Forum: Some balance needed in western island reclamation and preserving marine biodiversity
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As a marine biologist, I find the land reclamation project of several southern islands to create a new “western island” recently announced at the National Day Rally striking because of its scale and location.
A large part of the sea in the Singapore Strait will be converted into a massive land mass, obliterating small islands within and completely burying rich marine habitats such as coral reef, mangrove and seagrass.
If this had happened before the mid-1990s, no one would have raised an eyebrow. From the late 1990s, some development agencies started commissioning impact assessment studies and adopted mitigation measures to minimise habitat degradation. In the following decade, the National Parks Board was given the authority to protect and conserve Singapore’s marine biodiversity.
The development of the Semakau landfill showed that development and nature can coexist.
Pre-development considerations included protection of the island’s western reef using sediment screens. The loss of a section of Semakau’s mature mangrove forest was mitigated by restoring two nearby sites with mangrove saplings, which have today developed into healthy forests.
The establishment of the Sister’s Islands Marine Park in 2014 also emphasised Singapore’s commitment to marine biodiversity protection.
Today, while we understand the need for development for the western island project, is the destruction of marine natural heritage unavoidable? If the habitats must be obliterated, how do we affirm our commitment to sustainable development?
I am confident that we have the capacity to address the situation.
For a project of such scale, conducting a comprehensive environmental impact assessment (EIA) will be important. It must go beyond assessing what is presently in the area and species of conservation value, and account for ecosystem services benefits and heritage value that will be lost. A more realistic valuation will help when considering trade-offs.
A large volume of the sea will also disappear. As marine life occupies all levels of the water column, measuring the impact on marine life based solely on the reclamation area is a poor underestimate of the space lost to swimming species.
All other options should be explored first. Is it possible to have an island of the same area but shaped to avoid burying these habitats? Can the island’s boundary be irregular like natural shorelines?
If the reclamation must destroy natural habitats, then a second option is restoration.
For restoration and nature-based solutions to be effective, we need to rethink seawalls. Instead of a single seawall, we need multiple lines of defence in the sea beyond that first seawall, including a hard outermost structure to deflect or buffer incoming waves. This will create sheltered conditions and provide opportunities for shallow lagoons or large tidal pools to form that can support regenerated seagrass and mangrove habitats.
Such interventions are costly, but the marine ecosystem benefits from the restored habitats.
For the longer term, a strategic marine spatial plan that includes biodiversity distribution will be useful to decision makers so that restoration initiatives can be implemented in places that are unlikely to be developed.
There are numerous project-based EIA reports currently undertaken by different agencies. Integrating the information gathered along with past published data, including that of the Comprehensive Marine Biodiversity Survey, can provide a robust database that will go towards supporting a strategic EIA.
Chou Loke Ming
