Postcards To My MP Replies

Last year, 309 of you wrote postcards to your local MPs during our rally, urging them to take greater climate action and work towards a climate-just future.

Both the People's Action Party and the Workers' Party responded. Read their full replies below:

PAP

Sent by MP Louis Ng on behalf of the PAP

Dear SG Climate Rally,      

Thank you for your postcards and emails to me and all PAP MPs. You wanted to know about the steps that have been and will be taken on climate related issues. My responses below should answer the questions in your emails and postcards to all the PAP MPs.

We share your concerns about climate change. This is an issue on which many MPs have been actively speaking up in Parliament.

I will share some of the positive changes that have happened over the past few years. It’s a long reply. There is much to share about these positive changes that have happened. We are on the same page when it comes to protecting our environment.

I attended the first SG Climate Rally (SGCR) in 2019 and was inspired by the passion that I saw. Several of the initial members of SGCR are no longer in the organising team this year. They had good ideas. My hope is that the new team in SGCR will continue to focus on climate change and sustainability in Singapore.

In our journey, we need to protect the ecosystems, and for meaningful engagement with the public on Singapore’s climate action strategy for this meaningful cause.

I want to acknowledge that everyone’s shared goal is to ensure our ecosystems and our people survive. This is not about being able to boast about a long list of accomplishments. This is not a box-checking exercise. We only truly win if we succeed in keeping global warming within the 1.5°C or 2°C Paris targets.

The following are some of the changes that have been initiated:

1. We are the first country in Southeast Asia to introduce a carbon tax in 2019 and have also launched a roadmap for the increase in the carbon tax. In 2024 the tax will increase five-fold and expected to reach between ten to sixteen fold by 2030.

2. PUB has been appointed the national coastal protection agency to lead, coordinate and explore whole-of-government efforts to protect Singapore’s coastlines.

3. In 2021, we launched Singapore Green Plan 2030, a whole-of-nation sustainability movement.

4. We will decarbonise our power sector by increasing solar deployment and harnessing green electricity imports from the region. We also announced our National Hydrogen Strategy last year.

5. We will partner the Energy and Chemicals sector to develop needle-moving solutions including carbon capture, utilisation and storage. We have outlined plans to transform Jurong Island into a sustainable Energy and Chemicals Park.

6. We will green our public transport operations and expanding the electric vehicle ecosystem. Our vision is to phase out internal combustion energy (ICE) vehicles and have all vehicles run on cleaner energy by 2040. We implemented fiscal incentives for new purchases of electric vehicles (EV) and taxis and are expanding our EV charging network.

7. Last year, we raised our national climate target to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, with the Public Sector leading the way to achieve this by around 2045.

8. We implemented the EPR for e-waste in 2021, and will be extending the EPR approach to packaging, starting with beverage containers, in 2025.

9. We implemented the disposable carrier bag charge implemented at large supermarkets to encourage Singaporeans to reduce the use of disposables.

10. Since FY 2022, SGX requires all Singapore-listed companies to incorporate climate-related disclosures into their sustainability reports on a “comply or explain” basis. Large non-listed companies will also have to make these disclosures from FY 2027. The Government will continue to support our companies to make their green transition through various grant schemes and capability-building initiatives such as the Enterprise Sustainability Programme and Enterprise Financing Scheme Green.

11. Singapore will build upon our efforts to transform Singapore into a City in Nature. A key effort is the ‘OneMillionTree’ movement launched in April 2020.  In April this year, over 75,000 members of our community have contributed to plant more than 540,000 trees across Singapore.

12. We continue to grow and invest in our local produce and have implemented several initiatives to build the capability and capacity to produce 30 percent of our nutritional needs locally and sustainably by 2030 (our 30 by 30 vision).

13. This year’s inaugural Go Green SG national sustainability movement saw more than 160 partners from the people, private and public sectors engage over 70,000 Singaporeans through more than 300 activities to raise awareness and inspire action for environmental sustainability.

14. You can see more of our national initiatives at: https://www.nccs.gov.sg/singapores-climate-action/overview/national-circumstances/

The PAP MPs will also not just talk about this issue in Parliament. We will also help to improve our policies and legislation. We will also walk the talk and do our part to tackle climate change and cut the carbon emission in our own constituencies.

Following the launch of the Singapore Green Plan, 15 PAP Town Councils collaborated on the Action for Green Towns initiatives to galvanise and partner residents, thought leaders in the sustainability domains, town management stakeholders and service providers to work towards making every PAP-managed town zero waste, energy efficient and greener by 2025.

In 2022, the Green Action for Communities (GAC) a nationwide movement was established to galvanise community action and ground-up initiatives in environment sustainability. It aimed to foster active, green citizenry, and embed sustainability as a shared responsibility and way of life.  

Let me also highlight some of the efforts we have taken specifically in Nee Soon:

1. Solar panels have been installed on around 290 blocks in Nee Soon. By 2026, this number will increase to around 580 blocks.

2. More than 64% of the electricity for municipal fittings is from solar energy. This percentage will continue to increase with our efforts to install solar panels on more blocks.

3. More than 95% of the lights in our town are already energy-saving LED. We are now moving towards smart LED lighting, that reduces energy usage for common area lighting by up to 60%. By 2026, 82% of blocks in Nee Soon will have this smart LED lighting. 

4. We will have a 30% reduction in energy use in our common areas by 2030.

5. We have more than 27,000 trees in Nee Soon and will plant lots more.

6. We will protect our existing greenery and will have a new Nature Park in Nee Soon, the Khatib Bongsu Nature Park.

We also want to partner Singaporeans in this journey to protect this planet we call home. We are getting our residents involved in our journey to protect our environment. In Nee Soon East for example, we have programmes to:

1. Tackle food waste through our monthly food rescue project.

2. Upcycle clothes and recycle paper at our Rcycling Hub @ Blk 293.

3. Clean up our marine environment through our monthly Kayak and Clean Up sessions.

Over the past few years, many climate change activists have worked with our passionate volunteers make these programmes work and I invite you and your friends to also be a part of this whole-of -society effort. Join us in some of these activities that make a real difference to lives of all our residents and our environment and translate ideas into action.

We also need to help lower-income Singaporeans and vulnerable persons and making sure they are not left behind in this journey. These are issues close to our hearts.

The cost of mitigation measures has to be looked at. Households are offered transitional support including GST U-Save Vouchers, which provides lower- and middle-income HDB households with quarterly rebates to offset their utilities. The Household Support Package tries to help with to all cost-of-living issues. NEA and PUB also offer the Climate Friendly Households Package to one-, two- and three-room flat residents to offset upfront costs of installing energy- and water-efficient appliances.

In addition we have been progressively enhancing interventions to uplift the wages and well-being of lower-wage workers, through the Progressive Wage Model, the Progressive Wage Credit Scheme, the Local Qualifying Salary requirement, enhancements to Workfare and the Workfare Skills Support Scheme.

Over the years, I have met many activists and we have worked together to tackle climate change and speak up for our vulnerable members of our society. Some climate change activists have also worked hand-in-hand to tackle these issues and I know there is lots more to do, lots more to speak up about and to push for more changes.

My colleagues and I will continue to advocate for more to be done in the future. We have to continue to partner with Singaporeans, and civil society organisations in this journey.

Yours sincerely,

Louis Ng

Member of Parliament

Nee Soon GRC (Nee Soon East)

Chairman

Government Parliamentary Committee for

Sustainability and the Environment

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WP

Dear Aljunied, Hougang and Sengkang residents,

We are grateful for the personal messages you have shared with us through your postcards and the thoughtful conversations we had at the 2023 SG Climate Rally. 

It is moving to see your passion in tackling one of the gravest and most urgent challenges of our lifetime. What is also special is your call for our country’s green transition to leave no fellow human being behind. If there is something that will help secure this future, surely it is the power of people speaking out and standing together as you have.

Singapore has an important role to play in climate action as a wealthy nation and as a global centre for trade and finance. Because of this, the Workers’ Party recognises the value of advocating vigorously and frequently on a wide range of climate-related issues in Parliament and our MPs have done so over the years. 

For instance, we have consistently pushed for Singapore’s carbon tax to be higher than what the government has planned, in order to discourage pollutive activities and to achieve net zero emissions more quickly. We have proposed legislative amendments for the tax system to be transparent, and called for the tax to be returned to the public in the form of a “green dividend”, which could go a long way in helping lower-income residents adapt to a warming environment and the impact of climate change on grocery bills.

We have also worked to hold the government to account on issues like conservation, which cannot be overstated in a small country in one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. On this point, we have called for improvements to the Environmental Impact Assessment regime and scrutinised the sustainability of sand imported for land reclamation. What little nature we have needs to be protected to the best of our ability for the sake of future generations and our only planet.

In towns managed by the Workers’ Party, we are on the lookout for ways to work together to tackle climate change. Sengkan town, for example, now has the highest concentration of textile recycling bins in SIngapore. The Aljunied-Hougang Town Council held its inaugural “Let’s Paint the Town Green” carnival last year with the aim of increasing awareness on sustainability and encouraging a more environmentally conscious lifestyle among our residents. 

We recognise that we can do more as MPs and as a Party. You remind us that this cause is essential, and many of these ideas and actions are a direct result of you sharing your perspectives and shining a clear light on what the science says. So keep writing to us actively because it counts. 

Yours faithfully,

Pritam Singh (Aljunied GRC)

Sylvia Lim (Aljunied GRC)

Faisal Manap (Aljunied GRC)

Dennis Tan (Hougang SMC)

Gerald Giam (Aljunied GRC)

He Ting Ru (Sengkang GRC)

Jamus Lim (Sengkang GRC)

Louis Chua (Sengkang GRC)

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We hope the replies show that your writing makes a difference! You remind our politicians that we care about the climate crisis, and that we want it addressed with care and justice. 

Thanks for writing in and creating a better world together!