Transforming Singapore into a City in Nature: President Tharman Shanmugaratnam's Speech At The Festival Of Biodiversity On 25 May 2024

Minister Desmond Lee

Ms Hwang Yu-Ning, Chief Executive Officer, NParks

Partners from the Biodiversity Roundtable, community stakeholders, friends

Everyone else who is here for this year’s Festival of Biodiversity

1.  It is a pleasure to join you all this morning.

2.  I last attended the Festival in 2016, when I was in Government, and it’s great to return and see how it has grown so significantly, with many more partners and contributors.

3.  And many more initiatives being presented - many more efforts to discover, record, understand and preserve Singapore’s precious biodiversity.

4.  Singapore is indeed making good progress in protecting and restoring its biodiversity - and the ecosystems that support biodiversity.

   1.  Guided by the Nature Conservation Masterplan (NCMP), over 40 hectares of forest, marine and coastal habitats have been restored and enhanced since 2020, and we intend to double this to 80 hectares by 2030.

   2.  We are establishing networks of nature parks around our nature reserves that provide complementary habitats for biodiversity. And we are safeguarding our marine habitats – just earlier this month, the Government announced plans to designate the southern part of Lazarus Island and the reef off Kusu Island as Singapore’s second marine park.

   3. Besides our parks and nature parks, we are also establishing nature corridors to strengthen island-wide ecological connectivity.

Successes in species recovery

5.  These habitats are home to Singapore’s rich trove of biodiversity, which comes as a surprise to some, given our small size.

   1.  For example, we are home to more than 2,000 plant species, over 400 bird species, over 300 butterfly species, around 65 mammals and 35 true mangrove species.

   2. Over the years, we have also discovered new animal and plant species and even rediscovered some that were previously thought to be extinct.

6.  I want to highlight especially the successes we are seeing from NParks’ Species Recovery Programme - protecting rare or threatened native flora and fauna species and helping them survive environmental changes. We have implemented species recovery plans for over 80 plant species and over 40 animal species through this programme.

7.  In particular, we have had several successes in conserving endemic species, in other words those that are only found here and nowhere else in the world.

   1.  An important example is freshwater crabs. NParks has successfully carried out ex-situ conservation – in other words breeding outside of their natural habitat – for all three of Singapore’s endemic freshwater crabs. The three species are found only in freshwater streams in Singapore, and are amongst the rarest crabs in the world.

   2.  NParks managed to breed the critically endangered Singapore Freshwater Crab (Johora singaporensis) and Swamp Forest Crab (Parathelphusa reticulata) in captivity and released their offspring back into the wild to boost their fragile population.

   3. It’s quite an achievement by the NParks team, and more difficult than one might think. It is never easy to get crabs to breed in captivity, and in particular to get the first generation of offspring, themselves born in captivity, to breed and give us a second generation. I haven’t myself looked into the reasons for this, and can only assume that they get too crabby in captivity.  

   4.  Our third endemic freshwater crab, the Johnson’s Freshwater Crab (Irmengardia johnsoni), is also being successfully conserved. NParks has managed to produce over 300 crablets of the Johnson’s Freshwater Crab in captivity. More than half of these first-generation offspring have since been released into the wild.

8.  There is something else worth appreciating about freshwater crabs, that is a part of biodiversity’s secrets. Freshwater crabs perform a useful role in recycling nutrients. They break down leaf litter and small animals’ remains into smaller parts, which quickens their decomposition into mineral nutrients in the freshwater stream ecosystem. The nutrients in turn help sustain plants and algae in the food web.

A new and greatly expanded edition of the Singapore Red Data Book

9. While we press on with these efforts, we also continue to strive for a deeper understanding of our biodiversity, which is itself critical in guiding our conservation approach.

10. So I am happy today to launch the third edition of the Singapore Red Data Book.

    1.  This book details the national conservation status of the algae, fungi, plant, and animal species of Singapore.

    2.  Over 9,400 species have been compiled in the third edition, more than three times that of the previous edition published in 2008.

    3.  The book also features detailed write-ups on selected species and ongoing efforts to conserve them.

    4.  This is the fruit of many years of work by 130 contributors across the government, academia and civil society.

    5.  Most importantly, the Singapore Red Data Book provides a common reference point for all stakeholders, and will be a key tool in guiding nature conservation strategies across Singapore.

Sowing the seeds of stewardship

11.  No effort in conserving our biodiversity is too small.  

    1.  Much like this Festival, at the very root of our efforts to conserve Singapore’s natural heritage is the work of members of the community.

12.  It also starts with the young. So we are happy to recognise this year’s winners of the Community in Nature (CIN) Schools Award, which received a record 70 nominations for this edition. In fact, one of the winning efforts involved preschoolers as young as three years old.

    1.     These young nature stewards have taken on the mantle of biodiversity conservation in their own ways. They went on nature walks within their school gardens, made their own eco-friendly pesticide, and raised funds for their schools’ green initiatives.

    2.  This year’s “Student of the Year” winners are Tiffany Chu and Poon Xi Song, age 15 and 14 respectively, from Yusof Ishak Secondary School. They embarked on a journey of documenting the biodiversity found in the school’s campus itself. Despite not being able to distinguish certain shades of colour, Xi Song had the help of Tiffany – and they found 50 species of plants and 70 species of animals, which will be compiled into a book.

    3.     My commendations to Mee Toh School too, which won the “School of the Year” award. The primary school developed an interdisciplinary biodiversity programme. Students were taught the names of different species in their Mother Tongue languages, got to debate the issue of urban wildlife that ‘visits’ residential estates in their English classes, learnt to build ‘Fauna Hotels’ with upcycled materials for pollinators (like bees) in their art classes, and how to programme a sensor and incorporate it into the ‘hotels’ for data collection or to initiate feeding of fauna.

13.  I look forward to presenting the Community in Nature Schools awards shortly, and hope that they will inspire more Singaporeans to take that first step, no matter how small, in their own conservation journey.

Conclusion

14.  Over the next two days, I hope as many people take the time to learn more about the rich array of biodiversity we have in Singapore by visiting the various booths, workshops and talks at this year’s Festival.

15.  I encourage everyone to join us in our journey to transform Singapore into a City in Nature – whether as a Community in Nature volunteer, contributing to biodiversity surveys as a citizen scientist, or spearheading City in Nature initiatives in your own, various capacities.

16.  Thank you, and I wish you all a rewarding time at the Festival of Biodiversity.