YP to work with MPs on private member’s motion on sustainability

The PAP’s youth wing has mapped out key industry recommendations in a position paper on what Singapore can do to secure a sustainable future for everyone.

After developing the sustainability position paper “Singapore – A Green Hub” in March 2020, the Young PAP (YP) conducted two focus group discussions in September 2020 with climate activists and representatives from 14 business sectors to seek feedback to improve Singapore’s sustainability landscape.

On November 22 2020, YP held a public consultation webinar to gather further feedback on the updated 19-page position paper.

YP chairman, Dr Janil Puthucheary, MPs Louis Ng (Nee Soon GRC) and Hany Soh (Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC), questions from members of the public. A wide range of sustainability topics such as smoking, mangroves, biodiversity, green buildings and recycling were discussed.

Dr Janil, Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information and also for Health, said sustainability means different things to different people, but it affects multiple aspects of our lives and is "one of the biggest and most important issues" facing the world today.

As sustainability has been on the agenda for some time and there are many related topics, it is about which to prioritise, which interventions to put in place and how to convince people to join the effort, he pointed out.

Mr Ng, who chairs the Government Parliamentary Committee (GPC) for Sustainability and the Environment, said it was important to “make sure sustainability is at the heart of everything that we do”. He added that there are many good ideas to tackle the issue and “it’s up to us to go out there to create a platform to capture some of these ideas and give them a voice in Parliament”.

Mr Ng, Ms Soh and another MP, Ms Poh Li San (Sembawang GRC), who is also the deputy chair of the same GPC, will be involved in drafting a private member’s motion to be discussed in Parliament in February 2021 that will include some of the issues raised in the paper.

The YP also offered proposals in the areas of driving behavioural change, multi-stakeholder cooperation on climate resilience and sustainable urban development.

It also proposed that the Government conducts a feasibility study of the cap-and-trade (carbon quota) model as an alternative to the existing carbon tax model. The cap-and-trade model will promote greater certainty around emissions reduction and help countries to achieve pre-determined emissions targets and to apply a falling emissions cap over time.

These are the three key recommendations from the “Singapore – A Green Hub” paper:

1. Establish Singapore as a Research and Development hub for alternative energy

• Direct more national resources towards scientific research for alternative energy

• Increase the talent pool for scientific research and invest in clean energy infrastructure

• Enhance corporate-university-government partnerships

• Host regional or international research competitions to tap on a larger pool of scientists

• Deploy supercomputers to support research into alternative energy solutions

2. Professionalise the sustainability industry

• Singapore to lead global carbon documentation and reporting market and provide end-to-end carbon accounting services to the world.

• Establish a state-supported set of protocols and accounting standards to document and report end-to-end carbon emission for all products.

• These initiatives can potentially create jobs for Singaporean professionals, managers, executives and technicians.

• Government-sanctioned training and certification for practitioners.

3. Develop an energy usage data-sharing framework

• Data-sharing framework in two categories: sectoral data for each Key Industrial Sector and overall Key Environmental Indicators among industry players.

• Data-sharing can reduce compliance costs for businesses and enhance market efficiency.