The big tree debate

The past 50 years has seen the greening of Singapore. But even as people become more eco-aware, population needs put pressure on the environment. Grace Chua looks at the challenges.
Straits Times 15 Jun 13;

YOU look out the window of your HDB flat at a view that makes you happy. It is a wide expanse of trees and grass, an open space where children play football or where yellow orioles sing. But one day, hoardings go up, construction cranes move in. And your view is gone.

Some may shrug and see it as the price of progress. Others will be sad at the loss of yet another precious slice of nature in this tiny island of so many people.

And, amid the rise of civic activism, a small but vocal minority might wonder: Could I have done something about it?

Such a scenario is a microcosm of the conflict between urbanisation and nature, that pits the needs of a growing country, such as infrastructure and housing, against less quantifiable needs such as the value of species-rich forests.

However, recently those less quantifiable things have been found to have their own currency, now that the perils of climate change have reared their head, with more pollution and fewer trees able to filter carbon from the atmosphere.

Going green now also means tangible benefits such as realising that trees help filter pollution particles and make for cleaner air, or that, planted wisely, their shade can reduce the need for expensive air-conditioning.

And to some extent, planners see the need to be eco-aware, too, with the latest Land Use Plan released in January setting a target of 0.8 park ha per 1,000 residents by 2030.

Still, there's no escaping that tension, seen just this week as Trains versus Trees. Nature groups are upset over plans for an MRT line through the Central Catchment Nature Reserve.

Ironically, tomorrow marks 50 years since the greening of Singapore took off officially, when the first tree-planting campaign was launched.

Today, that planting campaign still continues, but even as trees are planted, others are chopped down to make way for development.

Can any balance ever be found between a space crunch and the need for different shades of green?

What are the challenges that lie ahead in trying to reconcile the two, especially as Singapore's population grows?

How going green took root

ON JUNE 16, 1963, then-Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew planted a slender mempat sapling at a traffic roundabout called Holland Circus.

Trees such as the mempat - known for its pretty pink blossoms - certainly are pretty to have around.

But decades before it became fashionable to be environmentally conscious, Mr Lee put shovel to soil to kick off a tree-planting campaign to help bring rain. It was the middle of a drought at the time, and leaves help send water vapour into the atmosphere.

Pragmatic Mr Lee also wanted to send visitors and investors the message that Singapore was a disciplined nation able to tend to its people and its environment.

As well, an island-wide greening programme was a social equaliser, in contrast to British rule, when only wealthy enclaves like Tanglin had cultivated gardens.

Since 1963, Mr Lee - often dubbed Singapore's "Chief Gardener" - has unfailingly planted a tree every year, typically in November, at the start of the rainy season.

Professor Leo Tan, who in 1973 was a young biology lecturer at the University of Singapore, said: "Originally, people took (trees) for granted. The assumption was that we had enough green. But Lee Kuan Yew had this vision."

Singapore was a fledgling country, and it was not immediately clear why government money should be spent on greening.

But Mr Lee in his memoir, From Third World To First, called it "the most cost-effective project I have launched" to differentiate Singapore from its developing neighbours.

But the scheme was not without flaws. Prof Tan said: "At that time, any green would do. A lot of it was cosmetic, such as trees along the drive from the airport to town. That's the first impression visitors had of Singapore."

There was also little understanding of conservation.

Even as planting took place, much of Singapore's mangroves were cleared as they were thought to breed mosquitoes.

Clearing continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s as natural spaces were developed for housing, ports and industry.

"I watched Tanjong Rhu make way for development, Sembawang for a shipyard. My research site made way for Changi Terminal," Prof Tan said.

"I was really angry as a young lecturer - my research sites became the history of natural history."

In 1986, the Bukit Timah Expressway was built, slicing between Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and the central catchment forests.

It was the last straw for some. In the late 1980s, several members of the Nature Reserves Board (National Parks Board's precursor) resigned en masse, including Prof Tan, the Nature Society's Mr Richard Hale, and the board's then secretary, Dr Kiat W. Tan.

"We said, 'If we are here to supervise the demise of every nature reserve, there is no point'," said Prof Tan.

But they were persuaded to stay on for the formation of the National Parks Board (NParks) in 1990.

Recalling those eco-wilderness years, Dr Tan, who went on to be NParks CEO and who is now Gardens by the Bay CEO, said there was little civic sense then.

"People were stealing plants. The parks were not used. Some MPs said, why are we wasting so much money on parks and greenery?"

In 1990, signs had to be posted along the East Coast Parkway explaining to the public why the grass was allowed to grow.

Even the tree that Mr Lee planted at Holland Circus was removed when the roundabout made way for a flyover in 1997.

Learning to hug nature

TODAY, there are more than 300 public parks, from pocket-sized neighbourhood ones to destination parks like East Coast Park. About 50 per cent of Singapore is under vegetative cover, more than half of which is "natural" green, like scrublands and forests.

NParks chief executive Poon Hong Yuen says public reception has completely shifted. "In times past, people complained about leaves falling and creating a mess; now when we chop down a tree, people complain."

When NParks recently asked for feedback on what people want from destination parks and an upcoming round-island park network, "people said, 'We don't want our parks to be just manicured, with no wooded area'. That surprised us because in the past, people would tell us they wanted an amphitheatre or a hard court. It's a bit more sophisticated now."

Is that a reaction to being surrounded by more built-up space? Perhaps, he said.

An NParks survey in 2010 revealed that 90 per cent of those polled say parks and greenery are important, even if they do not visit parks. The same number think nature should be conserved, even if they don't visit nature.

Yes, residents still complain of the noise and mess from, say, koels roosting in trees. But planners, academics and the public increasingly recognise the ecological value of nature, which can protect against the effects of climate change.

The Building and Construction Authority looks to mangroves for coastal protection from sea-level rise. The Public Utilities Board has its ABC Waters programme, which cuts flood risk by turning canals into planted, more natural waterways.

And studies from the National University of Singapore (NUS) show that green cover reduces the high temperatures that result when buildings and roads trap heat, and that natural areas support a more diverse range of birds and butterflies than cultivated ones.

Some green innovations developed here have even gone international. Architect Ong Boon Lay came up with the concept of the green plot ratio, which measures the amount and quality of greenery used in architecture and has been applied to cities in Sri Lanka and Egypt.

In 2008, Singapore committed itself to developing the first City Biodiversity Index, which is used by parties to the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diver-sity.

At home, greening has helped shape Singapore's identity as the Garden City, then the City in a Garden.

Take the national Community In Bloom community-garden programme, launched in 2005. At first, people felt the Government should take care of greenery in their estates.

"Now, people see the point of it - it brings the community closer together," said NParks' Mr Poon.

Senior research fellow Belinda Yuen, an urban planner at the Singapore University of Technology and Design's Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities, pointed out that besides "active" uses of green space such as for exercise and picnics, there is an indirect psychological benefit.

People like having a view of a garden or nature area, she said - they know it is available to escape to if needed.

Battles and trade-offs

IS THERE a difference in benefit or value depending on whether you're looking at a cultivated park or a natural area?

Little work on that has been done in Singapore yet, Dr Yuen said. "We need to conduct a study to better understand what exact value people ascribe to open space."

But vociferous public debate over areas like a Pasir Ris patch of empty land, slated for an international school, and Bukit Brown cemetery, earmarked for housing, demonstrates "the people don't just want manicured parks, they want wild areas also", said Mr Tony O'Dempsey, a council member of The Nature Society (Singapore) (NSS).

"Promising a manicured park within some distance of each household - as per the White Paper discussion (see other report) - is missing the point of what I think people really want."

The NSS is concerned that small forest patches at Bukit Timah, Lornie, Mandai and Seletar are getting too separated by roads from larger reserves to sustain rich plant and animal life.

It has identified green sites rich in biodiversity that should get higher priority in protection efforts, and is currently preparing a report on the overall green impact of the Government's Land Use Plan.

And Mr N. Sivasothi, an NUS biology lecturer and coordinator of the Raffles Museum Toddycats volunteer group, calls for the protection of specific biodiversity-rich areas such as the Mandai mudflats.

In an impassioned speech on the White Paper and Land Use Plan in Parliament earlier this year, Nominated Member of Parliament Faizah Jamal said the plan's emphasis on parks "reflects a disturbing need for human control - not just green spaces, but indeed the constant need to control life itself".

Afterwards, she said, several MPs came up privately to agree with what she said.

Civil servants and politicians operate based on efficiency and cost-effectiveness, she noted. And providing parks for more users focuses on people, who are also voters.

"But that's not a paradigm that works any more" because of the growing importance of the ecological services that wild places provide.

But how long will it be before nature becomes a real voter issue?

On the one hand, urbanites don't interact with nature every day and don't see the value of the clean air or fresh water it provides.

"On the other hand, I see young people actually doing something about it."

The next 50 years

AS NPARKS' Mr Poon puts it: "The top three challenges for us are space, space and space."

However, it is precisely because the population is growing that more nature also needs to be retained - to address the impact of climate change, serve as an emotional anchor, and meet recreational needs.

But what happens when NParks' mandate clashes with another agency's - say, when planners decide a space is needed for housing?

At the senior levels of government, there is an understanding that greenery is important, said Mr Poon. So there is a serious attempt to come up with a solution - to retain or replace or enhance greenery.

"In the past, we've been quite reactive - the Land Transport Authority says we want to do road-widening, we say you can't get rid of this tree. Now, you're doing road-widening, can (NParks) do something to beautify the area?"

Still, retaining natural or managed areas, and adding new ones, remains a process of give and take.

Later this month, an official tree-planting event will take place at Holland Village Park, not far from where Mr Lee planted his first mempat tree.

And perhaps symbolising how much the need to value the environment has taken root, even amid necessary development, in order to build the pocket-sized green lung - completed in 2011 - it was a carpark that made way.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GREENING IN SINGAPORE

1963

Mr Lee Kuan Yew plants a tree at Holland Circus as start of island-wide campaign
Parks and Trees Unit formed underPublic Works Department
Post- independence, mangroves at Pandan and Kranji cleared for development

1967

Garden City programme of roadside landscaping launched

1971

The first Tree Planting Day held (November); replaced by Clean and Green Week in 1990

1973

Labrador Beach de-gazetted to be nature park

1974

Parks and Recreation Department formed

1986

Bukit Timah Expressway constructed, cutting through Bukit Timah and Central Catchment Nature Reserve

1989

Sungei Buloh given nature park status after Malayan Nature Society (Singapore) calls on Government to conserve it

1990

Nature Society of Singapore (NSS) publishes its master plan for nature conservation

1990-91

National Parks Board (NParks) established to oversee nature reserves, Singapore Botanic Gardens and Fort Canning Park

1992

Government publishes its first Green Plan; Lower Peirce Reservoir golf-course development put on hold after environmental impact assessment by NSS

1996

Parks and Recreation Department merges with NParks

2001

Labrador Park re-gazetted as nature reserve

2002

Sungei Buloh gazetted as nature reserve

2009

Eco-link between Bukit Timah and Central Catchment reserves over the BKE is announced; Blue Plan by academics and non-government groups is submitted to Government, proposes specific marine areas that have high conservation value

2010

NParks, National University of Singapore and corporate sponsors begin five-year Comprehensive Marine Biodiversity Survey

2012

Gardens by the Bay officially opened

2013

Government publishes its Population White Paper and Land Use Plan laying out plans till 2030
Nature groups raise concerns about environmental impact, particularly of Cross-Island Line
Land Transport Authority agrees to postpone its Environmental Impact Assessment report till nature groups have studied the effect of different rail-line alignments