“Sustainability is an everyday thing.”
What’s the first thing that comes into your mind if I ask you to draw a relationship between the President of the United States and the Paris Climate Agreement?
Perhaps, the withdrawal announced by Donald Trump on 1 June last year in the name of protecting America and its citizens (Chakraborty, 2017).
What then, is the first thing that comes into your mind, when you think of Singapore and the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference?
“Nothing.” Most people would say.
But for Ms Nor Lastrina Hamid, she took the stage as a Singaporean to speak on behalf of the youth constituency present at the 2015 Paris Climate Summit.
The then 26-year-old said in her speech:
“We don’t want history to repeat itself. Stop the carbon colonialism!”
Fast forward 3 years later, Ms Lastrina continues to contribute in every way possible in her advocacy for various environmental causes. In her opinion, the most critical environmental issue in Singapore is air pollution.
Personally, I have this habit of looking at the sky above me whenever I am down because it’s a very therapeutic thing to do.
But it breaks my heart to know that we may not enjoy the same beautiful sky years later if we choose to be ignorant of the various environmental issues happening around us. In regard to air pollution, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) Air quality guidelines, the acceptable annual mean of PM2.5 is 10μg/m3. And to my surprise, the analysis of WHO’s report by Mead (2017) shows that Singapore’s annual mean of PM2.5 is 18μg/m3, which is above the acceptable level.
“Did I just read that Singapore’s air quality standard isn’t all that great?” I asked myself as I look at the sky outside my window.
While I try to convince myself that this cannot be true, Low (2018), however, asserts that Singapore, in fact, has an average of 96 bad air quality days annually and motor vehicle is the biggest contributor to domestic air pollution.
But who am I to kid? According to the vehicle statistics report released by Land Transport Authority, there were 961,842 cars present on the road as at 31 December 2017. Whilst initiatives such as Car-Free Sunday SG are put in place to encourage individuals to switch from driving to other transportation means (Chua, 2018), I question if such initiatives indeed tackle our reliance on cars? The convenience brought by driving cannot be replaced by walking or cycling. Consequently, when the roads are no longer close for the car-lite initiatives, individuals return to driving and continue their contribution to global warming and air pollution. However, is driving really a necessity in Singapore?
I think all of us can make a difference.
But can we make a difference before things get out of hand? I don’t know. But I do know that if we don’t try to do something about it and start doing them now, we will definitely lose the beautiful things of nature which we have been taking for granted.
P.S. For the full interview transcript, click here!
References
Chakraborty, B. (2017). Paris Agreement on climate change: US withdraws as Trump calls it ‘unfair’. Retrieved from Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/01/trump-u-s-to-withdraw-from-paris-climate-pact-calls-it-unfair-for-america.html
Chua, J. (2018). LET’S GIVE OUR CARS A LONGER BREAK! (PART 1). Retrieved from https://blog.nus.edu.sg/trashturnstreasures/2018/09/14/lets-give-our-cars-a-longer-break-part-1/
Land Transport Authority. (2017). Annual Vehicle Statistics 2017. Retrieved from https://www.lta.gov.sg/content/dam/ltaweb/corp/PublicationsResearch/files/FactsandFigures/MVP01-1_MVP_by_type.pdf
Low, N. (2018). Bad air days? The problem could well be domestic. The Straits Times. Retrieved from https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/environment/bad-air-days-the-problem-could-well-be-domestic
Mead, N. V. (2017). Pant by numbers: the cities with the most dangerous air – listed. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/cities/datablog/2017/feb/13/most-polluted-cities-world-listed-region
World Health Organisation. (2006). WHO Air quality guidelines. Retrieved from http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/69477/WHO_SDE_PHE_OEH_06.02_eng.pdf?sequence=1
Interesting. I question the veracity of these facts.
We have one of the lowest vehicles / capita among high-income countries and stringent measures (e.g., max COE = 10 yrs) to restrict emissions. Not to mention all those hybrid taxis and very few SUVs and pickups.
I really wonder what the relative contributions of the offshore refineries and the haze to SG’s air quality are ? Could they be greater than we are being led to believe ?
Hello Dr Coleman
To share with you, I interviewed a personnel from People’s Movement to Stop Haze a few weeks back. When I had the interview with that individual, she mentioned how by and large, the general public is aware of how millions of oils are refined at the offshore of Singapore. While we are proud of how our refineries are contributing significantly to Singapore’s GDP, only a handful of us are truly aware of the impacts these refineries have on our air quality. Even then, rarely anyone talks about the resulting consequences.
To quote what she said word-for-word: “Proper filtration systems may have been put in place, or that’s what companies have always been telling the public, but how transparent are those processes? We need to consider the residents living near Tuas and Jurong Island. What impacts do these refineries have on the residents’ health 10 years down the road?”
Frankly, I am really interested to know what are the statistics — I mean, real statistics. And I would love to hear them first-hand from the policy-makers themselves, or the executives of various organisations. However, I don’t know if it’s ever possible to have a genuine and transparent discussion with them in regard to environmental issues.
Lately, I have also been asking myself some questions. Over the past 9 weeks, we have constantly been questioning and pushing for various environmental causes. However, the inertia for any actions to be taken seems pretty high. I don’t know if there’s something wrong in our approach? Really really lost. 😔
Cheers
Wei Qian