be reduced to 90.
Donaldson Tan
Recently, a PhD candidate from Cape Town asked me about Singapore’s climate change policy. I was stumped by her question. Surely climate change has been factored into the deliberation process of policymaking, but it remains unclear whether environmental concern is the primary driving force in environmental policy making.
Perhaps, the Merlion epitomises the climate change dilemma faced by Singapore’s policymakers. The Merlion is Singapore’s native mythical creature with a head of a lion and the body of a fish – not necessarily the best of both worlds. On land, the Merlion will die because it has no limbs. Under water, the Merlion will die because it cannot breathe. The Merlion is naturally incompatible with its environment, so it must adapt and create tools to ensure its survival.
Our city-state enjoys some degree of prosperity, but precisely because of the prosperity, the economic value at risk to climate change is substantial. Climate change threatens Singapore with not only rising sea levels (which erodes our national boundary), but also the intensification of conflict and competition for resources worldwide. How this could be felt on Singapore’s economy would be via changes in international migration pattern, shipping routes and geographic profile of consumers.
Countries like China are already making contingency plans. To improve its access to energy supply, the Chinese government is in the midst of building an oil pipeline across Myanmar into China. It is also constructing the Kra Canal, which has the potential of making the shipping route along the Straits of Malacca and Singapore obsolete. The impact of climate change on Singapore would thus not only come from Mother Nature but also how other state and non-state actors respond to climate change nationally, regionally and internationally.
The nation-centric approach in many countries such as the USA and China involves a tight balancing act between climate change, economic growth and energy security. This makes sense for these countries as they have a huge domestic consumer market which essentially drives the global flow of goods and services. As an entrepot, Singapore’s ratio of trade to GDP is about 350%. What this translates into is that the private sector in Singapore has to not only adopt the best practices to remain relevant to its target markets, but it also has to monitor emergent practices from competing industry sectors in other countries to either preserve or elevate its position in the global value chain.
Too much is at stake. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the Singapore government has been promoting energy efficiency and other sustainable industry practices in Singapore to ensure that the domestic private sector remains relevant to international trade. For starters, liberalisation of the domestic electricity market has not only exposed domestic consumers to price fluctuation in the international energy market, but also spurred electricity producers to adopt more energy efficient practices such as the installation of stirling engines to generate electricity from waste heat.
To ensure the building sector in Singapore remains at the forefront, the Government has introduced financial schemes to co-fund cost premium to achieve higher Green mark standards. Such policy would help the building sector to gain capability and capacity to build sustainable housing in Southeast Asia and also position the building sector to export its newfound expertise regionally and internationally. The Government has also been promoting environment-friendly practices that lead to reduced material and energy wastage in the electronics and chemical industry. These measures are instituted to ensure Singapore’s economic competitiveness.
Going green is an economic imperative, not a moral one, as described by Senior Minister S Jayakumar in a media interview at MFA on 2 December 2009:
“Whatever we do, maintaining economic competitiveness is a key consideration because we have to preserve growth in order to have the resources to continue to take mitigation and adaptation actions.”
As an economic imperative, the government promotes Singapore aggressively as a test centre for green technology. In November 2009, David Tan, CEO of Energy Market Authority (EMA) revealed that the EMA has been working with Renault-Nissan, Mitsubishi and other auto manufacturers to secure a supply of electric vehicles (EV) for Singapore next year. EMA will also be rolling out a small network of EV charging stations, through a competitive tender to select an EV infrastructure service provider. On top of that, Pulau Ubin has been earmarked to be a test grid for renewable energy technologies.
All these policies are aimed at developing Singapore’s clean technology expertise in order to complement the global demand profile for technology and engineering services which is shifting towards low-carbon options. The apparent conflation between Singapore’s climate change policies and industrial policies can only be resolved by recognising that there is no climate change policies, but only industrial policies as the government is guided by economic imperative. If indeed the government is guided by moral imperative, it should not remain silent on tackling the high carbon intensity of the marine bunkering industry in Singapore, which accounts for about 45% of Singapore’s CO2 emission.
And also in view of the economic imperative to make Singapore industry relevant to the global market, it is more likely that the government will impose a carbon tax on producers rather than consumers, given the small size of domestic consumption and the tiny emission profile of local consumers in Singapore. The point of a carbon tax is to encourage carbon-efficient behaviour by discouraging specific acts and such a policy would only work if it were to target rational actors – something a consumer would hardly qualify as. Only industry actors have the incentive and resource to evaluate its every action and thus be more likely to respond as rational actors. Textbook economics does well in informing us that a producer tax will inevitably lead to a partial transfer to consumers through retail pricing, so there will be pressure on consumer behaviour too.
Hence, Singapore has no climate change policy. Singapore only has an industrial policy to fine-tune its industrial development to remain relevant within global markets.
Didn’t Singapore’s pledge of 16 percent reduction in GHG by 2020 with business as usual level siginify the stand that economic is more important than environment?
1) XIIIblackcat on December 17th, 2009 12.17 pm
That is neither a pledge nor a commitment. It is negotiation bait to position Singapore for talks at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.
This Compenhagen meeting on climate change looks like a wayang show.
Our industries on Jurong Island are Singapore’s greatest polluter, the heartbeat of our economic growth, how to make tangible committment to GHG reduction.
There is a certain odour in rresidential ares near this island in Jurong west, people may have health problems later in their in lives.
Like China, Singapore could not commit sincerely, as this will result in slower economic growth, which is of paramount important in both countries. The furure looks quite bleak, with India snapping at the heels of trying to do catch-up, China and India combined together is sufficient to sink any future meetings on climate change.
I am surprised nobody has yet commented on the scientific scandal of Climategate, which essentially undercuts the purpose of Copenhagen in the first place. The IPCC and the research its conclusions were based on have been revealed to be utter b*llsh*t. The data is now all over the internet, as well as the exact models they used, which used all sorts of arbitrary techniques to reach a certain desired conclusion. Hardly scientific at all.
And if the skeptics and the physicists are right, the current low solar activity (sunspot) cycle implicates a cooling trend over the next decade, similar to the Maunder Minimum of the 17th Century. We should also be more worried about possible rises in fuel prices. When the weather cools, people in temperate regions need more heating – the US is experiencing record low temperatures this year.
So what should Singapore do? A carbon tax on economic activity would be highly detrimental to our standards of living, but we cannot ignore the possibility of rising sea levels and threatening our already scarce land area due to warming, OR rising fuel prices due to cooling, exacerbating our crippling dependence on foreign sources of energy.
The keys as mentioned in the article are energy independence and efficiency. A nuke power plant, and more extensive use of solar cells would go a bit towards enhancing our independence. To this end, we should also invest more into bio-fuel/algae research, and see if we can grow our fuel in the region.
Yucks! The spitting bapok lion again!
Does Singapore have a Climate Policy? No it only has a Foreign Talent and Money making policy.
4) The Wobbly Guy on December 17th, 2009 4.29 pm
http://theonlinecitizen.com/2009/12/addressing-climategate/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
you write like you don’t read the newspapers at all.
of course singapore has a national climate change strategy, doesn’t mean you don’t know it, means we don’t have one!
shouldn’t the standard of the online citizen blogs be higher?
writers are not doing research before they tackle a subject
Throwing out populist sound bites to make it sound like they are doing something pales in comparison to what the US and Europe have themselves already committed themselves to. Have you not yourself read the papers? Singapore’s “leaders” openly declare that they have “no obligation” whatsoever to reduce their carbon emissions, even though we have such a huge per capita carbon output. This is disgusting and disgraceful.
crap article, waste my time.
Hi environmentalist #8,
I do read the newspapers but I don’t accept government propaganda at face value. It is the 133rd media in the world, remember? Just because it has been packaged as “climate change” in its presentation, it doesn’t necessarily make it actually part of the climate change agenda. You ought to more discerning of aggressive greenwashing efforts in this country and globally.
“you write like you don’t read the newspapers at all.”
Newspapers ? You mean you actually READ the toilet paper that meant for your backside ? U are Uniquely Singaporean indeed ! Little surprise that thy mind is full of S H I T. You read S H I T, you quote S H I T.
Wobbly Guy:
What Climategate? I’ve asked for people to point out the “utter b*llsh*t”. Lots of crazy ang mohs spewing paranoia, and only one person could point me to his methodology, but TOC deleted my detailed response.
So I’ll just say this:
People with specialized knowledge are misusing it to spin lies to the public. And they know people like me with the same knowledge will see through their manipulation immediately. But hey, as long as they can capture the attention of the majority who don’t understand how they are lying, they win.
There is nothing I detest more than people like these, and they are *not* the CRU scientists.
Thanks for the insightful article. Going green is an economic and not a moral imperative. That’s fine as long as we are going green.
http://web1.env.gov.sg/cms/ar2009/content/mitigating-climate.html
“Singapore is doing its part to tackle climate change through its environmental friendly policies and actions. However, due to Singapore’s limited land area and geographical constraints, large-scale adoption of alternative energy technologies such as hydropower, geothermal energy or wind energy is unlikely. The forms of renewable energy that will be more applicable to Singapore besides waste-to-energy would thus include solar energy and biofuels. However these sources of renewable energy are not yet cost-competitive with conventional fossil fuels. Hence, we are reliant on imported fossil fuels, such as natural gas, to meet our energy needs at present.
The main contribution to Singapore’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is carbon dioxide (CO2) from the use of energy to meet development and human needs. We have already switched much of our power supply to natural gas, which is relatively less carbon-intensive. Hence our key strategy in addressing climate change is to improve our energy efficiency. While our economy is expected to expand in the future and our population is expected to grow, improving our energy efficiency would allow us to meet the growing energy demand with less energy resources.
Achieving greater energy efficiency would require the efforts of all stakeholders, including households and the private sector. NEA is actively working to raise public awareness of the benefits of energy efficiency, such as educating consumers on the benefits of energy-efficient appliances and co-funding energy audits for companies and buildings.
There is also a consensus amongst the scientific community that climate change is a real and serious threat that we cannot ignore. As a low-lying island state, Singapore will need forward-looking policies to prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change. As a result of our environmental and developmental planning in the past, there are existing measures in place that can help to address certain potential climate change impacts in the short to medium term. NEA has also commissioned a two-year study to assess the possible longer term effects and impacts of climate change on Singapore, which is expected to be completed in end-2009.”
I believed most of you who criticized the government for not having a green policy is totally naive or ignorant in what is going on in Singapore.Maybe,they are not born in
the 60s and the70s.Compare to other cities like Bangkok,Manila,LK,Jakarta,S’pore
has the least air pollution.Why do you think that we have restriction of car ownership?Why do you think that you have to pay a hefty fee for driving down to the city core?You may argue that the PAP’s main motive is to make money.But you have
forgotten that PAP uses the same stone to kill the 2nd bird-air pollution.That Old Man
started fighting pollution 40yrs ago and way in advance than most western leaders.
No wonder, even President Obama called LKY,the Legendary.
Singapore govt’s climate change policy is nothing but a big wayang show since Day 1. They don;t have anything but try to create something out of nothing when push comes to shove.
I think Singapore has done better than many other countries, but as a successful state, we’re expected ‘to do more’.
Nothing irritates me than those three words nowadays. Those three words have become a substitute for debate. It already assumes that there’s a problem, hence a need to do something about it. Many of us still aren’t convince there’s a problem to begin with.
And those three words also eschews any responsibility for those who said it to come up with practical solutions – practical as in solutions that will not damage our economy, increase unemployment, increase taxation, and increase energy cost.
And in case such impact can be compartmentalized, well, think again. It’ll probably also mean higher hospital bills, more expensive telephone bills, etc.
Finally, those who said those words usually aren’t the ones who had to pay the bill at the end of the day.
What if what the government has offered is the most they dared to go, beyond which Singapore must endure higher unemployment, higher energy cost and lower economic growth? It might be acceptable by some ‘to do more’, but not to me.
@ preston loon
Do note that Hitler and Mao Zedong were also “legendary”. It is a neutral adjective. Stop manipulating it to suit your own beliefs.
@ preston loon
In a similar vein, Robert Neville of I am Legend. The book, not the silly movie with Will Smith.
Our former PM LEE once said this,I quote
“Even the air we breathe is not free”
How prophetic and refreshing his words were 37 yrs ago.I could not recalled any
world leader said anything about pollution at that time.Have you?
Reply to #20-young01
Tell me,in what context did President Obama said about LKY by calling him a
Legendary?.Come on guys,give that Old Man credit when credit is due.
There will always be reasons and sacrifices.
It’s a matter of priority.
Just appears right now that at the top of the list to most power-players is the economy. Fully understandable given how capitalism has morphed and permeated itself globally.
With already so many documentaries available and so many articles in the papers.
What else can be done?
How do you think individuals will be spurred into actions?
what the earth needs is a cut in current emissions, not just a hypothetical slower growth rate. in any event, whatever singapore does or doesn’t do isn’t going to matter much if the major polluters like china, the us, russia and india don’t make radical changes. they need to increase taxes on carbon and subsidise green energy.
hi everyone,
let’s keep the tone of the comments salutary and courteous shall we? We all have a role to play in demonstrating that we are capable of managing a free space for expressing personal opinions respectfully.
I do have one comment about our nations’s environmental policy: like everything else, it seems pragmatic in principle. My concerns have to do with how fast the climate is changing. I would like to highlight that our port, as a sector of our economy is still overwhelmingly large. And this is under threat from the melting of the north pole in the summer time. If the scientists are accurate about the rate of melting in the North Pole, we could see an ice-free North Pole by 2030. This also means that commercial tankers will no longer have to sail the “long way” from China, Korea, Japan to North America and Europe. They can sail via the North Pole. As of last year, there was already a test sail by 2 tankers in fall because enough ice had melted to make the route possible.
This is cheaper, shorter and faster and we can be sure it would be the route of choice in the future. This also means that Singapore’s significance as a port will surely diminish. Surely, this will impact how many people we can support on our little island (strength of the overall economy, unemployment rates, government tax revenues etc), not to mention our standard of living.
Climate change is real and I would like us to focus on the real issues of mitigation and adaptation.
thanks
Ray