Climate Change Policies in Singapore: Whose “Environments” Are We Talking About?

Abstract

Abstract

Environmental planning has always been a concern in Singapore and has largely resulted in the creation of Singapore's reputation as the “Garden City.” Policies have been purposefully designed to create a “clean and green” Singapore amidst attempts to create higher standards of living. More recently, this has gone on to include focus on the issue of climate change, a concern which has come to dominate the global environmental discourse. The climate change policies in Singapore have adopted an approach which focuses on the notion of energy efficiency as the solution to tackling the climate change issue. However, environmentalism is never simply just about the environment and a critical examination of Singapore's climate change policies would shed light upon that. This article will show how the tendency of the climate change policies to base its solutions and mitigation upon pragmatic and economic roots would only further the problems. First, the environment is actually under further compromises as no actual action is being taken and causes of environmental degradation continue to persist. Secondly, the climate change policies are adopted largely in terms of pragmatic values and actually act to reinforce the State's legitimacy as responsibilities of global economic problems get individualized. Finally, as the policies appear to be blind to stratification and inequalities, the impacts of the policies which are based upon pragmatism and economicism are also unequal as those structurally less responsible and involved are made to share the burden and cost put forth by the environmental discourse in Singapore.