Not Everything Can be Priced

I read “Economics don offers unique perspective on Nature Conservation” in the “Battle for Singapore’s Green Spaces Blog” and it’s really infuriating. This is coming from one of the people being consulted by Singapore’s government ministries and statutory boards.

He, on the flawed basis that “Nothing is free” proposes auctioning the forests like the one in Mandai, to decide if the land should be developed. The extremely flimsy way of calculation makes no sense at all. There is no way in hell that the amount calculated from surveying so-called “stake-holders” will beat the price offered by developers (henceforth termed “destroyers”). If anything, it might allow them to escape with destroying forests at a lower price! Perhaps that is what Professor Quah would like to see? Buildings everywhere, with the only greenery being roadside trees?

He assumes that he is a more “educated” person than other Singaporeans (arrogant or ignorant?). What does he know of ecology? Of climatology? Has he considered the quality of the air we breathe when we are shorn of all forests? How that would affect our drainages? Would that drive investors away? It seems that in his ideal world, there would be no forests, no animals, no other forms of life apart from Homo sapiens and destroyers running everywhere offering more and more money for more destruction projects.

Taking this outside of Singapore, destroyers have cleared mangroves (number one target for economists like him, muddy, and smelling of Hydrogen Sulphide, and apparently costly to leave alone) and mined corals (to make lime for construction of buildings) in Sri Lanka. Christmas Eve of 2004, a tsunami hit and everything was wiped out. That tsumani took between 30,000 and 40,000 lives in Sri Lanka displaced 2.5 million others. In contrast, Bangladesh, with miles and miles of undeveloped mangroves reported a grand total of 2 deaths. In the Tamil Nadu village of Naluvedapathy, villagers had earlier planted a forest of 80,244 casuarina trees, which broke up the waves and only 7 deaths and “no psychological trauma” amongst the people were reported.

Yes, in Singapore we are sheltered from these. But we are still flood prone, and still subject to the effects of sea level rising. There is a whole lot of environmental processes to go into, besides the sentimentalism and aesthetics put forward by Prof Ng. It takes more than an economist to understand this. Economists, it seems, “must be educated” to use Prof Quah’s own words.

Where is the Balance?

Recently, there has been a lot of commotion in the nature circles over the turning of Mandai into a "spa retreat", not least by a long, rather scathing post by Joseph Lai. As I did my field work in Nee Soon (and hearing the Seletar Range firing away) I thought about the multiple land use in Singapore.

Singapore is a small country, and so the government has had to find multiple uses of a specific piece of land in the urban (High-rise homes or offices built over Multi-storey carparks over shopping centres over underground MRT stations)and the less urban (I refuse to use "country-side" or "rural" to describe any place in Singapore Island) areas (SAF training ground and nature reserves and tourist spots). But the contention many have is that what works in an urban setting may not work in a different, more natural setting, especially with regards to wildlife where you cannot plan things. Sure you can plan to build a resort with a good forest setting and a way to control the bugs, but will the bug-control result in the death of the forest and giving way to stale, sterile, ornamental plantation? (Yes I said it. I have a disdain for all the "touristy" flower places and nicely manicured, "planned" parks which are not natural at all) You cannot transplant animals into tiny cramped environment and expect them to behave as they would in their natural, wide-ranging habitats.

I started my conservation journey inspired by Dr. Jane Goodall's work at the forests of Gombe, how she managed to find a balance for the people there, between livelihood and protecting the forest. Singapore may be harder, it's too small, and our forests, frankly are not sustainable on their own, and need constant care. What's bugging me now, are the questions: Does this point of balance even exist in Singapore? Or have we passed it in 1850?