Letter from Mona Chew Poh Gek Today Online 2 Nov 11;
THERE has been recent interest generated by the debate in Parliament on using a possible happiness index to gauge Singapore's development and guide the formulation of public policies, with various letters to Today and online joustings, too.
While the commentators have provided the merits of indicators such as Net National Product, Human Development Index, Graciousness Index, etc, all these measures focus narrowly on certain aspects of socio-economic development.
None of them adequately deal with the long-term sustainability of nations. And history has shown how economies have risen, peaked and declined. For nations that have declined, the lack of economic sustainability can be ascribed to many socio-economic factors.
With the emergence of many fast developing nations in the last 100 years, there is now the added concern of environmental sustainability, arising from the strains placed on Mother Earth by both developed and developing nations.
Greenhouse gas emission, global warming, climate change, dwindling food supplies, depletion of energy sources and general destruction of the environment are some of the issues threatening global environmental sustainability.
Ultimately, the economic sustainability of nations is at risk.
Singapore should be concerned with its long-term economic sustainability, and public policies should be aimed at this goal, which may not be adequately guided by any single socio-economic indicator, including GDP, or environmental indicators such as Water Poverty Index.
In 1991, Singapore's own economic guru Emeritus Professor Lim Chong Yah espoused the theory that a nation's development depends on its five interacting production ecosystems: Entrepreneurship, government, ordinary labour, investment and natural resources.
The health and balance of these five ecosystems are critical to the long-term economic sustainability of any nation and would depend on many factors.
These include business environment, technology R&D, freedom from corruption, strong civil institutions, the healthcare system, population/immigration issues, social capital, domestic savings, water and energy supplies and climate change challenges.
A comprehensive Index for Economic Sustainability is now being developed to compare and rank various nations.
Preliminary studies show that Singapore is doing fairly well. They also suggest various areas where it should fine-tune its policies to improve sustainability, for example, in energy resilience.
