The threat of rising sea levels: Climate change | ST Connect Webinar | The Straits Times

hello everyone very good afternoon and welcome to the first of the straits times monthly webinar series i'm david fogerty st's climate change editor and i'm the host and moderator of today's session today's topic is on sea level rise and coastal protection a topic some might feel is a problem for the future but is in fact very much a threat today especially for so many of asia's coastal mega cities and low-lying island nations such as singapore the maldives and the many islands of indonesia and the philippines so the big question for today's discussion is how big a threat is sea level rise and what can we do about it to find out we're very fortunate to have a wonderful panel who will look at this and discuss some of the solutions at hand but first allow me to share some housekeeping matters with our audience this session will be approximately 45 minutes for those who have submitted their questions ahead of this discussion thank you very much we'll try to address your questions most likely towards the end of the discussion for those who are joining us via zoom please do send us your questions by clicking on the q a icon on your zoom screen and the recording of this session will be made available online on the straights times website later today now our distinguished panelists today are professor benjamin horton who's the director of the earth observatory of singapore at the nanyang technological university welcome next we have dr singh yiwen senior research fellow at the nus center for nature-based climate solutions and next is hazel coo director of the coastal protection department at pub welcome now sea level rise is very much in the news especially with the use of faster melting of ice ice caps almost every week there is new research updating projections of how much sea levels will rise the century and beyond depending of course greatly actually on how much and how aggressively mankind reduces our greenhouse gas emissions because this is ultimately a problem caused by mankind so um welcome um to the panelists once more um so let's kick off this discussion with uh uh benjamin could you start off by explaining why sea levels are rising and what are the latest projections for this for this century and beyond well sea level rise is a complex problem it's driven by a variety of local regional and global processes the two major drivers on sea level rise in the 21st century will be a mass change and a volume change if we increase our atmospheric temperatures by producing more greenhouse gases those increasing atmospheric temperatures are transferred into the oceans when oceans warm up they occupy a greater volume and sea level goes up and that process has been responsible for 30 to 40 percent of the sea level rise of the 20th century the second major driver is a mass change if you increase your atmosphere and ocean temperatures the land-based ice on our planet glaciers ice caps and the ice sheets will melt increasing sea level rise in the 20th century it was glaciers that dominated but what worries the scientific community is the melting of our land-based ice sheets greenland and antarctica they are colossal in size greenland has enough water within it to raise global sea levels by six meters antarctica has enough water within it to raise global sea levels by 65 meters so you only need a melting of a small percentage of antarctica to have devastating effects worldwide regarding projections well sea level science is a rapidly evolving science so the intergovernmental panel on climate change their last global assessment was back in 2013 and they suggested that sea level rise if we keep our emission trajectory would be around one meter higher than today by the end of the 21st century but as i said it was evolving and as you illustrated there's continually new science so for example the earth observatory of singapore produced a paper last year that said by 2100 the upper estimate is not one meter it's 1.3 meters and by 2300 a colossal five meter rise in sea level now of course sea levels have already been rising steadily certainly in the past century uh they're roughly about 20 centimeters now uh you know they've risen about that level in the past century and i think about half of that since 1993 according to nasa so now a 20 centimeter rise might not sound a lot but it's already causing widespread impacts so uh again benjamin could you perhaps briefly explain why a small rise is still a problem and then hazel could you put this in the context of singapore in terms of impact so far and then uh u.n perhaps at your thoughts as well well sea level rise even in the smallest amount can have devastating effects it contaminates our freshwater aquifer influencing water security it floods our agricultural fields changing our food resources and it has a significant impact on the magnitude extent and what we would call a return period or how often a large magnitude storm occurs so some work that we did at the earth observatory of singapore was to look at one of the most famous storm surges that ever made landfall and that was hurricane sandy which barreled into new york city in 2012 causing hundreds of lives that were lost and over 70 billion dollars of damage so at the earth observatory of singapore what we investigated was how often would that event have occurred without sea level rise what is the current return period and how often would that event occur in the future as sea level rises accelerate and the results were alarming prior to the industrial revolution where we had no sea level rise an event like hurricane sandy occurred once every 500 years or once in every seven generations because of sea level rise statistically an event like hurricane sandy today occurs once every 50 years but if we keep accelerating sea level because that is the baseline on which tropical cyclones and hurricanes land upon it will be once every five years by 2050 and will be an annual event by 2080 an event that causes hundreds of dollar lives lost and billions of dollars of damage would be an annual event within around 60 years for new york city so like what ben has said earlier yeah we are expecting a rise in mean sea level up to about one meters by the end of this century and if we were to include the tidal effects as well as the search components of sea level rise we can expect that extreme sea levels could be as high as 4 meters or even 5 meters in singapore and the impact and damage will definitely be devastating and therefore that calls for action now yeah so if we were to bring it back to the coastlines of singapore and the city is called stretch we can expect that east coast parkway could be partially submerged and even like landmarks like um the sports hub will also not be spat i think the reason for this is because uh singapore is a low-lying city and about 30 percent of our island is less than five meters above mean sea level yeah so i think uh we are vulnerable to the effects of mean sea level rise yeah and we will need to be prepared for this scenario and i think from a nature point of view it's not just um human habitats will be affected by sea level rise nature places such as mangroves they are also they also be affected by it not only from the storm surges like ben mentioned but as well as just being submerged and changing the hydrology itself of the mangrove areas so this affects mangroves this can also affect places like seagrasses habitats like seagrasses now of course singapore is a long way from antarctica and greenland which i think is uh going forward will probably be the main source of sea level rise uh and some people think faster melting there might not affect singapore quite so much but that's really not the case is it it's uh regions far from a melting ice sheet will still experience sea level rise and in fact a sea level rise greater than the global average if that's correct perhaps ben you could you could take that off well yes i think people in singapore think that what's happening in greenland or antarctica which is 10 000 kilometers or so away will remain in these high latitude locations but it's quite simply not true the changes in greenland the arctic and antarctica influence the weather they influence the climate and they will influence sea level here in singapore as i explained previously they're going to be the big contributor in the 21st century because they're so large but the other thing to think about is something that is so large has a huge gravitational mass so antarctica is twice the size of australia which means it's 20 000 times the size of singapore it's two to three kilometers thick so it exerts a huge gravitational pull it pulls the water towards it if you lose that mass the water flows away and you get a greater rise in sea level in regions that are distant from these ice sheets such as the tropics so at the earth observatory of singapore we've been running some models that suggest that if for example antarctica contributes one meter of sea level rise in the 21st century singapore would receive around 30 greater than the global average at one point three meters that's quite shocking um hazel or ebon would you like to divide anything today no i think um i guess in addition because this region would suffer so greatly we also contain or we also house a lot of natural habitats like mangroves right these are largely tropical habitats so that means that these habitats will be i guess more affected than other possible habitats yeah yes in fact i wanted to ask you just on that very question about the impact on coastal ecosystems such as mangroves uh in this region at the current rate of sea level rise which is roughly about four millimeters and if emissions projections go the way they they are unless unless there's deep cuts very rapidly four millimeters will be increased by year will increase to five millimeters and so forth can uh mangroves and and other coastal ecosystems sort of manage with that sort of uh increase or will it start to sort of basically swamp them so so that's a very good question technically nature is very adaptable right so mangrove habitats actually have the ability to move further inland as the water rises same with sea grasses as well they can move around but the problem is when we develop areas behind the mangroves so when we develop the the land areas that serves as a barrier and that blocks all these habitats from moving further inland to adapt to the sea level rise so in this way they definitely under threat and thus if you add on the potential for storm surges and change in hydrology that would make these habitats at risk yeah now course if we don't cut emissions fast enough um what will the future of the region look like by the end of the century um you know and what could be the human and financial costs so we've already got a sense of that from the the singapore government the prime minister in lisian long in 2019 said that around 100 billion or more might be needed over the long term to protect singapore against rising sea levels exactly what that program will look like i think that's still uh that's up for future discussion but can i ask all three of you perhaps to give your views on the financial and human costs if you know if that's sort of known um starting with benjamin well i think the prime minister of singapore was very correct in stating that sea level rise and climate change is an existential threat to singapore and as hazel said that's because 30 percent of our island has a low elevation that would be subject to flooding if sea level rises were one meter or greater so we have to adapt to climate change and sea level rise but i've always advocated that you need to understand the science first before we think about adaptations unfortunately here in singapore the government has reacted we have the national sea level programme sponsored by mnd and nea and this is bringing together the best scientists here in singapore to understand all the local regional and global processes so we can accurately project future sea level rise but importantly not only the magnitudes the rates what worries climate scientists is how fast things are changing because quite simply our earth has been warmer than today and sea levels have been higher than today but not at these rates so if we're going to think about hard engineering nature-based solutions we need to think about how resilient they are to the rates of change that we are going to have unless we get at the root cause which is mitigating and removing the carbon dioxide from our atmosphere i think carrying on from what ben has shared i think even singapore's land constraints yeah um we do not have an option not to do anything about it because there's nowhere for us to retreat to basically so i think it is important that we start to prepare ourselves for for these scenarios and uh we want to actually look at how we can defend singapore's coastlines to put in measures simply to keep the rising sea levels out yeah so um uh like like what you have mentioned um the prime minister has mentioned that 100 billion or more will be probably be required in the longer term and a new coaster and flood protection fund has actually also been announced by deputy prime minister hank sikket in budget 2020 yeah and this cfpf is uh with the initial injection of actually five billion dollars will be used to fund coastal protection measures as well as a drainage infrastructure to improve and enhance singapore's flood resilience so pb as we have taken on the role of the national coastal protection agency our mission has expanded from just taming storm waters to also look at uh how we can protect and safeguard singapore against rising sea levels and we do this holistically to look at the to consider the effects of more intense rainfalls inland as well as the rising sea levels so this cfpf that's established under pub will support this endeavor and we will invest the funds to carry out studies and to implement coastal protection measures as well as drainage infrastructure yeah i think just to add on to that engineering solutions are definitely one very important component but at the same time there is a potential for nature to reduce some of this cost in certain areas so habitats like mangroves of course they can buffer storms they can um they can accrete or rather build up sediment to increase sea levels in certain areas so the potential is there for it to be a cheaper nature-based option but of course this is always not applicable everywhere right we some areas would need definitely hard structures to prevent or protect against sea level rise yeah so possibly nature can be a cheaper alternative in some areas yes so that's that's a very good segue uh uh in fact i wanted to turn the discussion more now towards solutions um um just just to pick up that on on hazel you've already shared some of what singapore's doing in terms of trying to increase resilience of coastlines and preparing for progressively rising seas maybe share some more details about the current studies that pub is doing for example i think looking at analyzing the most vulnerable parts of singapore's coastline i think such as during ireland and the city and east um i think those uh i think it's at jurong island the study starts first and city and east so tell me more about those those uh those studies and what what do you think the uh conclusions will be or what they might lead to okay so actually over the years we have actually put in place measures to protect singapore from uh coastal erosion as well as uh inundation from flooding and currently over 70 percent of our coastlines are already protected by engineering structures like uh stone embankments as well as sea walls and since 2011 we have also raised our reclamation levels to at least four meters above the current mean sea level up from three meters so um for major infrastructure critical infrastructure like the jurong port as well as the changi airport terminal 5 we have actually set the platform levels to 5 meters above mean sea level so this will actually protect and and already enhance the improve uh the the flood resilience against the rising sea levels but you know as we look at um just setting higher reclamation levels i think it is easy to do um for new lands that we are creating but we have to be mindful that for the platform levels of existing development that will take time to keep pace with sea level rise so uh what we will indeed need to do then is to put in place uh coastal defense barriers to keep out the sea and we are we are um looking at first of all uh the city east coast as well as jurong island because they have been identified to be more vulnerable and critical based on factors like the criticality of assets within the coastal region as well as the potential impact of the flood event and even opportunities to dovetail with development so by the end of this year or rather in this year we will actually be embarking on these studies to to develop strategies specifically for the southeastern coast as well as jurong island to see what measures we can put in place so i think we have talked about like you know engineering um solutions um and i think this can come in the form of um sea walls dikes dams yeah and these are measures that we will definitely look at but i think we are also open yeah to look at other measures soft measures green measures um that includes the planting of mangroves yeah so as we as we look at all these you know like variety of measures i think what is important is that we want to also consult extensively we want to be able to consult experts in the area and also the community and relevant stakeholders to make sure that the proposed measures that we come up with eventually will integrate well with development and we will also consider multifunctional users with recreational spaces and even create more community spaces for the enjoyment of singaporeans i think uh what what benjamin has mentioned about um the uncertainty of uh sea level rise i think we are mindful of that yeah so i think even as we approach it we we want our strategies to to remain flexible you know to the different uh climate scenarios that uh we can be informed of by climate advancing climate science yeah so naturally solutions i think is something that i think a lot of people interested it in mangroves uh is one i think that as you say that may or may not work in some places in singapore there are some areas of existing mangroves which are now being protected which is great do you see scope for expansion of of mangroves and in singapore and what other nature-based solutions could there be what would they look like so in singapore i guess it's a bit potentially limited right because singapore is landscapes in general but when we think about nature-based solutions um we tend to think along but think of it along two main lines one is the adaptation portion and one is the mitigation portion so the adaptation portions allows us to deal with some of these climate change effects such as sea level rise or storm surges it allows us to if we protect a certain patch of mangoes or restore a patch of mangoes that allows it to buffer the rains the different conditions that we will face but at the same time these habitats tend to be very good stories of carbon so they take in carbon dioxide photosynthesis and everything and it brings it into the ground it also stores the sediment and locks the carbon within the ground so what this does is that it gets to a bit of the root of the problem which is co2 emissions right increasing co2 emissions by reducing some and sequestering some of this carbon we actually sort of attack the main route of this issue yeah so outside of singapore of course um you know in the region and southeast asia i guess nature-based solutions would be particularly critical for indonesia malaysia philippines areas where they have i guess more room for nature to move right so i would have thought restoration of coastal uh landscapes back to sort of a natural state would be something that these governments would be looking at yeah so so yeah of course within singapore is a bit limited but across the region especially within southeast asia this is a very important solution right because there's a lot of green areas that are currently under threat and the idea is that if you go in and protect these areas stop development this reduction of emissions because otherwise this all these if you cut out a forest the emissions were being released like yeah through forest fires or should different use of the wood substances so so the idea is that by protecting these areas you can actually help mitigate some of climate change itself yeah so it's a double benefit basically protecting the coastline and soaking up a lot of carbon dioxide as well um just as nature does exactly normally yeah so i guess just um the last question before we head to uh uh taking some questions from the audience so just bringing it back to uh to singapore i guess you know if we don't cut emissions in time uh we will likely face several meters of sea level rise uh maybe not this century but in subsequent centuries um so is there a limit to coastal defenses um you know is do we is there a limit of say two or three meters and then beyond that it gets too difficult and then uh what's what's the what's the only solution a managed retreat um or building hdb estates on stilts of five six or seven meters or something hazel maybe you want to take that tricky question first okay pob is actually working very closely with the center for climate research singapore or the ccrs who is also building itself as a regional center for tropical climate science so as we have heard what benjamin has shared earlier climate science is really a very complex subject and there is like a lot of multiple factors yeah that that actually impacts it like the melting eye shades from greenland as well as antarctic yeah so as we as we approach a closer adaptation i think we are mindful of the uncertainties that we are facing and that's why ccrs is looking into the climate science yeah behind all these uh sea level rise factors and they are taking reference from the intergovernmental climate change assessment reports on the latest global projections on sea level rise so they will carry out the national climate change studies to have a better understanding of climate science as well as sea level rise projections that will be affecting singapore as well as the surrounding regions so what singapore is what pov is doing is we are developing the coastal inland flood model which will then take this uh we shall use this sea level rise projections to carry out our risk assessments as well as for our adaptation planning yeah so this will better inform us yeah what what is the current and what's the latest uh sea level rise projections that we could adjust and adapt our our uh strategies so that we remain you know ahead yeah of what we know is coming towards us but singapore can't really retreat any work have it except maybe on top of bukatima so for example so um this is a real a real challenge as the prime minister said an existential threat so um other countries bigger countries of course can retreat in land even where i come from australia people are already under pressure to no longer build houses so close to the coast or they won't get insurance for example but that's a very difficult prospect for singapore which is so landscape so um i guess i can't really put you on the spot by saying you know a week in singapore eventually going to retreat into malaysia for example but i don't think that it's an option for us yeah so i think uh pb we're on top of this and therefore we are actually uh looking at coastal uh barriers or defenses that we can put along the coastlines of singapore and we will do it progressively so we will we will want to see how we can actually actually approach this and see how we can improve take the opportunity to improve and enhance even our coaster areas like what you will have mentioned earlier like uh there's a lot of potential that we can put we can uh create value more than just meeting the objectives of coastal protection we can create an environment for the enjoyment of people and we can also look into how we can enhance or even restore biodiversity along our coastal and marine environments so i think as we approach this um we i don't think we will retreat yeah massively in that sense yeah and therefore we will have to work together and acknowledge that sea level rise threat is real to singapore and we will need to take action today and therefore we need the support of uh everyone in singapore yeah to see how we can make the best out of this now of course holland uh or the netherlands is a country that we're all familiar with um much of that country is part of me is below sea level so they've already come up with some ideas of floating houses obviously they've got a very impressive sort of dike system um could we see in the future perhaps a floating airport or floating townships or i mean it's um there's all sorts of creative solutions out there i don't know benjamin is have you sort of looked at this area of in terms of ex i wouldn't say extreme adaptation but um well perhaps more extreme than what we're used to at the moment i think you need to return to the problem i mean global sea level rise is by its very nature a global problem we live along our coastlines we work along our coastlines our resources along our coastlines unfortunately for south and southeast asia we are the most vulnerable area on the planet that's because of a high density population low-lying areas island archipelagos it means that by the end of this century some 500 million people will be at threat from sea level rise so we need to think about adaptations and you can do three things that have sort of been explained you can stop the water coming in that's hard engineering building sea walls you can live with the water that's by raising structures or you relocate singapore does not have that option so it's got to think about how it protects its shoreline how it manipulates its infrastructure but i would say that if we don't get to the root cause and reduce greenhouse gas emissions it's an existential threat there's it's called an existential threat because the threat are these two huge ice sheets that are very very susceptible to an increase in temperature so you need to remove the greenhouse gases to slow down the rates of rise then we can adapt then we can live along a coastline we can work along our coastline and our ecosystems can thrive but if we don't get at the root cause your adaptations are meaningless yeah you want you want to add a final thought to that yeah i think i agree but a lot of the things that have been said um yeah i think from that i guess one of the things i missed out was also that um with with there's a value there's a different there's a non-monetary value to protecting our coastlines and to to protecting the natural ecosystems on the coastline as well as i mentioned there is the idea that people can use this space right and there's we need to sort of deal with this because we need to ensure that people can use nature areas as well and gain all the benefits there's also the other you know like mango supports fisheries so that affects food production that affects people's lives so yeah there's all these factors that we need to consider as well yeah okay look this has been a great discussion um but now we'd like to turn our attention to the some of the questions from the readers who had submitted questions earlier um so the first question um comes from um st reader or sd readers i should say my apologies uh because yes we had a number of questions uh on this same subject what are some of the things that individuals can do to prevent sea level rise i think this i think we had quite a number of questions for people saying that they were very uh worried about the problem but they wanted to know individually what they could do about it so perhaps start with hazel and then ewen and then then i think i will i will approach this question uh more to to what we are doing in singapore in terms of our coaster adaptation i think it is very important for singaporeans to understand as we have discussed during today's session that the threat of sea level rise is real and understanding you know how how sea level rise could impact singapore hopefully yeah with the understanding you can uh also take on a more participatory role yeah as we develop some of these measures we want to hear from the community from the stakeholders as to what we can do together to reshape our coastline so that we can remain sustainable and we will continue to thrive yeah so i think individually we want to welcome your participation to come forward yeah to to share with us ideas and and and new new things innovative uh things that we can do i think like what ben mentioned earlier one of the main things we have to do is to actually reduce emissions on a personal level on a corporate level whatever but the idea is we have to reduce emissions right so that can be changing out the way we live our daily lives right maybe taking more public transport or something like that but at the same time there are you know tree planting initiatives there are a lot of other stuff ways to get involved in nature and to to try to i guess feel the value of nature as well yeah i mean you think and this webinar is an example of this is the key is education if you understand what the problem is as an individual or as a community or as a government or as a multinational you're more likely to act on it rather than being told what to do so here in singapore we need to understand why sea level rises what the root cause is and what we can do to combat it so it is greenhouse gas emissions so as an individual we need to think about living more sustainably so it's commonly said about here in singapore that we only contribute 0.1 of the global carbon budget but as an individual our carbon emissions are quite high they're twice the global average each individual in singapore consumes twice the global average of the amount of carbon and if we're going to lower emissions each individual in singapore as an average needs to reduce their carbon emissions by around 75 percent that can't happen tomorrow but as an individual you can think how can i reduce my carbon consumption over the next year by five percent what is that is that vegetarian meals a couple of days a week public transport using a bike switching off your electricity and you can start to lower your own carbon footprint and then as a community we can think about what projects there are to allow us to work with nature i mean i think to do with the pandemic what we've realized here in singapore is how important our green spaces are so let's preserve them let's enhance them because there are so many benefits to do with your health to do with air quality but also to do with the ability of our nature-based solutions to withdraw carbon out of the atmosphere and store them in the ground so i think it's all about education i'm bound to say that i work at one of the best universities in the world at ntu we have this unbelievable body of undergraduate students our generation needs to give the young generation time to find the solutions to climate change and that's living responsibly sustainably reducing your consumption recycling and reusing that's great yes i think we should all take um a bit of a a tip from that i think there's all you know lots of things individually that we could do and of course collectively it does make up it makes a difference makes a huge difference yeah um so here's here's a question from thomas so um this might be more for you i think hazel will there be public engagement to co-create climate change and coastal adaptation solutions so i guess this is about public consultation right yeah so i think as we as pob embarked on the site specific studies especially for the cities course which will be rolled out first at the later part of this year um the intention is for us to consult the public and with experts extensively yeah so that we can uh together develop the optimal measures for the coastlines and even if we look at the city east coast stretch we realize that there are very different land users you know leading from the greater southern waterfront through to east coast and to changi area so i think the intention is for pov to consult extensively and to work with the community and stakeholders to develop these coaster adaptation measures together i guess yeah i guess maybe that's probably not really a question for you two i guess because it's more i mean i i guess probably for you ben because you do you know you have students right so in terms of educating them you know in terms of um adaptation sort of measures and so forth i mean what what would you what would you say to them well i think um what i have been very pleased to see at ntu is now that every undergraduate that enrolls in a programme whether they're in engineering one of the core sciences social sciences arts business medical they all have to take a course on sustainability they have to now think about how they value this planet they have to think about how they're going to enable future generations to have the same opportunities that we did and so now you've got this incredibly educated workforce that understands the value of nature and then when they go on to their further employment be it in engineering or the sciences in business in law or in medicine they're aware of how the earth interacts it's our lack of understanding of the planet which caused the pandemic we were aware that if you removed natural resources that there was a possibility of a virus transmitting from a bat into a human but we weren't aware of the consequences on people's lives and their economy so we need to truly understand the earth system once we have that knowledge then we can think about how we protect this planet and i guess really for a lot of people they just take nature for granted they just take uh the planet for granted it's likely if you live in a wealthy country everything's sort of there and provided but you don't really ever think about where it came from or the process by which it was made and whether it was you know whether it was destructive or the impact i mean so when you put petrol in your car you're paying for shareholders profits taxes to the government and some exploration costs but you're paying not one single cent for the impact of the emissions of your petrol driven car into the atmosphere singapore started with a carbon tax but can we truly value nature put a dollar value to this this is what nature based solutions is all about and then you can think about then people start to react we always react to the bottom line okay so um i think i think we're running out of time here so um next question is from uh huang wai chang are we working with our neighbours to mitigate the threat of sea level rise so i guess both academically and politically um you know are we working with as fellow as in neighbors uh to you know about emissions cuts and i guess academically i guess we must be as well right well academically it's a global problem so here in singapore we have to work with scientists that study the antarctic ice sheet or the greenland ice sheet singapore's part of the arctic council to understand the science in the arctic is part of the intergovernmental panel on climate change next year we're bringing international scientists for a meeting here in singapore we're hoping depending obviously on travel restrictions but countries from around asia and globally will be descending on singapore in july of next year to talk about the latest science to talk about the latest adaptations we have to use all the great minds in the world from developed and developing countries to solve this problem of climate change and singapore's at the heart of this singapore has a very unique place it's located in the tropics it has the highest biodiversity in the marine and the terrestrial realm on its doorstep academically we have two universities in the top 50 in the world nus and ntu and they can fight it out whoever's top but they're world-class institutions and in the tropical belt there's only three in the top 50 in the world and the other one's hong kong singapore can take the lead in understanding climate impacts in the tropics highest biodiversity highest population but potentially the highest impacts from climate change i i guess also from the nature-based point of view there's been a lot of people in the region who has been working on forestry working on all these sort of solutions from stakehold for all across the different stakeholders from local communities to project managers to government there's a lot of people that have been working on how to preserve forests for years right tons of ngos that work within southeast asia so this is something that's been going on for quite a while right it's it's just that now we understand that nature has its value right and there's value towards mitigating climate change right so incorporating some of these i mean there's also been tons of projects within the region itself southeast asia itself that has been tackling this problem and i guess singapore is part of that community the ecosystem of people who want to conserve nature and mitigate climate change yeah so i think as far as the center for climate research singapore is concerned i think it is positioned to be a regional center as we go in depth into understanding um climate science uh especially tropical climate science i think it will benefit the region yeah to also understand how they will be affected by the threats of sea level rise okay great um now our last question is from uh conglom uh this is one for for you yiwen um i think you've answered this to some extent already but uh don't know how i'm sort of going over um how do mangroves protect coastlines from sea level rise so so mangroves do several different things like i mentioned before um they are well and one and they mitigate climate change by storing carbon right there the other way that it protects is just like being there they buffer the coastline from storms and major storm events right because they're basically three structures and they stabilize the soil at the same time they accrete sediment so they store sediment they function as a way to store sediment along the coastline and then increase over time they can increase in terms of height and that sort of balances some of the increase in sea level yeah um actually i do have one more question and it's quite an interesting question it's from uh uh we langley how will our mrt tunnels and properties with basements be protected from flooding so i guess that's the combination of both the intense rainfall such as what we had a few days ago but also i guess also the threat from rising sea levels given we have uh drains that are actually open to the sea such as on the east coast which fluctuate um so i guess hazel that's that's one for you so pob we will be uh approaching flood resilience holistically we will not only look at uh the threats from rising sea levels but we also look at more intense and in fact more erratic rainstorms like what david has mentioned yeah over last saturday we have experienced a very intense rainfall in fact in the western part of singapore we experienced uh we received more than 90 percent of the average monthly rainfall for the entire month of april and that is something that we can expect more and more frequently so for singapore we have uh adopted a source source pathway receptor approach towards a storm water management so for storm uh for the source measures we actually look at how we can detain and capture storm water as and when it falls onto our catchment areas and pov we have been looking at how we can increase and improve the capacity of our storm water conveyance system through the widening and widening and deepening of our drains and last but not least we also talk about platform levels we have actually raised our platform levels and we are also looking at uh crest levels and that will be particularly important for underground uh infrastructure or development like the mrt tunnels and the basement so we have all this in place and on top of that now as we are looking at uh keeping the sea levels out we will actually be looking at regional uh coastal barriers so uh we have talked about like you know nature-based solutions and that that could be effective in attenuating wave energy but what we will need um to really protect singapore from rising sea levels is to have a strong barrier that keeps the sea out yeah and with that regional protection we can be assured that we can continue to have basement in development without compromising the resilience of development any final thoughts ben or here before we wrap up lycan climate change is a huge problem for every single person on this planet we are going to be entering a new normal the rainfall that we experienced on saturday will happen more frequently and will increase in its magnitude because that's climate change if you increase temperatures you get more evapotranspiration from the oceans that water vapors sat in the upper atmosphere and there's only one way it's coming down and it's coming down in intense rainfall so a city like singapore quite simply needs to become more resilient but if you don't understand what you're having to be resilient to it's very hard to adapt so we need to quite quickly understand what are our projections on rainfall what are our projections on sea level how do they come together as a compound threat to make sure that people's properties are safe make sure that our lives are safe we need to understand the science then we can have proper adaptations but i'll just repeat myself unless we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions there is no adaptation solution available just give you on rates you mentioned earlier david that the type the instrumental record in singapore shows sea levels rising around four millimeters per year we don't do anything about climate change that rate will be 30 millimeters per year in 50 years there's not one engineering solution that can solve that and your corals your submerged aquatic vegetation and your mangroves all go extinct that's the threat but we have the solution the solutions the paris agreement all countries coming together reducing our greenhouse gas emissions the key about the paris agreement is keeping your temperatures below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial you keep your temperatures below that your ice sheets don't disintegrate your corals don't bleach and our adaptation solutions work i think just adding on to that um yeah there's so much that we can do on a personal level across you know all levels of the way we live our lives right at the same time there's always a very important nature component um nature is not only the potential solution to mitigate and adapt to climate change but they also want the areas that are highly under threat right if sea level rise and there's something behind the mangroves the mangroves will disappear then we lose two things you lose the ability to mitigate and adapt to climate change as well so there's a need to preserve conserve and restore some of these really important habitats in order to combat climate change great thank you very much and i guess this discussion is also very timely because we have joe biden's virtual climate summit featuring 40 world leaders uh this week as well so we'll see how ambitious that summit will be what the pledges will be that will hopefully give us a better indication of the sense of global ambition to fight climate change certainly ahead of the paris so the the uh glasgow cop 26 uh climate conference in november so just before we finish i'd like to express our appreciation to professor horton dr zheng and hazel coo and a big appreciation too of course uh big thanks to our audience who participated and joined us for the session and for your questions um shortly after this event please also do join us on the clubhouse chat app from 1 45 p.m to 2 30 p.m it's about half an hour after this webinar uh the link can be found in the chat box i'll be chatting to sorry with climate uh sorry i'll start again i'll be chatting with science and environment correspondent audrey tan and the host for the chat uh st's mobile editor jeremy alyong as we talk about the impact of rising sea levels on singapore a recording of this webinar discussion will be available on the straits times website later today so if any any of your friends missed this webinar they can still catch the recording on the on straightstimes.com this session is part of the straits times monthly webinar series thank you everyone for joining us and please stay safe

Channel: The Straits Times

Views: 6,722

Keywords: climate change, global warming, sea level, rising sea levels, asian insider

Id: fN_KFjbhF6o

Length: 52min 2sec (3122 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021