The four pillars of Singapore’s sustainable development success

By Teo Chee Hean

Wednesday 7 June 2017

http://www.eco-business.com/opinion/the-four-pillars-of-singapores-sustainable-development-success/

At this week’s Ecosperity 2017 conference, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security Mr Teo Chee Hean shared how Singapore has balanced economic, social, and environmental priorities to achieve sustainable development. Below is an excerpt of his speech.

Since the 1970s, economic development has helped to lift billions of people out of poverty. Social indices of human development such as healthcare and education have improved significantly.

But this progress is not even, and important challenges remain. Social inequality, education and work opportunities for women, and youth unemployment are still areas of concern for many countries.

Rising populism and protectionism in several advanced economies, technological disruptions, and new transnational security and pandemic threats add more complexity and uncertainty to health, safety, and development.

Our environment is also under stress. Since 1972, the world population has grown from 3.8 billion to 7.3 billion in 2015, and is expected to grow to 9.7 billion by 2050. More than 54 per cent of the global population already lives in urban areas.

Access to clean air, clean water, power, and sanitation are challenges in many countries. Low-lying coastal communities such as Singapore are also more vulnerable to rising sea levels due to climate change.

Individuals, companies, countries, and the global community will need to work together to develop solutions for sustainable development.

As a small, densely populated island nation with no natural resources, Singapore’s own sustainable development experience has focused on four key areas: Building a sustainable economy; creating a sustainable living environment; ensuring sustainable development for our people; and contributing to international collaboration.

Sustainable economy

Economic growth generates the resources to invest in education, research and development, security, infrastructure, and public services.

With no natural resources, Singapore has had to be resourceful to make a living for ourselves. This has entailed finding ways to create and add value, producing goods and services that are in demand by others, and making careful use of resources.

This has required integrated and long-term planning to optimise resources such as budget, land, manpower, energy, and more recently, carbon emissions, to ensure sustainable growth.

We made early choices to turn away very pollutive industries and took early action to switch to natural gas, the cleanest form of fossil fuel, for power generation. Today, we are among the 20 most carbon efficient countries in the world.

We will intensify our efforts as we work towards achieving our commitment under the Paris Agreement. We will reduce emissions intensity by 36 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030, and stabilise emissions with the aim of peaking by then.

We plan to introduce a carbon tax from 2019 so that those who emit the most carbon emissions will bear the cost to our environment and be encouraged to reduce their emissions. There is also much potential for our industries to save costs as we raise energy efficiency.

The carbon tax will also help align the costs and benefits of reducing emissions. We are also scaling up deployment for solar, aggregating demand across our agencies and testing floating solar photovoltaics on our reservoirs.

These plans can help us to move towards a low-carbon society, and also be a Living Laboratory for businesses, agencies, and research institutes to develop new products and services for the global economy.

According to the recently launched ‘Better Business, Better World” Asia report, opportunities in sustainability could contribute US$12 trillion to global GDP and create 380 million new jobs by 2030. I encourage our businesses to seize these opportunities.

Sustainable living environment

Our pioneer generation had a vision for a clean, green and sustainable Singapore for all Singaporeans. They instilled in all of us the consciousness that this little island is all that we have, and we have to look after it well.

Over the past 50 years, we have seen vast improvements in our housing, water, public health, and sanitation. Today, we are a City in a Garden with about 47 per cent green cover in Singapore. More than 80 per cent of households are within a 10-minute walk from a park.

We have 72 hectares of rooftop gardens and green walls today, and aim to triple this by 2030. These plans are outlined in our Sustainable Singapore Blueprint.

I have also just launched the Public Sector Sustainability Plan, which will catalyse sustainable practices, generate demand for green products and services, and encourage our public officers to think green. These initiatives will achieve a green and sustainable living environment for all Singaporeans.

With no natural resources, Singapore has had to be resourceful to make a living for ourselves. This has entailed finding ways to create and add value, producing goods and services that are in demand by others, and making careful use of resources.

Sustainable development for our people

Our people are our precious and only resource, and investing in them is of utmost importance.

Since the 1960s, we have worked to achieve mass education at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Our next frontier is mass continuing education to prepare for the future of work. Rapid technological advances will change the nature of work and the skills required.

The knowledge and skills we acquire through conventional pre-employment education during the first 20 years of our lives will need to be refreshed to last a working life of over forty years.

Our workers must be prepared to constantly upskill and reskill, and move into new jobs and industries several times in their working lives. SkillsFuture Singapore will work closely with our associations, unions, and companies to support our workers to deepen and refresh their skills at key points in their careers.

International collaboration

Nations also need to work together to address global challenges. Issues such as transboundary air pollution or pandemics require a regional response, while others such as climate change require the contribution of all countries.

Singapore remains committed to the Paris Agreement and supports the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which provides a framework to guide national efforts in achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

In support of this agenda, we have trained more than 112,000 officials from over 170 developing countries in key areas such as sustainable urban, water, and human resource management, health, and education.

We will continue to share our sustainable development policies and expertise through leadership seminars in policymaking, workshops on urban governance in cities, and water and sanitation projects.

In the course of our development journey, Singapore has benefited from the experience of many countries as we developed, and we continue to do so. We hope that our collaborations in sustainable development can, in a similar way, make a small contribution to the development paths and journeys of other countries.

Through international partnerships, we can collectively find more efficient, more comprehensive, and more sustainable solutions to address global challenges.

The four aspects of sustainable development that I have highlighted work in combination with one another. Strong partnership between the public, private, and people sectors will be required to shape a sustainable future for all of us.

Eco-Business is a content partner for Temasek’s Ecosperity sustainable development event, which was held on Monday 5 June in Singapore. 

Why Singapore Is the World’s Most Successful Society

By Kishore Mahbubani

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/kishore-mahbubani/singapore-world-successful-society_b_7934988.html

SINGAPORE — Singapore turns 50 on Aug. 9, 2015. Is Singapore the most successful society since human history began? Or, to put it differently, did Singapore improve the living standards of its people faster and more comprehensively than any other society?

The only way to answer these questions is with empirical data. The most basic needs of any human being are food, shelter, health, education and employment. Did Singapore improve the delivery of those basic needs faster than any other society?

When Singapore was expelled from Malaysia in 1965 and thrust into an unwanted independence, it was a typical Third World country. Its per capita income of $500 was the same as Ghana’s then. It was not desperately poor, but it had malnutrition. I know this personally as I was put on a special feeding program when I joined school in the first grade, drinking milk from a pail with a ladle shared by other children.

This malnutrition disappeared quickly. Singapore’s per capita income has shot from $500 to $55,000 today, the largest increase any newly independent nation has enjoyed. This spectacular economic success story of Singapore is clearly amazing. Yet, when I was Singapore’s ambassador to the UN in the 1980s, the then head of UNICEF, the American James Grant, used to chide me for speaking about it.

He told me that Singapore’s success in another area was even more spectacular. We had reduced our infant mortality faster than any other society, going down from 35 per 1,000 live births in 1965 to 10.90 in 1985. James Grant was right. Babies are the most vulnerable members of any society. When they live instead of dying, they reflect an improving social ecosystem that keeps them alive.

The babies who lived in Singapore went on to enjoy one of the best education systems in the world. The OECD ranked 15-year-old Singaporean children number one in the world in a recent global ranking of “Universal Basic Skills” in mathematics and science. Singapore students also topped the OECD PISA problem solving test in 2012.

From the Singapore with slums that I grew up in, we now have the highest home ownership of any country in the world, with 90 percent of residents living in homes they own.

There are many other areas where Singapore’s social standards top the charts. From the Singapore with slums that I grew up in, we now have the highest home ownership of any country in the world, with 90 percent of residents living in homes they own. Even amongst households in the lowest 20 percent of incomes, over 80 percent own their own homes. Rapidly rising salaries and strong compulsory saving schemes, through the Central Provident Fund, led to this incredibly high home ownership.

So why did Singapore succeed so comprehensively? The simple answer is exceptional leadership. Many in the world have heard of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister who passed away in March this year. Far fewer have heard of Dr. Goh Keng Swee, the architect of Singapore’s economic miracle, and Mr. S. Rajaratnam, Singapore’s philosopher par excellence.

Together, they made a great team.

This exceptional team also implemented three exceptional policies: Meritocracy, Pragmatism and Honesty. Indeed, I share this “secret” MPH formula with every foreign student at the Lee Kuan Yew School, and I assure them that if they implement it, their country will succeed as well as Singapore. Meritocracy means a country picks its best citizens, not the relatives of the ruling class, to run a country. Pragmatism means that a country does not try to reinvent the wheel. As Dr. Goh Keng Swee would say to me, “Kishore, no matter what problem Singapore encounters, somebody, somewhere, has solved it. Let us copy the solution and adapt it to Singapore.” Copying best practices is something any country can do. However, implementing “Honesty” is the hardest thing to do. Corruption is the single biggest reason why most Third World countries have failed. The greatest strength of Singapore’s founding fathers was that they were ruthlessly honest. It also helped that they were exceptionally shrewd and cunning.

Singapore’s success is due to MPH: Meritocracy, Pragmatism and Honesty

Still, Singapore has its fair share of detractors. Its political system was widely viewed as being an “enlightened dictatorship,” even though free elections have been held every five years. Its media is widely perceived to be controlled by the government and Singapore is ranked number 153 out of 180 by Reporters Without Borders in 2015 on the Press Freedom Index. Many human rights organizations criticize it. Freedom House ranks Singapore as “partially free.”

Undoubtedly, some of these criticisms have some validity. Yet, the Singapore population is one of the best educated populations and, hence, globally mobile. They could vote with their feet if Singapore were a stifling “un-free” society. Most choose to stay. Equally importantly, some of the most talented people in the world, including Americans and Europeans, are giving up their citizenship to become Singapore citizens. Maybe they have noticed something that the Western media has not noticed: Singapore is one of the best places to be born in and to live in. Quite amazingly, a society destined to fail in 1965 has become one of the world’s greatest success stories.

Accepting broader definitions of success

Education Minister Heng Swee Keat yesterday called on Singaporeans to rethink what constitutes success in life so that the education system can have meaningful reforms. Here are excerpts of his speech.

MANY parents and students feel that our education system is too focused on examinations and grades. This excessive focus has several consequences:

·        It may come at the expense of the development of well-rounded individuals, including the character and values of the student, which ultimately matters most.

·        It may come at the expense of learning as students "study to the test" and teachers respond by "teaching to the test" rather than to stimulate curiosity and a love of learning.

·        Students may choose subjects, and indeed, schools may offer subjects, based on how easy it is to score good grades rather than on their intrinsic value. The recent debate over literature, which Ms Janice Koh brought up, is a case in point.

·        Other forms of talent - in the arts, sports, music, leadership ability, applied skills using both hands and head, etc, are not sufficiently recognised. We should not just have an exam-based meritocracy. Rather, we should have a talent-centric meritocracy that recognises talent in a wide range of areas.

A major consequence of a single-minded focus on examinations is stress, in particular, stress related to competition and high-stake examinations such as the PSLE, which Ms Denise Phua and several others have spoken about. Mr Lim Biow Chuan also opened this debate by talking about stress. Some mothers take leave for an entire year or more to help their children prepare.

Many see entry into top schools as critical to their children's future and prepare their children very early, some as early as kindergarten, and even send them to two kindergartens. Many compete to get a place in popular primary schools or spend significantly on tuition, as Mr Low Thia Khiang mentioned.

Others worry about their children being streamed into normal streams, and suffer from the labelling and stigma associated with it. Some teachers who are committed to helping their students succeed may give a lot of homework or set tests that are difficult to stretch their students, but often with good intentions. I appreciate the stress that parents, students and educators feel. This is an important issue.

Is stress a necessary evil?

SOME are concerned about the effects of competition. Successful students may develop a narrow, competitive mindset. They may come to believe that: "I have succeeded because I have worked hard, so I deserve nothing but the best for myself."

While there are concerns about high-stake exams, I have also heard other views, and there are others who see merit in the current system. Many feel that the current system sets clear standards. Many students have told me exams challenge them to learn better. Teachers use exams to determine students' mastery of the different subjects and tailor their teaching strategies accordingly.

In a public education system, exams provide us with a standardised measure of progression and achievement, and ensure accountability across the system to uphold rigorous standards. In fact, this is one of the reasons why public examinations started. It also provides an objective way of determining entry into the next level of education. In Singapore, exams have helped assure a very high average among our students. That is why our students, even those who score average here, perform so well when they go overseas.

Some countries, such as the UK, Japan and Korea, and some states in the US that abolished exams or made these easier are now reversing course. Their experience has been that while removing exams was popular and brought short-term relief, over time, insidiously, standards fall. They are now concerned that their youth are not equipped to compete in the global marketplace. I should note that the people who suffer the most when educational standards drop in these countries are not the best students but the average students. That is why in some countries, while they say they have "high peaks", they also have "deep valleys".

As for the stress that comes with high-stake exams, many have observed that some amount of stress is almost unavoidable. While excessive and prolonged stress is bad, the right amount of stress can bring out the best in each of us. But what is optimal depends on each individual. Some parents have also said that some amount of competition is necessary - it is a reality of working life, and equipping our students to learn this early in life strengthens them for the future.

Singapore is not alone

INDEED, this issue of stress and competition is not unique to Singapore. Some of you may have read that in New York, parents queue to admit their children into high- end kindergartens, while a recent report noted that in the UK, rich parents pay up to £80,000 a year (S$150,000) to hire "well-qualified private tutors".

The common position is that we all want our children to get ahead in life. And the higher the aspiration, the greater the drive. The question we have to ask is, what exactly will ensure that our children can get ahead and be successful in the face of global competition and not just relative to other Singaporeans?

Social mobility

THE second area is that of opportunities, social mobility and inclusion. Some parents are concerned that without tuition, their children cannot cope or cannot do well enough to excel. Others, and Ms Mary Liew spoke about this earlier, whose children are doing well want them to do even better, and procure all sorts of tuition and enrichment classes to help them advance. Some are concerned that in some schools, students tend to come from similar social-economic backgrounds and have similar academic abilities.

Without the opportunity to interact with students from different backgrounds and academic abilities, our students may not develop empathy and our society may lose its cohesiveness. But some have also cautioned that if we mix up our students too much, it will be harder to cater to the learning needs of different groups. We will lose our peaks of excellence and also fail to support those who may fall behind without different approaches.

Policy options

IN THE next phase of Our Singapore Conversation, we can discuss the various policy options. For example, the PSLE serves as an objective benchmark for secondary school posting today. So important questions that we need to discuss include:

·        How do we maintain our rigorous standards and accountability and whether we can allocate all secondary school places without an objective benchmark like the PSLE?

·        Are there alternative posting systems that are still objective but can minimise the current over-emphasis on academic results, and enhance social inclusion?

·        To what extent should choice or proximity to school be a consideration in secondary school posting, as some have suggested?

Mr Gan Thiam Poh's suggestion about PSLE cut-off points is something that we can consider further. Ms Denise Phua spoke about a through-train model from pre-school to secondary school. Mr Yee Jenn Jong had other suggestions. As another example, streaming at the secondary level allows us to tailor instruction to the abilities and learning styles of our students. But some have questioned if we should re-think whether streaming is absolutely necessary.

So important questions to discuss in the next phase of Our Singapore Conversation include:

·        Can we ensure that every child can learn at his or her own pace if there is no streaming?

·        Will our schools be even less diverse if we did not have students from the various academic streams?

·        Can we replicate what we have done at the primary level, such as subject-based banding, at the secondary level? And that was the specific suggestion by Dr Intan Azura Mokhtar.

Whatever we do, we must be deliberate and thoughtful about what we need to change, how fast we can change and how far we can sustain these changes. We must have the resources to sustain any change. I have been watching the debates on resourcing education in various countries. Countries that have started with a big bang now have to make painful changes to cut back.

A long way ahead

EDUCATION is a long-term endeavour and always a work in progress. We should not rush into anything as the results, whether good or bad, are evident only many years down the road. And even as we seek to address current issues, we must be as thoughtful as we can.

It is also critical for us not to see our education system in isolation. Education alone cannot enable Singaporeans to realise our aspirations. If our society fails, the able will emigrate and the rest of us will be stuck here in failure. But if we stay and move together, we can succeed together. Education alone cannot give us a good life, and we need to be clear what a good life is. If a good life is simply about getting ahead of others and achieving the 5Cs (cash, condominium, cars, credit card, and country club), the competitive pressure in the workplace will define how we, as parents and teachers, view education. Then no amount of changes in the education system can alter the reality of each of us chasing after material and positional goods.

We cannot have broader definitions of success in education without our society accepting broader definitions of success in life. In many respects, the education system reflects societal norms and expectations.

"The Amazing Story of the Singapore Lion City"

What Singapore has accomplished in the past five decades in terms of extraordinary change is truly amazing.

The Singapore experience might be termed the "Miracle of the Pacific" as it is one of the most significant Pacific Basin ports and is the headquarters for Apec, the AsiaPacific Economic Community forum.

In the 1950s, Singapore was characterised by political instability, large slums, and an active communist insurgency. Under the dynamic and honest leadership of the brilliant Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore rose to become one of the world's most modern and wealthy countries and a city teeming with vitality.

Today, its income per capita stands at $62,100, making it one of the world's wealthiest countries (No 5), well above the US. Being a citystate with a population of only 4.7 million, it has generated currently $225.7 billion of foreign exchange reserves, almost double that of the US with its over 300 million population! In rankings just released, Singapore is No 2 in the world in terms of economic freedom.

How has a new nation that came into existence in 1965, with no natural resources, achieved such dramatic economic success? Three key factors have been:

1 strategic location (it is within a seven hours flight of 2.8 billion people),

2 leadership, and

3 education/human resource development.

In this column I will focus on the latter and the key distinctive features of Singaporean education.

The first and most basic characteristic of Singaporean education is its Confucian character and value system that emphasises respect for education and teachers and high motivation of students. Singapore pays its teachers extremely well and has a new major initiative to make the teaching profession even more attractive. This factor has contributed importantly to the overall high quality of Singapore education.

The second characteristic relates to Singapore's status as a multicultural and multilingual society. Currently, there is intense interest in the EU in the relationship between the multilingual mind and creativity. If this link does exist, then that augurs well for the future of Singapore. Its current policy is for all its students to be competent in both English and Mandarin, the world's two most important languages. Many Singaporeans also have command of other languages such as Malay, Tamil, and Teochiew.

A third characteristic is pragmatism. Singapore has emphasised academic fields with high economic payoffs such as science, information technology, business, and economics. Also it chose to send many of its students overseas to utilise the excellent higher education infrastructure already built in the US, Europe, and Australia.

A fourth characteristic related to pragmatism is the country's stress on multiple postsecondary paths for students and recognition of diversity of talent. Singapore has created strong polytechnic universities to meet the needs of students preferring that kind of skill set and training.

A fifth element has been the stress on the development of a knowledge economy reflected in former PM Goh's aspiration to have Singapore become the "Boston of the East". Boston is known as a higher education centre (presence of Harvard and MIT) fostering innovation and entrepreneurship.

A sixth element is a focus on globalisation and the development of Singapore as an international education, finance, tourist, and communications hub. Malaysia and Thailand have similar aspirations. Singapore's key advantage is that its people have the best English in the AsiaPacific region. Thailand's big advantage is that it has much lower costs than Singapore and its tourist attractions are much more diverse and "exotic".

Finally, at the moment in Singapore, there is a new thrust on the development of character and citizenship education. Also there is the goal to broaden Singapore education beyond its narrow pragmatism with the development of a new liberal arts college in collaboration with Yale University, called YaleNUS College.

The Singaporean story is an amazing one demonstrating the compelling necessity of achieving both highquality education and honest, creative leadership.

Gerald W Fry

Distinguished International Professor

Department of Organisational Leadership, Policy, and Development

University of Minnesota

gwf@umn.edu

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/The-Amazing-Story-of-the-Singapore-Lion-City-30174285.html