Another cause of deforestation in Singapore is due to rapid urbanization.
Singapore in the 1960’s
Singapore Today
Singapore’s History
Let’s take another step back into Singapore’s history of urbanization. Singapore was once a hub for biodiversity. Forests covered most of its surrounding areas that we no longer see today. It wasn’t until the late 1950′s that Singapore began its journey towards becoming a world renowned city. To cope with the social and economic changes at that time, Singapore sought the help of UN representatives who visited Singapore. They made recommendations which eventually led to the launch of the “State and City Planning Project (SCP)” which sparked the beginning of rapid urbanization. During that time the government had only two priorities: provision of adequate public housing and providing employment opportunities for the people. This led to putting priorities on urban development at the expense of protecting and preserving the natural habitat which help contributed to Singapore’s lost of 90% of its original forests today. Although National Parks Board was formed during the 1960s to help transform Singapore into a garden city, it wasn’t until the late 1990s that the severity of this issue began to cause the government to take immediate and fundamental measures to help protect the environment.
Population Growth
Today, Singapore’s population represents a whopping 5.5 million as of June 2014 according to government stats and it is still increasing. Singapore’s accelerated growth in population has resulted in the conversion of forest areas to non-forest lands for settlement, financial buildings, and residential area expansion.
Looking around Singapore, you can see infrastructure development everywhere, from buildings to roads to the underground trains. Infrastructure development has been a heavy contribution to the fast decline in forest lands in Singapore.
Even neighboring countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, which supply over 80 per cent of the world’s palm oil, clear large tracts of virgin forests for oil palm plantations. Malaysia also practices deforestation as a means to clear land for agriculture, economical, and residential use. Deforestation in Sarawak and Sabah due to the timber industry has been a contentious issue recently.
While agricultural did play the main role in clearing the landscape of forests, demographic and economic factors actually propelled the emanation of deforestation. The scarcity of land in the island state also makes it difficult for the nation to strike a balance between cutting down more forests and infrastructure development.
On the whole, Singapore has done well in maintaining this balance by planting more trees and making it a “green” city in the midst of rapid economic growth. In solutions, I will address on how the government can further play a part in sustainability of the environment.