Singapore,a Garden City

State-Led Transition to a “Garden City”

This material desire to turn Singapore into a developmental state, however, has not meant that it has remained a laggard in environmental issues. Rather, the government incorporated environmental protection goals into its development plan as early as the 1960s. Lee Kuan Yew led these initial environmental campaigns, as in the case of his tree-planting demonstration in 1963. Within a year, the number of newly planted trees increased from 440 in 1962 to 2,668 (Barnard & Heng, 2014, p. 287). Building on this success, the government announced its plan to create a “Green and Clean City” (National Parks Board [NPB], n.d.) and enshrined it in the Environmental Public Health Bill (O’Dempsey, 2014, p. 45). The Public Works Department established a parks and trees unit as a special agency to make Singapore “a city beautiful with flowers and trees” (Barnard & Heng, 2014, p. 289). Since then, imported trees such as rain trees and Angsana have been planted along roadsides, adding a green cover to Singapore’s urban landscape (O’Dempsey, 2014, p. 45). By late 1970, over 55,000 new trees had been planted (National Library Board, n.d.). In 1973, the government launched the Garden City Action Committee for interagency coordination in executing the garden city vision, and by 1980, its operational budget had increased 10-fold (NPB, n.d.). In addition to these measures, the government mobilized the entire society in tree-planting campaigns, involving politicians, bureaucrats, students, grassroots leaders, and residents of public and private housing estates (NPB, n.d.).

This garden city project proceeded together with the country’s introduction of other environmental reforms with institutional and legal aspects (Lye, 2008). The government established an antipollution unit in 1970 and promulgated the Clean Air Act to combat pollution in 1971. The Ministry of the Environment was launched in 1972, making it one of the world’s first environmental ministries with a wide range of mandates encompassing sanitation and public health, waste disposal, and monitoring of pollution and hazardous chemicals (D. Goh, 2001, p. 11). In Asia, this action was second only to Japan, whose environmental agency was installed in 1971 (Sonnenfeld & Mol, 2006, p. 122). Moreover, the government established basic infrastructure to meet its environmental needs, such as the removal of solid waste, as early as the 1980s. The initial environmental efforts under the theme of a garden city thus consisted of tree planting, cleanliness campaigns, environmental resource management, and pollution control (Neo, 2013, pp. 65–66). They helped the country eliminate the use of ozone-depleting materials by 2002 and record the lowest level of water pollution in Asia (Sonnenfeld & Mol, 2006, pp. 119–120).

The Singaporean government also started to express its environmental commitment internationally in the early 1990s. For instance, ambassador Tommy Koh was appointed as chairperson of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro (D. Goh, 2001, p. 11). At this conference, Singapore announced the Singapore Green Plan: Towards a Model Green City, the national goal of becoming an environmentally advanced country by 2000. The plan marked the nation’s first comprehensive proposal that included multiple facets of environmental governance such as green infrastructure, pollution monitoring and control, resources conservation, recycling, education, and technology. It was followed by the Singapore Green Plan Action Programs in 1993, a more detailed program that specified the criteria for designating conservation sites (Neo, 2007, pp. 190–191).

Singapore’s gradual adoption of environmental goals under the plan to create a garden city, environmental institutional reforms, and the international demonstration of its environmental commitment heralded the country’s transition to a greener state. This transition, however, has exhibited some features that highlight the path-dependent influence of the developmental state on the country’s environmental governance.

One of the impacts of the developmental state has been the disproportionate emphasis placed on economic development. This priority has continued to prevail despite the introduction of environmental goals and institutions and has been particularly pronounced when the goals of economic development and environmental protection have competed. The state has granted various development-oriented agencies the authority to exploit nature for military training grounds, public housing, industrial development, infrastructure, and recreation facilities. The promulgation of the Land Acquisition Act in 1966, for instance, gave the Ministry of National Development (MND) the legal authority to acquire land for any residential, commercial, or industrial purposes in the name of public interests. The state’s land inheritance increased to 80% in 1992, without much resistance from society because questioning the government’s land use was equated with disregard for the state’s pursuit of public interests (D. Goh, 2001, p. 13). The Housing and Development Board, an agency in charge of large-scale public housing projects since the 1960s, is another example. Under the total approach to housing from design to construction, the agency seized unpopulated lands such as forests for housing development. At its fastest pace, 21,000 units were built in the span of just 3 years (Housing and Development Board, Singapore, n.d.).

These development-oriented agencies have maintained greater bureaucratic power than has the central environmental agency, given the state’s impetus for economic development. Building economic infrastructure and urban facilities to lay the foundation for the country’s development has triumphed over the call for nature conservation (Ooi, 2002, p. 458). Populated by technocrats, these powerful agencies have made decisions on how to manage the environment for wealth generation. According to a source (Nature Society, Singapore [NSS], 2013, p. 6), this development orientation has resulted in the reduction of the island’s primary forest from some 410 square kilometers during the early 19th century to a mere 2 square kilometers today (see Table 1). While more than 90% of the forest had been cleared as of the early 1880s due to timber harvesting, plantations, and destructive agricultural practices (O’Dempsey, 2014, p. 18; Ooi, 2002, pp. 457–458), the rapid industrialization and urbanization under the post-1965 developmental state led to further degradation. What little pristine forest that has remained has faced fragmentation over time (NSS, 2013, p. 6; O’Dempsey, 2014).

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Table 1.

Forest Loss in Singapore Over the Past 200 Years.

Forest type	Total primeval coverage (km2)	Remaining coverage (km2)	Percentage remaining (%)
Dryland primary forest	410	2.01	0.49
Freshwater swamp forest	74	1.33	1.65
Mangrove forest	87	5.7	6.55

Second, these various development-oriented agencies have adopted technocratic and managerial approaches as an overarching mode of governance for economic development; these have also been applied to the environmental arena. The developmental state and its bureaucratic agencies have continued to perceive nature as an object to be controlled and managed by technocrats under centralized bureaucracies and have adopted a rational, scientific, and managerial approach (Barnard, 2014, pp. 7–8).

The garden city project embodied such a technocratic approach to resolving the negative environmental externalities from rapid economic modernization and urbanization processes (D. Goh, 2001). For instance, the government focused on areas such as tree planting and the development of parks and nature reserves where it could apply centrally orchestrated efforts featuring careful planning and controlled management (Nasir & Turner, 2013, p. 342). The MND, not an environmental agency, has had ultimate oversight in these areas (Ooi, 2002, p. 458). In particular, its NPB, composed of technocrats ranging from architects to landscape engineers, has been in charge of plant selection and placement (Barnard & Heng, 2014, p. 296). Adopting a scientific and managerial approach, these agencies have been able to negate the existence of legislation that protects natural reserves (Ooi, 2002, p. 456).

This approach to environmental governance embodies the ecological modernization theory (Neo, 2013, p. 64), which argues that advanced market capitalism, scientific management, and technological innovation can help states resolve environmental problems (Fischer, 2009; Spaargaren & Mol, 2009). This idea that environmental goals can be reconciled with economic development goals through the advancement of modernization has underpinned the Singaporean government’s approach to environmental governance (Wong, 2012). Lee Kuan Yew acknowledged the importance of planning and management in his 1995 speech at the opening of the National Orchid Garden (NPB, n.d.):

Singapore today is a verdant city, where abundant greenery softens the landscape. This was no accident of nature. It is the result of a deliberate 30-year policy, which required political will and sustained effort to carry out.

Environmental concerns such as ecosystem diversity and climate change that do not generate immediate utilitarian values have not received the state’s attention for a while. Despite being a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity, a legally binding international treaty addressing conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, Singapore has not paid much attention to this particular arena (NSS, 2013, p. 39). Thus far, no authoritative central agency has been developed to coordinate matters of nature conservation (Neo, 2007, p. 189). This environmental domain has been relegated to the margin of the state’s environmental efforts, often left for concerned environmental actors and organizations (Neo, 2007, p. 195; Neo, 2013; Wong, 2012).

In the field of climate change, the country’s upward trend in greenhouse gas emissions (Figure 1) suggests that it should make more conscious efforts not just to adapt but to mitigate. Partially for these reasons, when countries’ environmental impacts are examined based on natural forest loss, habitat conversion, overfishing, fertilizer use, water pollution, carbon emissions, and threatened species in proportion to resource availability per country, Singapore ranks number one (Bradshaw, Giam, & Sodhi, 2010). This finding was also supported by the Environmental Performance Index, which placed Singapore relatively low in climate change and near the bottom in the protection of natural habitats category, while its ranking in more materially relevant environmental areas such as water treatment and water resources surpassed any other state (G. Chua, 2014). OPEN IN VIEWER

This utilitarian framework has been adopted in pursuing the garden city vision as well (H. Goh, 2014). The government has seen the vision as instrumental for the higher level national goal of economic prosperity, believing that the garden city policy will help create an amenable environment for its citizens and foreign capital so that they provide a healthy and economically productive workforce (Savage, 1998, p. 226). The Lee Kuan Yew administration stated that the project would not only raise the morale of Singaporeans and fill them with pride in their improved environmental conditions (K. Lee, 2000, p. 202) but also facilitate the country’s transition from a third-world country to a first-world one. Lee wrote in his memoir that he envisioned making Singapore “an oasis in Southeast Asia” and a “base for business and tours of the region” (NPB, n.d.). This understanding of environmental policy as a subset of national economic goals reflects the state’s utilitarian perspective toward the environment.

State–Society Relationship in Environmental Governance

Another feature of the developmental state discussed in Introduction was the proactive roles that the state and its agencies have played as the guardian of national interests such as rapid modernization and industrialization. Under the model, several bureaucratic agencies and their technocrats have played an interventionist role in all aspects of people’s lives. The traditional roles of the developmental state as the decision maker and society as the subject or target of public policy have been replicated in the state’s interaction with various societal actors in environmental governance. As the state has been considered as the central moral authority in guiding society toward a more prosperous future, its technocratic elites have been empowered to exploit the island’s environment proactively (D. Goh, 2001, p. 25; Neo, 2007, p. 189). State intervention in nature has been legitimized by the claim that the state is acting to safeguard collective interests (Campbell & Marshall, 2002, p. 163; Perry et al., 1997, p. 66), so questioning the government’s authority to utilize the land has been considered unethical or selfish. The state has decided for the nation what the pressing development needs are (Neo, 2007, p. 192). Therefore, any societal demand for conservation has been considered irrational and emotional (Neo, 2007, pp. 188–189), generating a stifling impact on societal participation in environmental policy making. The government has encouraged cooperation with environmentalists from time to time, but only when the latter framed their environmental goals in economic development terms (Barnard & Heng, 2014, p. 302).

In its interaction with civil society, the government has taken on the role of an enlightened shepherd guiding society toward a cleaner and greener future. The government has mobilized people through environmental campaigns and education on antilittering, clean public toilets, dengue fever prevention, waste recycling, clean rivers, and food hygiene under the garden city motto (Neo, 2013, p. 65).The state has seen these environmental activities as a way to promote nationalistic values in its citizenry (Chan & Islam, 2015, p. 181). Environmental textbooks, for instance, have promoted the state’s utilitarian perspective toward the environment, asserting the need to manage the island’s limited resources for national economic interests (Anwar & Sam, 2012; Kwan & Stimpson, 2003; Teo, 2004).

Partially due to this top-down environmental mobilization where non state actors’ roles were confined to mere policy targets (Neo, 2010), the public developed a narrow understanding of nature. According to a study conducted in 1999, many Singaporeans felt little affinity with nature, as they were familiar with it only in the form of parks and gardens. They have been educated to accept the state-directed utilitarian discourse that nature needs to be utilized for economic and human needs (H. Goh, 2014, p. 246).

However, Singapore has witnessed the rise of environmental civil society over the course of its transition into a more prosperous nation. Organizations such as environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs) expanded their space by using the leadership transition from Lee Kuan Yew to Goh Chok Tong in 1990 as a window of opportunity as the latter presented a vision of a “kinder, gentler society” (Neo, 2007, p. 195). Since then, ENGOs have engaged in environmental protection and conservation campaigns, dealing with major issues such as environmental degradation, destruction of wetlands, and deforestation (D. Goh, 2001, pp. 9–10). As of today, Singapore has more than 35 ENGOs and international organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund (Ministry of Communications and Information, Singapore, n.d.).

NSS is one such NGO that has boosted its visibility. NSS was established as a branch of the Malayan Nature Society in 1954 and later became independent (D. Goh, 2001, p. 14). Composed of specialists such as ecologists and botanists (Hobson, 2005, p. 163), NSS has lobbied against the destruction of the nation’s biodiversity and has gained some policy influence over the years (p. 169). For instance, it published the Master Plan for the Conservation of Nature in Singapore (hereinafter, the Master Plan), which affected the government’s decision to designate conservation sites (D. Goh, 2001, p. 15). Some of the policy recommendations of NSS were incorporated into the Green Plans announced by the government in the 1990s.

NSS has led a series of high-profile environmental movements. For instance, when the Public Utilities Board, the national water agency, decided to clear 123.8 ha of rainforest to build a golf course in early 1992, NSS released its independently conducted environmental impact assessment (EIA) report to the public to raise their environmental awareness and urged the government to consider the project’s potential negative consequences (D. Goh, 2001, pp. 16–17). As this activism led to the government shelving the plan, the organizational capacity of NSS grew, with its membership expanding from 1,000 in 1990 to 2,200 in 1998 (p. 21).

However, not all activism by the environmental civil society has been successful, as the developmental state and its development impetus have continued to prevail vis-à-vis environmental conservation goals, as illustrated by the Senoko case. Senoko was a nesting site for more than 180 species of bird, including two internationally and 19 locally endangered species (Neo, 2007, p. 196). This ecological value made Senoko a five-star conservation area in NSS’s Master Plan. Acknowledging these values, the Singaporean government and Urban Development Authority promised to conserve this area as a nature park, a pledge confirmed by the MND in October 1992. However, a year later, the government reversed its promise by announcing a plan to develop the area to meet rising housing needs. The NSS wrote an appeal letter and mobilized approximately 25,000 people under the name of “Friends of Senoko.” Although the movement mobilized prominent public figures such as Tommy Koh, Senoko was bulldozed to make way for 17,000 housing units (Neo, 2007, p. 196). This case illustrated the state’s ability to implement its overriding development policies despite strong opposition from society (Chan & Islam, 2015, p. 181; Neo, 2007). As Neo (2007, p. 197) puts it, this case suggests how the “hegemonic developmentalist ethos of the Singapore state is difficult to supplant” despite non state actors’ “fight against the continuing decimation of natural sites to secure a sense of place” (p. 187).

More recently, the Singaporean government has introduced elements of participatory policy making to accommodate the increasingly diversifying ideas and needs of societal entities. For instance, the government established the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Sustainable Development, in which officials from various departments hold consultative forums with nongovernmental actors. However, non state actors do not enjoy institutionalized and routinized outlets for political and public action. In a politically controlled regime context, ENGOs, like other social organizations, opt to expand their policy influence through complementing the state’s environmental programs and environmental service delivery rather than through challenging the state’s vision of an efficient, sustainable, and clean Singapore (Hobson, 2005). Therefore, they remain marginal as targets of state-led environmental policy.

Continuous Journey to a “City in a Garden”

This story of Singapore’s transition to a green state under the garden city vision illustrates how the country’s development trajectory has generated various path-dependent impacts on its environmental governance. The Singaporean government has continued to initiate a series of ambitious environmental programs. Recent environmental policy outputs include ensuring 70% of morning commuters use public transportation by 2020 (up from 59% in 2008), ensuring 80% of buildings meet Singapore’s “Green Mark Certified” energy efficiency standards by 2030, and expanding park space by more than a quarter from 3,300 to 4,200 hectares by 2020. These ambitious programs, however, reflect the state’s continuous positioning of environmental governance within broader economic and technological development domains and its preference for applying a managerial and planning approach.

For instance, as part of its plan to increase public transportation utilization and create a car-lite city, the government proposed the Cross Island Line (CIL) in early 2013, with the Land Transport Agency (LTA) as one of the lead agencies in its design and implementation. This line, however, would pass through the southern section of the Central Catchment Nature Reserve (Figure 2), one of the last and only extensive patches of Singapore’s primary and mature secondary forests. OPEN IN VIEWER

As this public transportation development plan could clash with the goal of protecting the natural environment, it raised concern within civil society (Tan, 2016). ENGOs such as NSS argued that various activities related to this new railway construction such as soil investigation and engineering works would likely degrade one of the oldest pristine forests and rainforest stream systems, which has served as a natural animal habitat for hundreds of years. While the CIL will be an underground railway, its construction will entail the transformation of the surface, which is likely to result in clearing of forest, compaction of soil along the length of the railway, toxic material spillage, erosion, and siltation due to excavations, leading to serious damage to, if not complete loss of, a pristine ecosystem (NSS, 2013).

Environmental organizations and activists argued that Singapore’s continuous forest loss and resultant diversity degradation go against the government’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan announced in 2009 as the blueprint for biodiversity conservation (NPB, 2015a). NSS has also maintained that the LTA’s exploitation of the nature reserve for infrastructure development purposes is

against the spirit and intention of the both the Parks and Trees Act and National Parks Board Act and, more importantly, runs counter to public trust doctrine that holds that the government has an obligation to hold and use public land on trust for the citizens and that it has a moral, if not fiduciary, duty to use land in accordance with its intended purpose. (NSS, 2013)

In response, the LTA consulted NSS and environmental activists for feedback during its preparations for Singapore’s first EIA for rail development and proposed deliberative measures such as focus groups. In February 2016, the government released the project’s EIA report, which foresees a moderate impact, and announced a plan to modify the scope of the investigation works to reduce any environmental impact (Zhu & Othman, 2016). Whether the LTA will engage the environmental civil society in making a final decision remains to be seen. However, this project, proposed by development-oriented bureaucracies, evidences the government’s continuous support for conventional infrastructure development and the promotion of environmental goals (such as reduction of carbon emissions) as an attachment to broader economic development projects.

While Singapore’s pristine natural environment has been subject to development and is likely to be undermined by future projects such as the CIL, the government has made deliberate efforts to build more gardens and parks to offset any losses. Government agencies such as the Singapore Botanic Gardens and NPB under the MND have led this endeavor (Barnard & Heng, 2014, pp. 282–283) based on the government’s traditional approach of maintaining a hierarchy of parks and gardens (Ooi, 2002, p. 459).

The state has continued to promote green spaces under the “City in a Garden” plan since late 2011. As a concept that succeeds the garden city policy, it aims to surround Singaporean homes with greenery and biodiversity so that people can enjoy an island wide network of parks, nature areas, streetscapes, and park connectors (Barnard & Heng, 2014, p. 302). For instance, the Gardens by the Bay project completed in 2012 at the 101-hectare heart of Singapore’s new downtown marks yet another landmark for the city-state. The government has also internationally marketed its image as a city in a garden. For example, Singapore obtained the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage inscription for its Botanic Gardens in 2014 after several years of preparation (Singapore Botanic Gardens, n.d.).

Overall, these recent greening programs have led to the expansion of green spaces (Table 2). For instance, the number of parks increased from 13 in 1975 to 330 as of March 2014, and the total area reserved for parks and green spaces increased from 879 ha to 9,707 ha within the same period (NPB, 2015b). Other achievements in green infrastructure development include the incorporation of 170 public housing blocks and 130 buildings into the Green Mark Incentive Scheme (Ministry of Environment and Water Resources and Ministry of National Development, 2014, p. 12), the state-designed rating tool to evaluate the greenness of the built environment. This quantitative growth in green spaces and infrastructure confirms the idea that top-down planning and management can generate highly visible policy outputs through the concentration of authority and resources. This growth also suggests the government’s lop-sided attention to the kinds of environmental projects with utilitarian values.

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Table 2.

Green Spaces in Singapore.

	2009	2013
Amount of skyrise greenery (ha)	10	61
Amount of green space (ha)	3,602	4,040
Length of park connectors (km)	113	216
Amount of water bodies open for recreational activity (ha)	650	959
Length of waterways open for recreational activity (km)	72	93

These policy outputs have given the country a reputation as “one of the greenest urban centers in Asia” (Barnard, 2014, p. 1). In 2011, the Siemens-Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Singapore as Asia’s greenest city (Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources and Ministry of National Development, 2014, p. 9). The Asian Green City Index placed Singapore at the very top in 2011 among approximately 20 major Asian cities (Wong, 2012, p. 109). The government is proud of the fact that its journey toward sustainability began as early as the 1960s even “before it was fashionable to be green,” and attributes its achievements to its visionary leadership and careful, long-term planning. As for the public, in a survey of 2000 Singaporeans conducted in early 2014, more than 80% of respondents viewed Singapore as a liveable and sustainable place (Ministry of Environment and Water Resources and Ministry of National Development, 2014, pp. 9–10). Singapore’s environmental conditions today also stand in stark contrast with many other Asian countries, in which environmental degradation continues to worsen (Beeson, 2010).

Critics, however, argue that the government’s green projects, such as making more gardens and transplanting trees under the garden city motto, are mere beautification programs rather than a genuine form of environmental protection in that the greenery is neither natural nor spontaneous as it has been the product of deliberate government intervention (Barnard & Heng, 2014, p. 281). One environmentalist was quoted as saying, “I think it’s ridiculous that they even count roadside trees and pretty parks and say that oh, this is the amount of green, amount of nature we have. I mean, that’s development not conservation, right?” The chief executive officer of the NPB admits that Singapore’s garden city is a “human construct” in that the gardens and parks are different from native habitats that have been left relatively untouched by development (Neo, 2007, p. 190).

This continuous journey of Singapore from garden city to the City in a Garden policy suggests that the state has disciplined and manipulated nature to the point where state control and environmental protection have become too tightly integrated to be separated (Barnard & Heng, 2014, p. 283). While gardens and parks have been promoted as a symbol of the state’s environmental stewardship domestically and internationally, these artifacts reflect the state’s utilitarian environmental perspective that nature can be controlled through proper planning and management and with the use of technology and science. This state-led green transition process has not fully engaged the society. Rather, the state retains its authority to impose its own environmental vision upon society.