<
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-10-09/singapore-is-saving-50-billion-in-real-estate-from-rising-seas-climate-change>
"During a half-century of independence, Singapore has fought to expand its
territory, inch by hard-won inch. On the tip of the Malaysian peninsula, the
island city-state piled up sand to expand its coastline and reclaim land from
the sea.
In that time, Singapore has grown by one-quarter, adding landmass more than
twice the size of Manhattan. At 284 square miles, Singapore is now approaching
the size of all five boroughs of New York City. It plans to grow an additional
4% by 2030. It’s a striking accomplishment, given that many other coasts are
receding because of rising sea levels, a result of climate change.
“We are not planning to lose any inch of land permanently,” says Ho Chai Teck,
a deputy director at PUB, the government agency coordinating the effort to save
the nation’s shores. “Singapore will build a continuous line of defense along
our entire coast. This is something that we take very seriously.”
Roughly one-third of Singapore is less than 16 feet above sea level, low enough
for flooding to cause punishing financial losses. Some of its most prized
property sits on vulnerable land: the skyscrapers overlooking the Marina Bay
waterfront, known for its luxury mall and casino, and the towers that house
giant banks such as Singapore-based DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Southeast Asia’s
largest, and UK-based Standard Chartered Plc.
Assuming 1.5C of warming, prime real estate in the city worth S$70 billion ($50
billion) faces a high risk of flooding, according to Bloomberg estimates using
data from real estate company CBRE Group Inc. Another endangered, and vital,
part of the country is Jurong Island, where Shell Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp.
have oil and petrochemical operations.
“You’ve got small island nations, but they don’t have this much economic
wealth,” says Benjamin Horton, a professor at Nanyang Technological University
in Singapore who studies sea-level change. “The actual value of every square
meter in Singapore is off the charts. This is a country more susceptible to
sea-level rise than virtually any country in the world.”
In 2019, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that Singapore would need to spend
S$100 billion over the next 100 years to protect against rising sea levels. The
government has since put S$5 billion toward a coastal and flood protection
fund. “Both the Singapore Armed Forces and climate change defenses are
existential,” he said then. “These are life-and-death matters. Everything else
must bend at the knee to safeguard the existence of our island nation.”"
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-education-girls-crime-uk-ocean-conservation-new-zealand/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
