Sustainable development is still about development?

National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan spoke yesterday in Parliament on the newly-formed Inter-Ministerial Committee on Sustainable Development. According to the Straits Times, the committee involving various ministries will release a 10-year roadmap next year to address sustainable development in Singapore.

In his speech, Mr Mah stressed that: “We need to remind ourselves that sustainable development is still about development… We still want growth and we still want good jobs.” We have nothing against development and economic growth. We just feel that economic growth does not necessary lead to progress and may not benefit the environment and people.

For the roadmap, we want to see the government at its best in developing sustainable development policies. The success of past public policies according to the book, Dynamic Governance, involves the following three critical governance capabilities:

i) thinking ahead — the ability to perceive early signals of future developments that may affect a nation in order to remain relevant to the world; ii) thinking again — the ability and willingness to rethink and remake currently functioning policies so that they perform better; and iii) thinking across — the ability and openness to cross boundaries to learn from the experience of others so that new ideas and concepts may be introduced into an institution.

We hope to see the committee think ahead of the current and economic costs of implementing green policies, and consider the future and environmental costs of not doing so.

We hope to see the committee think again and across about green policies such as: environmental impact assessment; energy efficiency and renewable portfolio standards; bus rapid transport system; urban agriculture; green universities; and circular economy. 

We hope to see the committee think across to gather views not only from the public sector but also from the private and people sector, and develop a holistic and inclusive roadmap. We don’t wish to see a roadmap that only involves some top administrative officials who probably think about sustainable development in the same myopic way.

The sustainable development roadmap will be out next year. Will it be a roadmap that “meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”, as defined in the Brundtland Commission? We are holding our breath.

Source: Straits Times via Wildsingapore; World Scientific Publishing Co. Image attribution: wildsingapore.

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Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization by Lester R. Brown

Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization is the latest book written by Lester R. Brown, the founder and President of the Earth Policy Institute, and a well-known environmentalist and thinker. The book is an update of his previous two Plan B books, which gives a summary of the environmental problems that we faced and outlines the response needed to save our civilization. He describes what we need to do:

The challenge for our generation is to build a new economy, one that is powered largely by renewable sources of energy, that has a highly diversified transport system, and that reuses and recycles everything. And to do it with unprecedented speed.

Continuing with business as usual (Plan A), which is destroying the economy’s eco-supports and setting the stage for dangerous climate change, is no longer a viable option. It is time for Plan B.

Plan B 3.0 gives a blueprint for stabilizing population and eradicating poverty, restoring the earth’s ecosystems, and stabilizing climate. It describes the need to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 80% before 2020, through raising energy efficiency, developing renewable energy sources, and increasing the earth’s forest cover. We already have the resources to adopt Plan B and save civilization. No more business as usual.

The book can be downloaded for free at the Earth Policy Institute’s website or buy it from our Amazon bookstore.

Source: Earth Policy Institute.

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Green Tip #8 – Use rechargeable batteries instead of normal single-use batteries

Rechargeable AA and AAA alkaline batteries can be reused many times and this will help to reduce the disposal of normal single-use batteries. If 5% of the local population switched to rechargeable batteries, this would prevent the annual disposal of more one million single-use batteries (assuming each person throws away five batteries a year).

Switching to rechargeable batteries also helps to save money. A pack of four AA alkaline batteries costs about S$2 and can be used once, whereas a pack of four rechargeable batteries and a charger costs about S$20, and the batteries can be reused about 500 to 1,000 times. If you switch to rechargeable batteries and reuse them 10 times, the purchase cost between normal and rechargeable batteries would breakeven.

Image credit: PublicDomainPictures.net.

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