Natural Capital Singapore in RIE News
Dr Dan Richards, principal investigator of Natural Capital Singapore explains the importance of valuing our natural capital in the National Research Foundation publication.
Nature provides us with many benefits: roadside trees provide shade and cooling, forests regulate flood risk, and parks provide spaces for recreation. In spite of its importance to society and the economy, the role of this natural capital has historically been under-recognised and undervalued. This has resulted in ecological degradation, leading to urban warming, destructive floods, the loss of biodiversity, and compromised health of the residents.
While several national-scale assessments of natural capital have been conducted, for example in Europe and North America, such national assessments have never been done in a tropical and largely urbanised country. Dr Daniel Richards, principal investigator of the external pageNatural Capital Singapore project, shares that the project will undertake the first national assessment of natural capital in Singapore.
In addition to synthesising existing ecological, knowledge, Natural Capital Singapore will develop new methods to model and map the benefits of ecosystems. This will help government agencies, developers, and architects make more informed decisions in assessing the trade-offs between future development and environmental concerns.
The three-year project is co-led by the Singapore-ETH Centre and NUS, and supported by the National Research Foundation under
the external pageCREATE programme.