Straits Times Forum 21 May 10;
WE WELCOME Wednesday's reply from the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources and Ministry of National Development ('Green study disregards Singapore's circumstances') to last Friday's article, 'Is Singapore the worst environmental offender?', which highlighted the recent publication of our paper in PLoS One.
In a telephone interview with The Straits Times reporter, Professor Navjot Sodhi mentioned that Singapore had lost large amounts of forests and species. We do not know how the phrase 'past 30 years' was added to this statement.
Another author, Mr Xingli Giam, had replied in an e-mail to the reporter that 'in Singapore's case, deforestation was almost complete by the end of the 19th century - primary forests were felled for cash crop agriculture'.
There is no doubt that we agree with the ministries that these losses occurred between the late 1800s and early parts of the 1900s, well prior to Singapore's independence.
As for the inclusion of emissions from bunker fuels, we believe that bunker fuel should be accounted for in the environmental impact rankings.
By including the carbon emissions generated by bunker fuels, we are taking into account the environmental trade-off generated by this often-excluded aspect of fuel consumption. However, we recognise that this approach over-estimates the environmental impact to ports and under-estimates the environmental impact to the home country of the ships.
Prof Navjot, in the telephone interview with the reporter, had conceded that the study could be perceived by some as less than fair to Singapore and that more meaningful comparisons of environmental impact could have been made with other major cities such as New York City and Hong Kong.
Nevertheless, we thought it was still appropriate to include Singapore in this country-level study.
We are acutely aware of Singapore's constraints and environmental management initiatives.
There is no doubt that Singapore has done well, particularly in recent years, in terms of good environmental practices.
We sincerely hope that our study will be taken in a positive light and encourage those involved in environmental management to see if more can be done for the environment in the years to come.
We believe that good environmental management is the key to human survival and well-being.
Professor Navjot S. Sodhi
Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science
National University of Singapore
Professor Corey J.A. Bradshaw
The Environment Institute and School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide, Australia
Xingli Giam
Graduate Student, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, USA
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