The recently-held COP30 at Belém – billed by many as “the adaptation COP” – saw many governments pledge to step up efforts to help societies live with a hotter, harsher climate.
Singapore’s highly-anticipated climate adaptation plan, announced at the United Nations summit, promises to chart how the city-state will weather intensifying climate impacts, including shoring up coastlines, accelerating decarbonisation and protecting citizens from heat stress.
While nature-based solutions were also key to this strategy through procuring carbon credits from reforestation projects in Ghana, Paraguay and Peru, Singapore’s own forests seemed to be missing.
Singapore’s secondary forests, which have regrown over abandoned kampongs (villages) and plantations, continue to be cleared for housing, industrial expansion, and infrastructure. While not at the same rate as its neighbours (Singapore has lost less than 2,000 hectares of secondary forests over the last decade or so, compared to far higher rates in Malaysia and Indonesia) it is nevertheless losing forest cover at a speed noticeable to its residents.
Forest loss rates in Singapore since 2001 [click to enlarge]. Source: Global Forest Watch
These are not pristine primary rainforests, but they are biodiverse, heat-mitigating, flood-buffering ecosystems – units of climate resilience that have quietly served the city for the last 50 to 150 years.
Though the deforestation rate has slowed since the highs of 2018 and 2019, patches of secondary forest continue to disappear all over the island. What’s left is growing thinner and more fragmented.
The most intensely deforested area in recent years is Tengah, where forests have regenerated since the 1850s over gambier and pepper plantations, villages and brick-making factories. Most of these forests have now made way for Singapore’s newest public housing precinct.
Other deforestation hotspots in Singapore include Clementi forest – lovingly captured by residents in a drone video that went viral a few years ago – Bukit Batok Hillside Park, Dover East and Turf City. Next year, a 10-hectare (ha) patch of forest in Woodlands, near the border with Malaysia, is to make way for a new transport and business hub. Only yesterday, it was announced that more than 52ha of forested land and streams near Nanyang Technological University will be cleared for the expansion of an industrial district in Jurong.
When the issue of forest loss was debated in parliament in 2021 following an outcry over the zonation of Clementi forest for development, the government spoke of the trade-offs the land-scarce country must make in balancing the needs of development and conservation as it plans for the future, and how green spaces compete with housing, infrastructure and workplaces in land-use considerations.
Singapore rightly earns international acclaim for its lushness – with tree-lined roads, greenery-covered buildings and network of parks that support its enviable “city in nature” image.
But there is reason to worry about how much more secondary forest the city can afford to lose from a climate adaptation perspective.
Singapore is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, but still has a relatively high proportion of green spaces – around 20 per cent of the island – despite its compact size, at 72,860 hectares. Secondary forests account for about one-fifth of the country’s green spaces; a tiny 0.16 per cent of its land area is covered by primary forests. However, under the government’s redevelopment master plan, more than 7,000 hectares of secondary forest – an area of forest larger than Singapore’s parks and nature reserves combined – could disappear over the coming decade or so.
The argument that these forests must make way for public housing as the population expands is compelling, but there has been no serious public conversation so far about the impact of clearing a forested area that covers 10 per cent of Singapore’s land area on heating and flooding, and other factors such as humidity, rainfall patterns, soil health, water quality or air pollution.
Crucially, there have been no formal studies on how land use change has, or will affect, the local climate in Singapore. So can the country risk converting so much forest without more scientific understanding of possible consequences?
Heating and flooding risk were topics covered at AlterCOP, a local event that runs parallel to the actual COP conference from 10 to 22 November. But forest loss as a heat stress or flooding risk was not mentioned by speakers from Singapore’s national water agency PUB and Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
In his presentation, PUB director Justin Wu pointed to the dangers of coastal flooding from rising sea levels and the government’s efforts to protect Singapore’s shorelines from inundation through flood barriers and the Long Island reclamation project to protect the East Coast. The potential impact of local forest loss on flooding was not mentioned.
NTU PhD heat researcher Emma Ramsay spoke of the importance of local heat adaptation measures like green spaces and cool surfaces – such as heat-reflective paint on buildings – which can reduce temperatures by up to 2°C. But Singapore’s secondary forests weren’t mentioned either.
It made me wonder if Singapore has had a sufficient discussion about the role of its secondary forests, which could underpin its own climate resilience strategy?
Secondary forests: foundational climate adaptation assets
Forests are one of the most effective ways to cool a city, reducing temperatures by degrees that no mechanical cooling system can realistically match – and Singapore is fast approaching heat levels that threaten liveability.
In 2024, the annual mean temperature of 28.4°C was the warmest on record, tied with 2019 and 2016. The government’s Third National Climate Change Study projects that by 2050, Singapore could experience between 47 and 189 “very hot days”, defined as those when the mercury exceeds 35°C, every year, compared with 21 today.
Forests also help rainwater soak into soil instead of rushing across concrete and into drains already struggling with more frequent extreme rainfall or “rain bombs”. Forests form natural corridors that allow wildlife to adapt to shifting climate conditions, enabling species that are critical to ecological resilience survive.
And, in a busy city where stress levels run high, forests also support social resilience. On a recent walk through what remains of Tengah forest, Eco-Business found evidence of people still using the forest for leisure and to keep the memories of kampong life alive.
Ramblers walk through Tengah forest, most of which has been cleared for a new residential development. Image: Robin Hicks/Eco-Business
An abandoned building, likely part of a 19th-century brick factory, in Tengah forest. Approximately 90 per cent of Tengah forest is slated for clearing. Image: Robin Hicks/Eco-Business
In other words, forests are not just disposable makeweights in Singapore’s adaptation strategy; they are foundational assets.
Yet as the government starts crafting its adaptation blueprint, the country’s last secondary forests remain vulnerable. Could there be other ways to retain these forests as the city develops?
Singapore is already a global player in blended finance, energy connectivity and carbon-market governance. It is exploring nuclear power, importing low-carbon electricity, supporting developing countries’ reporting capacity under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and strengthening climate science across Asean.
Its precious secondary forests deserve some attention by policymakers in the role they could play to build the city-state’s resilience.
As Singapore develops its first national adaptation plan over the next five years, it has an opportunity to integrate nature protection into the blueprint. That means recognising forests and spontaneous green spaces not as soft, optional amenities but as critical climate assets integral to heat mitigation, flood control, biodiversity resilience and the mental and social health of its people.
