Singapore Government Press Release
Media Division, Ministry of Information and The Arts,
MITA Building, 140 Hill Street, 2^nd Storey, Singapore 179369

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Mr Henry Paulson, members of the Asia Pacific Council, ladies and gentlemen,

A few months ago, I accepted The Nature Conservancy's request to co-chair the Asia Pacific Council with Mr Henry Paulson. Let me explain why I agreed to do so.

First, The Nature Conservancy is a blue chip organisation worthy of support. It was established in the United States, in 1951, as a non-profit organisation. It is led by the private sector but has a broad base of over one million members. In 1999, it raised over US$470 million in cash and gifts. The Nature Conservancy's mission is to protect the Earth's rare plants, animals and ecosystems by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive.

To-date, the Conservancy has protected over 10 million acres of land in the US and Canada. Working with partner organisations in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Asia Pacific, the Conservancy has another 80 million acres of land under protection. Altogether, the Conservancy has 1,600 preservation areas, constituting the largest nature sanctuary system in the world.

The Conservancy's operating philosophy emphasises a non-confrontational approach to conservation and has a successful history of working closely with government, business and NGOs in win-win partnerships.

In recent years, the Conservancy has extended its activities to the Asia Pacific, which has the world's richest biological diversity. It has programmes and partnerships in Australia, China, Japan, Indonesia and four South Pacific countries. In China, the Conservancy is working with the provincial government of Yunnan, to preserve its biological diversity and to promote the long-term economic well-being of its citizens by integrating conservation and development through compatible development strategies. This area in China is the source of four of Asia's great rivers, namely, the Yangtze, Salween, Irrawaddy and Mekong.

In Indonesia, which has 35% of the world's fish species and 17% of all terrestrial species, the Conservancy's activities focus on two areas. In the terrestrial area, the top priority is to help implement a 25-year management plan they worked with government and local communities to design for Lore Lindu National Park in Sulawesi. In the marine area, the priority is to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of sodium cyanide and dynamite in fishing practices and to implement a 25-year marine management plan they developed in partnership with then national parks authority for Komodo National Park.

A second reason is my experience trying to keep Singapore clean and green since 1959. After our unexpected independence in 1965, I tried to make Singapore different from other Third World cities, to keep as much of it as a tropical garden with birds and bees in spite of the glass, concrete and tarmac. Since November 1971, we have had an annual Tree Planting Day, involving members of Parliament and community leaders. To overcome the initial indifference and vandalism of the public, we educated our children in schools, getting them to plant and care for trees. They brought the message home to their parents. Today, Singaporeans enjoy greenery and parks scattered throughout the island. And linking these parks and our conservation areas are green corridors for birds to fly through and humans to jog and walk. There is a law which prohibits the cutting down of mature trees without the permission of the National Parks Board. Public opinion reinforces the sanction of the law.

Shrubs and plants were our early monitoring system to measure pollution. Where exhaust fumes from poorly maintained cars, buses and diesel lorries are excessive, the shrubs and plants get covered in hydro-carbon particles and become sickly. We learned to enforce strict emission standards. When we were wealthier, I set up an Anti-Pollution Unit in the Prime Minister's Office and placed proper monitoring instruments along busy roads to check pollutant levels. Unlike other cities, which have the space to allow the better-off to distance themselves and create clean and green suburbs, Singapore's size forced us to work, play and reside in one small island. We do not distinguish between the affluent and the less wealthy neighbourhoods, but maintain a clean and gracious environment for rich and poor alike.

Greening Singapore has been good for our people, for our business and for our region. Our people want to live in an environment in which they can breathe the air, drink the water, swim in our rivers and sea, live, work and play on land which has not been poisoned by chemicals, and are protected from excessive noise pollution. Our clean environment has been a competitive advantage, attracting companies, workers and tourists to Singapore. Our example has inspired our neighbours who have tried to out-green and out-bloom each other. Greening is a positive competition that benefits every one, good for morale, tourism and business.

My third reason is that increasingly our environment depends on factors beyond our borders. This was illustrated in a dramatic way in 1994 and 1997. We may have solved our domestic air pollution but the quality of the air we breathe is affected by the activities of our neighbours. Air pollution needs no passports and respects no boundaries. In 1994 and, again in 1997, the whole of Singapore and large parts of Malaysia and parts of Thailand and the Philippines were covered in a haze of smoke and dust caused by forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan. After extracting valuable timber, plantation companies had set fire to the rest of the forest to clear the land for palm oil and other crops. During the dry season, the fires raged for months. In mid-1997, a thick poisonous haze spread, causing airports in the region to close and thousands to fall ill. At present the fires are raging again in Sumatra. We must work together, preferably in a non-confrontational way, to help Indonesia enforce its law and develop a sustainable strategy for developing its vast forest resources.

Since the end of World War II in 1945, the destruction of forests and fishing grounds in Southeast Asia and in other parts of the world has been appalling. Man invented the implements that made this possible. Trees that took hundreds of years to grow are felled within hours by mechanical saws, and tractors drag these logs to market with ease. Coral reefs have been blown apart by dynamite, or the fish and coral poisoned by chemicals poured into the sea.

As a government, we have done what we could to keep down pollution and minimise the degradation of the environment. I remember the Singapore of my youth in the 1930s as a green island with narrow winding roads most untarred, used by few motor vehicles. Now the whole city is criss-crossed with asphalt and concrete expressways and high-rises everywhere. True, we have sewered the whole island, cleaned up our rivers and made them into reservoirs by building dams at their mouths. All the same, we have further stressed the environment.

It is the pressure of our population that has quadrupled from under 1 million in 1940 to nearly 4 million in 2000. Our population growth has now gone into decline, with fertility rate below 1.5 which means we are not replacing ourselves. But other countries in Asia have fertility rates well above replacement levels. However careful the conservation, however advanced the technology, high population density must lead to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions, climate change and rising sea levels.

Man’s ingenuity is threatening our survival. Can we restrain and control the power at our command to manipulate and irrevocably alter his environment? Hence we have to encourage all efforts at preserving the environment, whether by the UN or through voluntary organisations like The Nature Conservancy.

I believe the time has come for Asia's governments, business leaders, NGOs and blue chip organisations like The Nature Conservancy to forge partnerships to tackle Asia's most pressing concern, the environment - a global concern.