SINGAPORE BUDGET 2021

Coastal-protection measures to be carried out in phases

Published Thu, Mar 4, 2021 · 09:50 PM

Singapore

THE government will implement coastal-protection measures in phases, beginning with the more vulnerable parts of Singapore's coastlines, said Sustainability and Environment Minister Grace Fu on Thursday.

This is part of the ongoing effort to safeguard the country's coastlines against the threat of rising sea levels, and managing inland flood risks.

During the debate on her ministry's budget for the new financial year, Ms Fu said national water agency PUB and the JTC will embark on site-specific studies along the coastlines of City-East Coast and Jurong Island this year.

Several factors were taken into consideration to identify these sites, including the potential impact of a flood event, the importance of assets like airports, economic and industrial districts, and opportunities to dovetail these coastal-protection measures with upcoming developments.

Among the potential measures to be examined are sea walls, polders and nature-based solutions such as mangrove planting.

Ms Fu said: "In developing these plans, we will search for innovation in complementing our land use, sea-space needs and the natural environment."

She also said that PUB will be developing the Coastal-Inland Flood Model this year to manage both inland and coastal flooding risks.

This model comprises different tools which incorporate advancing climate science and data to allow for holistic flood-risk assessment.

This is done by analysing the impact of extreme sea levels and intense rainfall-induced inland floods for Singapore.

"This model is able to simulate flood-risk events, and evaluate effectiveness of coastal infrastructure designs against different climatic scenarios," said Ms Fu.

Also during the debate, Minister of State Desmond Tan announced a new S$60 million Agri-Food Cluster Transformation (ACT) Fund; this replaces the Agriculture Productivity Fund (APF), which expired in 2020.

The ACT fund, to be established by the Singapore Food Agency, will be launched later this year.

It is designed to support the agri-food sector over the next five years to increase its productivity and achieve the "30 by 30" goal, which refers to Singapore's target of producing 30 per cent of its nutritional needs through local farms by 2030.

Mr Tan said the ACT Fund has been designed with several improvements over the previous fund.

"It will better cater to farms of different scales and development needs, from start-up to growth and expansion."

He added that the new fund will have "higher co-funding and wider scope, in support of farms that adopt advanced farming systems which improve productivity and resource efficiency".

A total of S$43 million had been awarded to 118 farms as at December 2020, under the APF.

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