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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