Singapore’s Background

Singapore is an island country in South East Asia, located at the southern tip of peninsula Malaysia. The country’s current land area is at 718.3 km2(Singstat, 2014), which is increased from 581.5 km2 (224.5 sq mi) in the 1960s through land reclaimation projects. Singapore generally has a tropical rainforest climate with no distinctive seasons, high humidity and abundant rainfall.

singapore-location-map

Being a small country, it lacked natural resources like tin and oil, as well as those that requires large amount of land to produce, such as rubber. Essentially it doesn’t have any natural resources other than what a typical rainforest can give. When it claimed independence on 9 August 1965 from previous merger agreement with Malaysia, it faced a crisis of unemployment, housing shortage, lack of land and lack of natural resources, one of which that is most important to survival was lack of portable water.

Because the island is small, Singapore lacked natural aquafiers to collect and store rainwater and relied tremendously on imported water to survive. Singapore has went through several water rationing exercises during dry spells in 1960s and 1970s(PUB Singapore, 2013), and it is still being considered early this year(February 2014) as an educational drill to curb the increase in water consumption during the dry period(Today Online, 2104).

Water Rationing in 1962

Water Rationing in 1962