Climate battle can be fought with nature's help: DPM

Nature is not, and cannot be, a passive victim of economic development, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said yesterday.

Not only does nature help make city life more liveable, but it can also contribute to mankind's fight against climate change, he said, urging delegates gathered at the Ecosperity Week sustainability conference to take a fresh perspective on the natural environment.

The three-day conference is convened by Singapore's Temasek for policymakers, investors, non-government groups and businesses, and is being held in a hybrid format, with some attendees gathered at Marina Bay Sands.

"While we must continue with our global effort to reduce carbon emissions, decarbonisation alone would not be sufficient," Mr Heng said. "We need to also adopt complementary strategies for carbon sequestration, and this is where nature-based solutions can play a big role."

Carbon sequestration refers to the ability of trees to take in planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, and store it in their leaves, roots, trunks and soil.

There is growing global attention being paid to the role of natural ecosystems, and how they can be conserved and restored so they can continue to do what they do best - photosynthesising and drawing down the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Mr Heng said the potential for such nature-based solutions in South-east Asia is "tremendous", as the region is home to 200 million hectares of terrestrial forests, and has the largest blue carbon stock in the world.

Blue carbon refers to the carbon locked up in marine ecosystems such as mangroves and seagrass meadows. These habitats are known to store much more carbon than land-based forests.

Mr Heng said unlocking the potential of what nature has to offer at scale will require a significant amount of investment.

This requires a carbon marketplace with robust governance standards and an emphasis on trust must be built, he said.

Singapore is contributing to this on a few fronts, said Mr Heng, citing the Climate Impact X (CIX) - a global carbon exchange and marketplace funded by DBS Bank, Temasek, Standard Chartered bank and the Singapore Exchange announced earlier this year.

CIX is a promising solution in the fragmented carbon credit markets landscape today, which is characterised by thin liquidity and carbon credits of varying quality, said Mr Heng.

Singapore is also represented on the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets - a global initiative to help define the standards for carbon markets, he said.

Carbon must also be properly priced to account for the negative externalities that it contributes to the global climate.

Mr Heng said the Singapore Government is reviewing the trajectory and the level of its carbon tax post-2023. The current rate is $5 per tonne of emissions - a rate that critics have claimed is far too low.

Mr Heng said the Covid-19 pandemic did not derail the green movement, but instead gave it more momentum.

The global media is putting focus on this issue, he said, citing World News Day on Sept 28 that had focused on the climate crisis. The Straits Times has joined nearly 500 newsrooms from around the world in telling the story of how climate change is already impacting the lives and livelihoods of communities, and how they are grappling with it.

Environmental accountability is also becoming a key consideration alongside profitability, said Mr Heng.

"What is clear is that carbon will become an increasingly greater constraint for the world. But this does not mean that global growth would be stunted, and human progress impeded," he said. "What we can achieve in the decades ahead, depends critically on what we do today."