Speech by 2M Desmond Lee at "Celebrating Our Forests In Conjunction With International Day Of Forests"

Mar 17, 2018

I am delighted to join you today to commemorate the International Day of Forests.  The day itself is on 21 March, but we are starting a little early in Singapore.  This year’s theme – Forests and Sustainable Cities, is especially relevant to all of us, because as an island state with very limited land, we could have easily turned into a concrete jungle. 

Today, I hope you enjoyed your tree planting.  The saplings that you plant today, will, for some species, be the towering trees of tomorrow – to provide the shade, to provide the marvel, both for Singaporeans and for visitors from abroad, who will marvel the greenery that shades us all.  These tall, towering trees that provide canopy along our streetscape, in our parks, in our nature areas, they don’t appear or spring up overnight.  You can’t plant a tree, and then in one or two years’ time create that kind of canopy.  It has to be done decades in advance, and sometimes planted by people who will not be around to benefit or enjoy that shade.  The foresight of our early leaders and early Singaporeans, coupled with careful planning – today, we have four natures reserves that form the core of our natural forests, an extensive network of parks, nature ways that connect areas of high biodiversity, as well as streetscape greenery forming our urban forest.  Singapore is also on top of the list of cities with the highest tree densities.

We will continue to support our collective push for urban greenery, and let me outline a couple of things.  First, we have established a network of nature parks which will serve as green buffers around our nature reserves.  So they have multiple uses – to protect our reserves from the desiccating impact of the urban environment around the reserves, but at the same time, they provide you and I with spaces to enjoy that are green.  We need not always go into the reserves, we can enjoy the environment in the nature areas that ring the reserves.  We opened Windsor and Chestnut Nature Parks last year.  In the near future, we will open Thomson Nature Park – which also has a heritage element in that, because of the former village whose remnants, building structures we can still see today, as well as Rifle Range Nature Park.  Second, we will enhance the habitats in our green spaces so that biodiversity can thrive alongside us in our urban setting.  Third, we will strengthen the connections between our forests even if they are separated by urban development.  We will do this by incorporating more native plant species in our streetscape greenery.  With the habitats around our island linked as one ecological network, our rich biodiversity will be better able to thrive.  I spoke earlier about nature ways – there are very careful and deliberate planting that allow areas of high biodiversity density to be connected in some way. 

We are already doing this at Fort Canning Park.   The planting of the wild relatives of the nutmeg earlier this morning marks the start of our work to restore the heritage landscapes there.  Those nutmeg plants that you added to the landscape are part of returning back to the heritage of the area.   You might be interested to note that the story of nutmeg is intricately tied to the history of Singapore.  In the 1800s, Sir Stamford Raffles initiated the idea of a botanical garden at Fort Canning when he sent a shipment of nutmeg and clove specimens to Singapore.  Around the same time, several wild species of nutmeg were found, suggesting that the species could be cultivated commercially in Singapore.  After experimentation, nutmeg was eventually grown in Singapore, along with crops like cloves and gambier.

From June 2019, we will bring this area back to its origins as our First Botanic Garden.  When completed, it will extend from Fort Canning Park and onto the streetscapes bounded by Hill Street, Victoria Street, Bras Basah Road, Handy Road, and Canning Rise.  This will be the world’s first botanic garden on urban streets!

But the conservation of our natural heritage cannot be sustained by my colleagues from NParks alone.  In this regard, I am very encouraged to see so much community support for these efforts, and all of you here are testimony to that.  For example, many volunteers have conducted surveys of animals and plants in our parks and reserves, thereby helping to direct reforestation efforts. 

I am also very happy to announce that Dr Easaw Thomas will be leading a new community group called the Friends of TreesSg.  Dr Thomas is a long-time volunteer and a member of NParks’ Heritage Tree Panel.  Friends of TreesSg is another good community initiative that will help our conservation efforts, and inspire fellow Singaporeans to get involved. 

In tandem, I am happy to launch trees.sg.  This is an online platform that will allow people to learn about, and interact with, our urban trees.  Around half a million trees in our parks and roads have been mapped, making it the most extensive tree map here in Asia. The platform includes interesting facts about more than a thousand species of trees around our island.  For instance, you can find out when the trees in your neighbourhood will be getting their next ‘haircut’.  You can also share your observations, like which trees are flowering, with other users – to share your local enjoyment of the flowering season with people around the island, and they can come and see.  Feel free to express your enjoyment and passion and love for our trees by sending them a “Treemail”, giving them a virtual “hug”, or by posting a photo of them.  These are ways to continue to get people involved in the virtual space, and hopefully through that, into the real space to do planting and conservation work.

On this note, allow me to congratulate the winners of the Singapore Garden Photography of the Year 2017.   Your photos have captured the beauty of our forests, and the love that Singaporeans have for nature.  I look forward to giving out the awards and viewing the exhibition shortly after.  

I conclude by thanking all of you for being here today.  I thank you for contributing to the continued expansion of our City in a Garden.  Your support for greenery is critical, as future generations of Singaporeans come on board, we need to continually ensure that they have a love for the City in the Garden, and continue to keep this city remarkable.  Thank you and please enjoy the rest of the morning.