Land Resources
An Inter-Ministerial Committee on Sustainable Development (IMCSD) was established in 2008 to set out Singapore’s sustainable development strategy, and came up with the Sustainable Singapore Blueprint (SSB) that outlines sustainable development for the next 20 years.
Singapore comprises the main island of Singapore and some 63 smaller offshore islets. It is located in the midst of one of the world’s busiest sea and air transit point. Singapore has a tropical rainforest climate with no distinctive seasons, and its climate is characterized by uniform temperature and pressure, high humidity, and abundant rainfall. Singapore has on-going land reclamation projects with earth obtained from its own hills, the seabed, and neighbouring countries. As a result, Singapore's land area grew from 581.5 km² in the 1960s to 704 km² today, and may grow by another 100 km² by 2030. The projects sometimes involve some of the smaller islands being merged together through land reclamation in order to form larger, more functional islands. The land-use planning and development control functions are overseen by a single agency, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). The first Concept Plan from the URA was released in 1971, and is reviewed in 10 year intervals. Only 2% of Singapore's area is arable land, and this only contributes 0.1% to GDP. With limited land and sea resources for primary production, Singapore’s agricultural developments occur in allocated areas called Agro-technology Parks on land, and Marine Parks at sea. Production in these areas includes vegetables, eggs, fish, milk, orchids and ornamental fish. Land is safeguarded for long term economic needs, including strategic industries like pharmaceuticals, electronics, biomedical sciences, and new growth sectors such as aerospace and medical travel, and land is also set aside for future expansion of ports, the airport and other large infrastructure. Over the 20 year period from 1986 to 2007, green cover increased from 36% to 47% even though the population increased 68% during that period. Singapore also caps vehicle growth, limiting car growth in the same period to 3%, and reducing it further by 1.5% between 2007 and 2009. As Singapore is 163 meters above sea level at its highest point, and much of the island is 15 meters above sea level and generally flat, the effects of sea level rise are not projected to be as intense as in other SIDS. Additionally, Singapore has a deliberate policy in place to raise low-lying areas in conjunction with redevelopment proposals.
