Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at the OCEANS 2024 Conference
Apr 16, 2024
Good morning to all!
I am glad to join you for the opening ceremony of the OCEANS 2024 Singapore Conference! To our friends around the region and around the world, a very warm welcome to Singapore.
Singapore has had the opportunity to host this conference for the first time in 2006, and we are happy to host it again this year.
Importance of “Climate Resilience, Costal Protection and a Sustainable Ocean”
Our oceans cover over 70% of Earth’s surface and hold about 97% of its water. They are essential regulators of our climate, absorbing carbon dioxide and generating oxygen essential for life.
The ocean is also a rich and diverse ecosystem, home to a vast array of marine species. Within its depths, each species, from the tiniest plankton to the largest whales, plays an essential role in nutrient cycling, sustaining intricate food chains, and ensuring overall ecosystem stability.
Our oceans also serve as a vital source of sustenance and provide livelihoods for millions of people worldwide, while also serving as key routes for global trade and transport.
This conference therefore comes at an important time. Because our oceans are increasingly impacted by climate change:
We are already seeing its adverse effects – the ocean is becoming warmer and more acidic, sea levels are rising, and we will see more frequent and severe weather events.
These changes will disrupt marine ecosystems, impact marine habitats, and exacerbate coastal erosion and flooding.
These issues matter a lot for Singapore. As a small, low-lying island city state, we are acutely aware of our vulnerability and the urgent need to address these challenges. Indeed for us, climate change and rising sea levels are an existential threat.
It is through conferences like this one that we are able to bring together the brightest minds from academia, industry, and government to discuss these pressing issues, forge partnerships, and explore innovative solutions.
Marine and Climate Change Science (MCCS) Programme and Launch of 2nd Grant Call under the MCCS Programme
In the face of climate change, we are working hard to conserve our marine environment, while finding innovative ways to protect our coast from the threat of rising sea levels.
For example, we designated Singapore’s first Marine Park at Sisters’ Islands in 2014 to promote marine conservation, research and public outreach. Today, the Marine Park serves as a 40-hectare sanctuary for our local marine biodiversity, including the critically endangered Neptune’s Cup sponge, which was believed to be globally extinct until it was rediscovered in Singapore waters in 2011 – after what I believe was close to a century.
This sanctuary is in Singapore’s waters, which are some of the busiest waterways in the world – for trade, recreation, fishing, for the marine industry and so much more. Within all of that, we also want to make sure that we protect our waters and our biodiversity.
Beyond habitat protection, we have been implementing nature-based solutions to strengthen Singapore’s coastal resilience while restoring ecosystems, such as the mangrove restoration project on the southern coast of Pulau Ubin, an island situated in the north-east of Singapore. We keep it for future generations, not just by protecting its biodiversity but also its rustic way of life.
To advance our understanding on how climate change will impact our marine ecosystems, we had also launched the Marine Climate Change Science, or MCCS, programme in 2021 to address key knowledge gaps and fund research in the areas of blue carbon science, eco-engineering, ecological resilience, marine climate impact modelling, and community-driven climate resilience planning.
We had recently awarded grants to two more research projects under the MCCS Programme, to a team of researchers from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and the Technology Centre for Offshore and Marine, Singapore (TCOMS).
The first project, awarded to Dr. Harrif Santo of TCOMS, aims to deepen our understanding of how our mangroves, seagrass meadows and coral reefs can serve as effective nature-based solutions for coastal protection.
The second project, awarded to Assistant Professor Kyle Morgan of NTU, aims to understand how Singapore’s mangroves and coral reefs will respond to future sea level rise and marine heatwaves.
The insights and knowledge gained from these projects will pave the way for more effective conservation and protection of our coastal and marine ecosystems.
I am also pleased to announce the recent launch of the 2nd Grant Call under the MCCS Programme in March 2024, which will focus on two crucial areas:
First, we hope to better understand the impact of climate change and coastal developments on the sediment volumes of soft-sediment coastal habitats such as seagrass meadows, mangroves, and mudflats.
Second, we hope to examine the complex interactions between water quality parameters, climate change-induced environmental stressors, and human influences, and their combined effects on water quality.
We welcome the community to participate in these research areas.
Conclusion
In closing, I would like to thank the organisers, and all who have contributed in different ways to the hosting of this Conference here in Singapore. We all face a long-term, imminent, difficult threat of climate change and we have many things to do, but we also have to protect our oceans, waterways and ecosystems. I believe all of us are driven by our shared commitment to conserve one of our planet’s most precious resources – our oceans.
With our research efforts and investments in innovative solutions, I am hopeful that we will continue to safeguard our oceans for generations to come. But much work lies ahead of us.
I wish everyone a fruitful and meaningful conference. And in the meantime, if you have some white space, do visit the rest of Singapore – not just the city, but as a City in Nature – visit our nature reserves. Unlike many of the larger countries which you may have come from, our biodiversity is in the heart of the city and not outside.
Thank you.