From the PAP to the Workers’ Party, why are Singapore’s political parties increasingly concerned with climate change?
- Parties from across the political spectrum are treating it as a policy issue ahead of the general election, which must be held before April 2021
- Analysts say young voters especially care about the issue
Goh, the area’s parliamentary representative for over four decades, was responding to constituents who had written to him as part of a youth-led appeal to lawmakers to take action on a range of issues from nature conservation to imposing higher carbon taxes.
Singaporeans have in recent years become more concerned about the costs of climate change. Ground-up movements seeking to change behaviours such as using fewer plastic bags and consuming less meat have sprung up, along with calls for policymakers and businesses to do their part to combat global warming, which has already threatened livelihoods and food security.
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And as political parties across the spectrum gear up for an election that must be called by April 2021, they are also consolidating their positions on the issue. In August, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during his National Day Rally devoted 20 minutes of his 80-minute English speech to climate change, pegging the cost of rising sea levels to be S$100 billion over the next century and calling the issue a “life and death matter”.
“We should treat climate change defences like we treat the [Singapore Armed Forces] – with utmost seriousness,” he said.
On October 29, The Workers’ Party – the island state’s main opposition party – released a statement saying there was a “climate emergency facing our planet”. The party has previously brought up the issue in parliament, and in its 2015 manifesto called for the government to perform a regular risk assessment on climate change.
Workers’ Party chief Pritam Singh last month wrote on Facebook that Singapore’s sovereign wealth funds should be more transparent with how much they have invested in sustainability efforts.
Political observer Eugene Tan, associate professor of law at the Singapore Management University, said it was the first time the country’s political parties had seriously discussed climate change in the run-up to an election
“The number of parties talking about it, the attention they are giving to the issue and the interest of voters all point to climate change being given close attention,” he said.
He said it was driven by a political imperative to be relevant to young voters, who care about the issue and expect government and politicians to act firmly.
“Parties also think they can show their policy nous in dealing with climate change,” Tan said.
We should treat climate change defences like we treat the [Singapore Armed Forces] – with utmost seriousness
Tan Cheng Bock’s Progress Singapore Party told This Week in Asia that government and government-linked companies should provide incentives for renewable energy usage, while Singapore Democratic Party chief Chee Soon Juan felt the country had to make climate change a focus in foreign policy and diplomatic missions.
Fellow opposition groups, such as the People’s Power Party and Singapore People’s Party, suggested encouraging the use of electric vehicles, upping research into alternative energy sources and dropping single-use plastics, while echoing Lee’s point that climate change is an existential issue for Singapore.
Dr Felix Tan, an associate lecturer at SIM Global Education, said Lee’s raising of the issue in his national address brought it to a more prominent stage.
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Tan believed the country’s political parties were actively debating climate change for the first time for two reasons: Singaporean society was now more informed on how it affected their daily lives, and young voters had turned their attention to global matters rather than the bread-and-butter domestic topics that usually dominate the country’s politics.
Singapore’s next general election has to be called by April 2021, with political punters expecting it to happen next year, and the city state’s younger voters now forming one of the largest cohorts of eligible voters.
As of June, there were 708,600 Singaporeans between the ages of 20 and 34, according to the country’s Department of Statistics. While it is unclear how many younger people are registered voters, Singapore’s entire registry stands at almost 2.6 million people.
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Tan said he hoped this “Greta Thunberg effect” – referring to the 16-year-old Swedish climate change activist who has made headlines worldwide – goes beyond a populist movement and yields concrete attempts to focus on government policies.
For Tan, from Singapore Management University, the prime minister’s speech was a demonstration of the long-term planning and vision of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP). He said the country’s other parties would also have to offer ideas on how to tackle climate change, including how to finance their plans.
As PAP central executive committee member and speaker of parliament Tan Chuan-Jin told This Week in Asia: “Climate change isn’t a new issue on the table because it’s a fad. We have been dealing with food security for some time, and we have also been physically raising the island for a number of years. There is a range of things that need to be done to contend with issue – general elections or not.”
Singapore’s young voters have been keenly watching to see how the parties respond. When the election campaign season starts, Annika Mock, 21, a Yale-National University of Singapore student said she intends to track election speeches to see who mentions climate change and who does not, then publish that information.
She was one of the organisers of the climate rally held in September, which followed the global climate change youth movement started by Thunberg. An estimated 2,000 people attended the outdoor event despite Singapore being blanketed by haze from forest fires in Indonesia.
She was aware that while climate change has appeared on political agendas, it is not the most important issue for older Singaporeans – whom experts said will still focus on topics such as job security, cost of living, wealth inequality and immigration.
“We don’t want to represent climate change as the be-all and end-all, but as something people should consider as part of wider social issues,” Mock said. “We want to make climate change a priority to Singaporeans so there is more groundswell and political will for bolder climate action.”
