This feature news is part of Singapore International Water Week’s (SIWW) series of one-on-one interviews with global water industry leaders, Conversations with Water Leaders. In this edition, OOSKAnews correspondent, Renee Martin-Nagle, speaks with Mr Khoo Teng Chye, executive director, Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC), to gather insights on Singapore’s urban water planning and city governance.
Governance has played a critical role in Singapore’s success of becoming a sustainable and liveable city. Mr Khoo Teng Chye shares the importance of having water on the top of political agenda as well as enhancing urban experiences with the use of water features.
You have held several significant positions in Singapore – you were CEO of Port of Singapore Authority and of PUB, and now you’re head of the Centre for Livable Cities. How would you describe the changes you have seen in Singapore’s water landscape over the years?
I lived through the early days of Singapore, in the early 60s, as a child. We were less than two million people then, and we receive plenty of rainfall – 2.4 metres per year yet we had droughts in the dry months of February and March. In 1963 we ran out of water, and the government turned off taps for the most part of the day and initiated water rationing. During the monsoon months of November and December we would have floods. And we had severe pollution – our rivers were really open sewers. We had over-crowding and tremendous traffic problems. We had all the problems of urbanization gone wrong.
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It was an extreme problem of trying to create more reservoirs to collect and store the water, and making sure that that water, before it gets to the reservoir, doesn’t get contaminated or polluted. This was not an isolated problem but one that required attention from land-use planners, environmental managers and housing authority to come up with an integrated approach.
Fifty years on, Singapore now has a population of 5.3 million, in essentially the same land area. We are considered one of the most livable cities in the world. We are clean, we’re green, we are a dynamic city, and so on. So, of course, the issue is – what did we do right?
That’s a question we asked ourselves four or five years ago. So the Centre for Livable Cities was set up as a joint initiative of the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources and the Ministry of National Development, because we felt that the approach that Singapore had taken to develop ourselves in a sustainable way should be studied, documented and shared. We want to build on that knowledge through research, and then create platforms and programmes for sharing that knowledge both in Singapore and through initiatives from other countries.
What was Singapore’s approach to governance that caused it to go from what it was 50 years ago to one of the most livable cities in the world?
When we talk about governance, we talk about a number of things. One of course is leadership, and I think we were very fortunate to have a leader like Mr Lee Kuan Yew, our first prime minister who was prime minister for many years, who was both visionary as well as pragmatic. He had a clear idea of what Singapore ought to be and then had the ability to make that vision happen through his leadership. Water was very clearly identified by him as a top strategic priority for the nation, and he set up the water office in his prime minister’s office so that every single department in the government would see water as a priority. He got a young engineer, who subsequently became the chairman of PUB, to draw up a plan and help to execute that plan to make Singapore as self-sufficient as we possibly could be.
That’s the leadership part of governance. Then integrated planning flows from that. Look at the way that water has been managed in Singapore. Obviously the supply side is extremely important, but so is the demand side. The other part of the equation is to look at water holistically as the whole water cycle.
As a result of its strategic urban planning process, Singapore became one of the first cities in the world to harvest stormwater from urban catchments to supplement its water supply. How did Singapore manage this feat?
If you look at supply, we were getting water from our neighbor Malaysia. We had a few reservoirs that we inherited from the British, but the rain falling from the sky was being washed to the sea because we didn’t have the reservoirs to collect it. And the worst part of course was that a lot of the water got very, very polluted. It was an extreme problem of trying to create more reservoirs to collect and store the water, and making sure that that water, before it gets to the reservoir, doesn’t get contaminated or polluted. This was not an isolated problem but one that required attention from land-use planners, environmental managers and housing authority to come up with an integrated approach. Hence, there was a need to work across different agencies to tackle these problems.
As a result of this integrated approach, we have become the first city in the world to do urban storm water harvesting on a scale that I don’t think anybody else does. In Singapore, the rain that falls on two-thirds of the land is collected now in 17 reservoirs, including the Marina Reservoir that is right in the heart of the city.
And that’s not something that happened overnight but it has happened progressively over decades as we systematically experimented with one or two reservoirs and catchments and then gradually put in the right policies, laws, enforcement mechanisms and technology to make this happen. The solution involved a combination of policy action, research into new technology, and effective implementation, not just by the water agency but in a coordinated way with multiple agencies.
For a city that is beginning its approach to water sustainability, where would you suggest that they start?
I think the starting point has to be clarity that water is very high on the political agenda of the city. If the city has a water problem, then water has to be treated as a strategic priority. The political leadership has to take ownership of it and empower their planners and water engineers to be given the authority to do what is necessary, to take an integrated approach to manage the supply and demand of water, and to put in place the right policies, legislation, programmes and so on. That’s the most important thing that needs to be done.
Water should be brought into the urban planning agenda in an integral way with urban planning, with urban design, rather than to see water planning as the domain of the water engineer. Integrated planning actually has got quite a number of aspects to it and uses a combination of policy action, research into new technology, and effective implementation systematically, not just by the water agency but in a coordinated way with multiple agencies.
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If you want to make cities more livable and sustainable, and you want to tackle the water problems, the key is governance. If you get the governance right, most other things will fall into place.
Very often, urban planners plan a city looking at land use, traffic, greenery, but water, like other utilities – electricity, telecommunications, gas, and so on – is not given much attention. Water is an afterthought, and as a result we see all the negative impacts of water infrastructure in cities. I talk about monsoon canals and monsoon drains, and when they are not filled with water – which is most of the time because you don’t get heavy rain storms all the time – then they are ugly, concrete structures. You also have pipes and treatment plants that are unsightly.
In our case we have the Marina Barrage in Singapore. If it had been left purely to water engineers, the barrage would have been a big ugly pump house. But because of the intervention of urban planners, the Marina Barrage has been beautifully redesigned with a green roof and other sustainable features. It’s become a wonderful community resource in Singapore.
So if water can be brought up front into the urban planning agenda, then programmes like Singapore’s ABC Waters and other similar programmes in other cities will become more common throughout the world. Some cities – like Seattle, Philadelphia, Seoul, Tokyo, and cities in Australia — are beginning to see the value of planning for water resources in an integral way with other urban planning and urban design. If water planning is solely the domain of water engineers, then water designs and water features that could enhance the urban experience get forgotten when cities are being planned.
Were there things you found interesting at the World Cities Summit Mayors Forum in Bilbao in June of this year?
When we bring city leaders to Singapore for events, we also ask them to bring projects they want to discuss with us, and invariably about half, or at least half, of the projects have to do with water or water and sanitation. That was the case also in Bilbao. We asked the mayors beforehand for one or two projects they would like to share with the other mayors, and about half of them had to do with water and sanitation. That is very, very significant that water is seen as something that is extremely important in the priorities of the mayors in many cities.
I also got the sense that the mayors realised that their challenges are not unique to themselves, that there are many other cities facing the same challenges and that cities are trying out different ideas, different solutions to tackle these challenges. I think they felt empowered, listening to other mayors trying to tackle their problems with interesting programs. There was a tremendous amount of peer sharing, of networking among the mayors. It was a very intense two days, but there was a tremendous sense of energy, of feeling that it was a very valuable exercise. All of them expressed keenness to continue the networking and the discussions in Singapore next year.
These gatherings seem to be quite valuable. What other major events can we look forward to?
It’s extremely important for city leaders and water leaders from all over the world to come together. I’m glad that we’ve done that several times, and that we will be doing it again in June 2014 when the World Cities Summit will be held in conjunction with the Singapore International Water Week, the Mayor’s Forum and also the CleanEnviro Summit. I think it will be a very exciting event that all of us from all over the world will look forward to and where city leaders can meet and share their knowledge, their solutions and their challenges.
What is one final message you would like to leave with our readers?
Governance is key. If you want to make cities more livable and sustainable, and you want to tackle the water problems, the key is governance. If you get the governance right, most other things will fall into place. In Singapore, we were fortunate that we have had good governance. Once you’ve got good governance, then you create an environment in which your agencies and institutions can flourish. You need all the players to be working together – the public sector, the government, the private sector, the companies, and the people. All have a role to play, and they have to work well together for you to be able to achieve sustainable outcomes.
This post originally appeared here.
