Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at Commemoration of 60 Years of Greening

Apr 15, 2023

Thank you for joining us to mark 60 years of Singapore’s greening journey today. We have come a long way in creating a green, liveable and sustainable home for Singaporeans.

Roots of Singapore’s greening journey

When we became independent in 1965, Singapore had to grapple with many serious challenges – crime, unemployment, security communism and communalism, poor housing conditions, and more. And yet amidst all of this, our founding Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew recognised the importance of greening Singapore. 

First, Singapore was urbanising very rapidly in the 1960s, and greenery would soften the landscape and improve quality of life. Many of you would have seen some archival photos of Singapore at independence, and there were many buildings and not many trees in the city.

Second, a clean and green Singapore would allow us to distinguish ourselves, and attract the investments necessary for our growth.

Third, Mr Lee saw greenery as a social leveller. He believed that it was important that ordinary people, and not just the better off, had access to greenery and green spaces.

So, from the very beginning, our founding leaders wanted to be good stewards of our environment, and to nurture a, greener and more liveable Singapore. Over successive generations, we have worked hard to sustain this legacy.

Pillars of Singapore’s greening journey; From Garden City to City in a Garden

Our greening journey started on 16 June 1963, when Mr Lee launched the first nationwide tree-planting campaign, by planting a Mempat tree at Farrer Circus.

A few years later, he started the tradition of marking Tree Planting Day annually, to get people out to plant trees all over our island. We continue this tradition to this very day, and will continue to do so well into the future.

We also set out our first greenery plan in 1967, to transform Singapore into a Garden City. The idea was to plant trees and flowering shrubs to make our city beautiful and liveable for Singaporeans. Once we achieved this, we raised our ambitions to transform Singapore into a City in a Garden. Over the last 20 years, we strengthened our focus on conserving our natural heritage and increasing community participation in greening.

We formulated greening policies and directed, coordinated and monitored our greening efforts collectively. We enacted laws to protect our natural environment and built up our expertise to support these efforts. And we explored innovative ways to incorporate greenery into our surroundings despite land constraints.

This explains the lush greenery lining overhead bridges and expressways, covering our sheltered walkways, and on the rooftops and along the sides of buildings.

We would not have been able to sustain our greening efforts without the strong support of the community. Beyond tree planting, Singaporeans have been involved in a wide range of activities, from community gardening in our heartlands, to citizen biodiversity surveys, from habitat enhancement works to supporting nature conservation.

A testament to community involvement is how our NParks volunteer base has expanded over the years, from a small group of avid bird watchers who helped to conduct guided walks and bird ringing  at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, to more than 60,000 volunteers across Singapore today.

We have also received many generous contributions via our Garden City Fund, that have allowed us to embark on various greening initiatives.

City in Nature

As we mark 60 years of greening, it is worth considering what Singapore could have become.

First, we are a small city-state – Just 728 sq km in size, and densely populated, we face intense land-use challenges, which will only continue to grow with our aspirations and needs.

Second, we need to fit everything that a country needs, including defence, transport, healthcare, waste management, power generation, water resilience and many more, within the limits of our city. Under these incredibly tight constraints, Singapore could easily have become a city of concrete and steel, with hardly any greenery or natural spaces. It was because of the movement that started 60 years ago, that we are one of the world’s greenest cities today. Our nature reserves and nature areas are flourishing in the heart of our city, parks and green spaces dot our island, and green veins and nature ways thread through our neighbourhoods.

In our next bound, we are making an even bigger push, to transform Singapore into a City in Nature, as one of the key thrusts of the Singapore Green Plan. We will weave nature much more deliberately and intensively into the fabric of our city, so that City and Nature can better co-exist.

To do this, we will: (i) Safeguard more green spaces; (ii) Naturalise more of our existing green and blue spaces; (iii) Step up our conservation of important native plants and animal species;  (iv) Restore and enhance our forest, coastal and marine habitats; (v) And strengthen ecological connectivity as well as our park connector networks island-wide, to give Singaporeans greater access to nature and its benefits.

This requires all of us to step up and step forward, to be active stewards of nature and our environment. One of the many ways we can contribute is through our OneMillionTrees movement which we launched in 2020. This is not just a quantitative exercise to plant one million more trees across Singapore by 2030.

The trees that we are planting will help to provide shade and cool the environment, improve air quality, provide habitats for biodiversity, and even sequester and store carbon to mitigate the effects of climate change. We are also planting a diverse range of native trees, from the Pink Mempat, with its cherry blossom like-flowers, to the endangered Giam Rambai, a rare species found only in Southern Peninsular Malaysia.

We are involving the community in these efforts, not just in planting the trees, but in collecting seeds and nurturing the saplings in our network of community nurseries across Singapore.

I am happy to share that we have already crossed the halfway mark. To date, more than half a million trees have been planted with the help of over 75,000 members of the community.

Commemorating 60 years of greening Singapore through tree planting

To commemorate the 60 years of Singapore’s greening journey, we will be planting 60 native trees in the Singapore Botanic Gardens today.This includes the Mempat tree, the same species Mr Lee planted back in 1963 to kickstart our greening campaign. We are also planting 20 species of Hopea, or dipterocarps, including nine species which are new to the Gardens.

These hardwood trees are native to Singapore and Southeast Asia, and they form the backbone of our regional forest ecosystems. One day, some of the saplings that we are planting will grow into forest giants – 80 metres in height and almost as tall as a 25-storey building, that will live for up to 400 years.

My colleagues and volunteers at NParks will continue to organise more tree planting and commemorative events marking 60 years of greening, throughout the year. And we want as many Singaporeans as possible to participate in this movement.So, I encourage all of you to join in and to bring your family and friends along too.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank our partners, and everyone in the community who has contributed to our greening efforts over the years. Let’s continue to work together to transform Singapore into a City in Nature and an endearing home for everyone.

Thank you.