The Singapore Green Plan 2030, which has just been released, offers an ambitious blueprint for taking the country to its next phase of environmental development, akin to the economic plans that accelerated Singapore's economic development in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, the plan has a strong economic component. The quest for a green economy - one of five key pillars of the plan - seeks to harness ecological sustainability as a competitive advantage.

Thus, new jobs and the transformation of industries will answer to the overall quest for a green nation, an aim that entails ensuring that new carbon-intensive investments which are brought into Singapore are among the best in class in terms of carbon and energy efficiency. Climate-change denial causes nations to shy away from making difficult ecological choices. The opposite is true of this plan, which embraces the reality of a changing environment and seeks to make the most of it. Hence, in spite of competition from other like-minded economies and their environmental pursuits, Singapore could be a hub for green finance and the issuance of sustainability-themed securities because of its resilient banking sector and large asset management sector.