Ecology: Waste management and environmental sustainability in Singapore

Singaporeans are generally fortunate relative to our regional neighbours in the sense that we can breathe clean air and enjoy green spaces. The number of private vehicles on the roads is limited by expensive prices and even more exorbitant prices of COEs, thus ensuring good air quality.

The state puts lots of effort into waste management and sustainable development.

Singapore has just opened the Marina Barrage, the first city reservoir. It is a model of sustainable development. The nation stands to be completely self sufficient in water. Other than increasing the nation’s water supply, Singapore's largest solar park, at 1,200 sq m or about a third the size of a football field, is also there - with 405 solar panels generating 'green' power for the facility. Grass on the roof also helps to lower the building’s temperature so that less energy is used.

To cater to the increasing waste of Singaporeans, in 1999, a $1.3 billion offshore landfill was created by joining Pulau Semakau to Pulau Sakeng with rock bunds. The dumping ground covers an area of 350 hectares and has a capacity of 63 million cubic metres. Rubbish is taken by barge out to sea and spread over 840 football fields, and piled three storeys high.

During the construction of the landfill, effort was made to protect the marine ecosystem, especially mangroves and corals. 13 hectares of mangroves were replanted to replace those removed during construction of the bund. However, one wonders if quick-fix replanting can actually compensate for untouched thousands-year-old mangroves. Wildlife continues to thrive on Pulau Semakau, and the air and water quality remains good. In 2005, the island was opened to the public for nature-related recreational activities such as bird-watching and intertidal walks. Next week, its green technologies such as solar energy and algae farming will be showcased at the International Solid Waste Association’s annual congress here.

However, communities on the islands were driven out and their way of lives destroyed. Pulau Sakeng used to be the location of a sea village (kampong laut) inclusive of several shops catering to islanders and visitors. The village was built largely on stilts over a reef flat. Most of the villagers were subsistence fishers, making a living off the nearby reefs. Pulau Semakau housed a slightly smaller community. One of the oldest residents continued to live on the island even after the settlers were relocated to mainland. He eventually moved out as well, as the jetty fell into disrepair. As we can see, the actions of the mainland population have affected the communities on the islands.

Waste management fails to address the problem of the average Singaporean throws away about 1.1 kg of solid waste a day, a figure that is one of the highest in the world. It is a four-fold increase over the last 20 years, a situation created by our consumption culture that comes with economic development.

Despite the presence of environment interest groups such as Earthlink in NTU and the Nature Society, Singaporeans are generally insouciant to the plight of deteriorating environment. According to the National Environment Agency the Singaporean uses an average of 600 plastic bags annually. Recently going ‘green’ has become fashionable. Corporations have superficial, ineffective green campaigns that only last for a limited period of time to encourage Singaporeans to be environmentally friendly. For example, during my work stint in media company MediaCorp this year, they launched a month-long green initiative Saving Gaia. While the company exhorted the public to go green, the board members continued driving their fuel-guzzling SUVs and other big cars. Also, Singapore’s largest supermarket chain NTUC Fairprice dedicates every Wednesday to being Bring Your Own Bag Day. It is however a mere half-hearted effort as plastic bags can still be bought at a paltry 10 cents each. This is ineffective in stamping out the use of plastic bags. Food courts now charge 20 cents for the plastic container for take-outs which may cost less than $3, and patrons simply pay up.

One also observes in the neighbourhood that recycling is done with disregard to human safety and in relation to poverty. Low-income and elderly karung guni (rag-and-bone) people sieve through dustbins to find items that can be recycled. They are exposed to batteries filled acid, plastics that release toxins and bacteria-laden decomposing food items.

References

Ang Keng Hong Phillip. 8 March 2008, “Curbing plastic bag usage: FairPrice, please copy Ikea”, The Straits Times, http://www.straitstimes.com/print/ST%2BForum/Online%2BStory/STIStory_214442.html

APEC-ISTI. September 2008, “Environmental Technology in Singapore – A Country Study”, http://www.apec-isti.org/isti/abridge/sgz/zsgzenv.htm

Liaw Wy-Cin. 1 November 2008, “First city reservoir opens”, The Straits Times, http://www.straitstimes.com/Prime+News/Story/STIStory_297019.html?sunwMethod=GET

Wild Singapore. “Pulau Semakau” http://www.wildsingapore.com/places/semakau.htm

Technology: Technology controls our lives

The advent of information technology (IT) has affected society on an immense scale. On an inter-personal level, social relations have been greatly affected. For example, in the past, to send birthday wishes one would send dedicated birthday cards or at least make a phone call. With the arrival of Facebook and mobile phone texting, wishes are not as sincere anymore as they are easily dispensed with the click of the mouse or typing of the keyboard. Going online to chat with friends and to read blogs every night is a ritual among people my age. No doubt it is a way to keep in touch with many friends at once with this new found interconnectedness, but it also means that those who do not subscribe to technology are neglected and forgotten. IT may reduce social isolation for people in rural areas, with prospects of opening a world of global contacts and new relationships. It is however, also isolating because people now maintain virtual friendships in virtual communities from the confines of their rooms.

The Internet, an invention of humans, has turned into the inventor – today we have come to rely on the Internet to programme our social behavior. People depend on it as the solution to their everyday lives. Find an answer on Google. Find instant love with an account and profile – it is why the online dating industry is booming. Get a coveted job by buying a degree for US$50 and you can get a prestigious certificate from a university of your choice, if online advertisements are to be believed. Morals have also been altered. Take Google’s new Mail Goggles for example. It restrains one from sending off angry or embarrassing emails and regretting it later by flashing five mathematical sums which he has to answer before the email gets sent. This points to the diminishing of good old-fashioned self-control and self-respect for others.

Governments around the world recognize that computing power is global power. Technology has also become an important tool for economic reasons, and for elites to maintain their position of authority.

One observes that the Singapore state has many investment stakes in the Asian telecommunications industries. This is because with the world becoming increasingly wired, lots of money can be made in providing communication services. SingTel has stakes in mobile companies in Thailand, India, the Philippines, Australia and Pakistan among others; and SingTel’s parent company is Temasek Holdings, which the sovereign wealth fund of the Singapore state.

In North Korea, the authoritarian communist regime utilizes television and radio as a means to maintain its position of power, and to repress and indoctrinate the population with propaganda. All domestic radio and television are controlled by the state. Radio and television receivers are locked to government-specified frequencies. Content is supplied almost entirely by the official Korean Central News Agency, which fawns daily coverage of “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il. The country’s poverty or famines are never mentioned. After a deadly munitions train explosion in April 2004 in Ryongchon, the KCNA reported that citizens displayed the “spirit of guarding the leader with their very lives” by rushing into burning buildings to save portraits of Kim before searching for family members. The international press was barred from the scene, where more than 150 died and thousands were injured.

Technology is also a means of maintaining inequality. As power lies more in information and knowledge, and less in production, large multinational corporations produce designs, programmes, patents and copyrights that allow them to direct and profit from the production in developing countries. This allows for the immense proliferation of wealth of MNCs while developing countries languish in poverty because cheap labour is exploited by the power elite.

References

Committee to Protect Journalists. 2 May 2006, “North Korea tops CPJ list of ’10 Most Censored Countries’ ”, http://www.cpj.org/censored/index.html

Tan Weizhen. 27 October 2008, “Is the Net minding your manners?”, The Straits Times, pg B10, Singapore Press Holdings

Population and Health: Healthcare in Singapore

In Singapore, the state plays a huge role in healthcare. The underlying rationale for healthcare in Singapore is economic rationality. Because Singapore’s only “natural resource” are its people, the state needs its people to stay healthy and to join (and stay in as long as possible) the workforce and to power its economy.

There is a top-down management of healthcare in Singapore. In primary school, Health Education as a subject is taught to children. Children are taught to eat a balanced diet, exercise regularly and avoid tobacco. There are compulsory Physical Education lessons, and obesity and underweight among students are managed respectively. The National Physical Fitness Award (NAPFA) test was introduced in schools in 1982 at the secondary and pre-university levels and in 1992 at the primary level as an indicator of fitness levels of students. When males reach the age of 18, they are drafted into the defence forces where they will undergo more physical training. In new towns, there are community centres which have gyms and badminton, basketball, and football courts among other sports facilities. In its battle against smoking, the state bans targets to eventually implement a near-blanket ban on smoking in public places, and cigarette packaging in Singapore has mandatory pictures that show graphic images of a cancerous lung, for example.

The state also has imposed the Central Provident Fund act on working adults such that they set aside 20% of their monthly salary. The money accumulated can be used for hospitalization and withdrawn in old age. This creates a self dependency among the population for their health needs.

From the Sernau reading this week, “an ironic relationship exists between health and population: The sickest populations… have the highest rates of population growth. As a result, seeing each person as unique, precious, and worthy of great investments of time and money goes hand in hand with slowing population growth”. This can be observed in the 1960s. The state implemented the stop-at-two policy in order to curb the rapidly expanding population when there was polio, tuberculosis and cholera, and the state also introduced vaccines. These diseases have been eradicated since then. Shifting the population into HDB flats was also a huge step in improving the health standards because squatter settlements were a breeding ground for diseases.

The healthcare system in Singapore also demonstrates the class inequality that exists. Private (and better) healthcare is available only to the wealthy, while the middle and working class are able to afford public healthcare. If one goes to observe the polyclinics in the heartlands, a long queue of elderly people starts forming even before the opening time to obtain cheap healthcare. On the other hand, private hospitals are situated near the upper class districts to cater to them – Mount Alvernia Hospital at Lornie Road, Mount Elizabeth at Orchard Road, Gleneagles Hospital at Napier Road.

With globalization, we also see the proliferation of health products. Multinational gym companies such as California Fitness have set up branches in Singapore. These are actually reactions to the modern lifestyles of sedentary jobs and fast-food diets, which are products of globalization and capitalism. Health products are also enhanced by the media, which often expounds the image of slim people as beautiful people.

In the field of palliative healthcare, more specifically on the talk of legalizing euthanasia here, a reason cited during feedback sessions with public has been “financial burden”. It is perhaps a veiled protest against the high costs of healthcare. Rather, I feel it reflects how morals in society have degenerated with the spread of capitalism. Everything has an economic value placed on it – old and disabled people are perceived as de-valued because they are expensive to take care of.

References

Agence France Presse. 9 March 2005, “Singapore to extend smoking ban to pubs, bus shelters”, http://www.singapore-window.org/sw05/050309a2.htm

Khalik, Salma. 22 October 2008, “Euthanasia law: Let’s take it slow and easy”, The Straits Times, pg A2, Singapore Press Holdings

Urbanization: Urbanization in Singapore with the focus on housing

When Singapore became independent in Singapore in 1965, the state embarked on an economic programme of industrialization. Urbanization and its public housing policy was the main means to accomplish this. Farming was seen as having low value and removed, and the population was moved into Housing Development Board flats to pressure them to work in wage-paying jobs, instead of being able to rely on their families’ welfare, and so as to pay off their house installments. The arrival of new towns meant the arrival of the now standard spatial separation between places of work leisure and home. About 90% of the population lives in HDB flats today.

Established settlements which had to be demolished in order to make land available for new housing estates were justified by an ideology that ‘land is scarce’ in Singapore. Communities of urban squatters or semi-rural villages tended to be racially homogenous, for example Malay kampongs or Chinese shophouses. Destruction of these estates meant the destruction of ‘racial’ residential areas and their attendant cultural practices (Chua and Kuo, 1995). The dispersions have the worst consequences for minority groups. Since quotas for each of the three races for each HDB block are controlled, this deprives minority groups of certain social supports that can be fulfilled by their respective members. For example, working Malay Muslim parents find it difficult to entrust childcare responsibilities to non-Malays because of stringent rules on food and gender relations. But this is justified by the state’s interest to encourage inter-racial understanding.

As with other urbanized countries, we can also observe the class inequality in different urbanized areas of Singapore.

Although HDB flats look similar from the outside, if one looks within the blocks, different estates house different types of residents. Chinatown, more specifically Kreta Ayer, though beside the Central Business District, retains its population of elderly and poor people, setting a contrast. I also see similar circumstances of destitution in Tiong Bahru, Whampoa and Kallang. Along Kallang River, there are even vagrants who sleep on benches and bathe in public toilets.

One also observes that the best schools which cater to a lot of the upper class are situated in the Bukit Timah area, while neighbourhood schools are located in the heartlands and cater to the middle and working classes’ children’s educational needs, further exemplifying the concept of core and periphery.

A characteristic of urbanization is the immigration of people from the rural areas to the city. In Singapore’s case, foreigners come to Singapore to work. Expatriates are treated with envy and resentment, while blue-collar workers from South Asia are looked down on.

Foreign workers usually live in dormitories in industrial areas such as Tuas, Woodlands and Kaki Bukit. But in September, the Government’s plan to site a dormitory for foreign workers in the private estate of Serangoon Gardens caused a major furore among its residents. They described the move as one that will “create security and social problems and spoil the ambience of the estate” and petitioned to protest against the plan. In the end, the state compromised by giving the dormitory space to male and female workers from the manufacturing and service industries rather than the construction sector, and constructing a $2-million road that is away from the estate. This shows Singaporeans’ intolerance for blue collar workers. Even though Singaporeans know they are needed to build our houses and roads, they prefer to be ignorant when it comes to providing shelter, a basic human necessity, for these people.

References

Chua Beng Huat and Eddie Kuo. 1995 “The Making of a New Nation: Cultural Construction and National Identity”, in Chua Beng Huat, Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore. London: Routledge, pp 114

Lim, Lydia. 7 September 2008, “Why I did not sign the petition”, The Sunday Times, pg 4, Singapore Press Holdings

Tan Dawn Wei. 12 October 2008, “The ‘Them And Us’ Divide”, The Sunday Times, pg 27, Singapore Press Holdings