Natural Capital Singapore to Inform Planning

The launch of Natural Capital Singapore was featured in external pageDevelopment v saving nature: Project to help assess trade-offscall_made in The Straits Times, which delved into the project's objective, approach, and application.

The Singapore-ETH Centre and National University of Singapore are leading the effort, together with the Nanyang Technological University and the Centre for Urban Greenery and Ecology (CUGE) at the National Parks Board, to quantify the benefits of the country's forests, parks, waterways, coastal, and marine habitats. This will provide a framework for planners and developers to assess the trade-offs between development and conservation.

The team of architects, biologist, ecologists, economists, geographers, and software engineers will create a framework to define Singapore's most important ecosystems, determine their benefits and agree on tools to measure them. They will then assess the current state of the country's land, coastal and marine habitats, and quantify their economic, societal and environmental benefits.

One of the outcomes of this project is a tool to help planners and developers visualise data on the benefits of natural capital and simulate the impact of various scenarios on Singapore's natural capital.

Dr Dan Richards one of the principal investigators from the Singapore-ETH Centre, said that Natural Capital Singapore will equip planners and developers to make better-informed decisions when faced with development-environment trade-offs, and also identify opportunities for the stronger incorporation of natural capital into our urban landscape.