Singapore will do its full part to fight climate change: PM Lee
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has said that Singapore will do its full part to mitigate climate change.
He was speaking on Monday at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York, where dozens of world leaders outlined what their countries were doing to confront global warming.
"But however hard we try, Singapore will not be able to stop climate change on our own. Thus, we are cooperating with other countries on this common endeavour," he said in his speech at the global conference.
Singapore, like many small island states, is vulnerable to the effects of global warming such as rising sea levels, said PM Lee.
He repeated the grave warning he issued in his National Day Rally speech last month, saying: "For us, climate change is existential."
Throughout the day, world leaders laid out in brief speeches what they were doing, from achieving carbon neutrality to cutting greenhouse emissions, to fight what UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called a climate crisis.
PM Lee noted that Singapore pledged to have its carbon emissions peak around 2030 and will be switching to a cleaner fuel mix and deploying cleaner energy solutions.
Being small and very urbanised, Singapore is at a disadvantage when it comes to alternative energy sources, he pointed out. Some, like wind turbines to produce electricity, require a lot of land.
But Singapore has developed creative solutions within these constraints, said PM Lee, citing large-scale solar panels that float in the reservoirs and just off its shores.
GREENER INFRASTRUCTURE
Singapore is also making its physical and transport infrastructure greener, and is aiming for 80 per cent of its buildings to have energy-saving features by 2030.
It also wants 90 per cent of peak-hour commutes to be done through public, active mobility and shared transport by 2040.
"We are also developing our long-term low emissions development strategy, as called for under the Paris Agreement," said PM Lee, who will be in New York until Friday.
Singapore is working together with other countries on several climate change-related schemes, said PM Lee.
He cited the South-east Asia Disaster Risk Insurance Facility, which provides flood risk pooling for the region and is supported by Japan and the World Bank, among other examples.
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