Singapore's second nature park network, in the northern coastal areas, attests to the need to expand the country's ecological space and help balance the effects of urbanisation on the physical and mental well-being of citizens. Singaporeans should use the park network so as to make the project socially worthwhile. It is, indeed, an ambitious project. More than 400ha of wetlands, marshes, nature parks and eco-corridors along the northern coast, which include Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, the Kranji Marshes and the upcoming Mandai Mangrove and Mudflat Nature Park, have collectively become Singapore's second nature park network. The Sungei Buloh Nature Park Network will complement the country's first nature park network, the 2,500ha Central Nature Park Network that protects rainforest habitats around and within the Bukit Timah and Central Catchment nature reserves.

The second nature park network is the latest manifestation of a greening journey that can be traced back at least to the first nationwide tree planting campaign in 1963 here. That campaign recognised that Singapore's economic development, which required massive industrialisation and urbanisation, would also need to be balanced by the enhancement of its ecological ambience because by doing so, it would help make life and work in a concrete city psychologically pleasurable and significantly more bearable.