Around August of every year, I usually write a piece on Singapore for the year ahead. This time, things are a little bit different. I look further ahead and look at some of the strategic issues that might crop up. Also, this time I accompany the text with some diagrams as well. Why don't you try too, to think about what are the longer-range issues that Singapore might have to deal with for the decades ahead? What might you come up with?
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The Current Moment
This August 9, 2020, Singapore would be celebrating its 55th year of independence. Last year, it celebrated 2019, the 200th anniversary of the founding of 'modern' Singapore. The "Bicenntenial" commemoration, as the Singapore government had termed it, was not just about the founding of 'modern Singapore' by a British coloniser, but also about appreciating Singapore's place in this part of the world, stretching back centuries before. Visitors to the Bicentennial exhibition would also have seen snippets of how Singapore's was a strategic prize by several polities throughout history - both in the region and beyond. Our strategic location remains an important pillar of our place in the world, and for still sometime yet, perhaps until the Arctic sea ice melts completely and goods from this part of the world are able to find a radically different path to Europe and the West. That time might not be so far-off yet, as some might imagine. For those of us below a certain age, that might even come within our lifetimes, or at least, of our children's lifetimes. Unfortunately, that would also mean that humanity as a whole has made a mess of climate, and there might yet be other things that might preoccupy our minds. Survival as we have seen, is not something to be taken for granted. In some instances, mere survival is a feat significant enough.
As even that short discussion has demonstrated, our prosperity os often shaped more by events of the world, much more than we want to admit sometimes. There are definitely things we can do, certainly, but much of it will depend on external circumstances. We can make our living from the world, but only if circumstances allow for it. And even then, sometimes circumstances will become so hostile, that we are left to make only less-bad decisions. We cannot wish them away when they happen. We just have to deal with them as best as we can, and move forward.
As several commentators have mentioned, the current crises might be the most severe one in our short history as a distinct political identity. Perhaps more severe crisis would be the early years of Independence, as early leaders struggled with he project of nation-building, and the need to protect ourselves as an independent entity. Good leadership in the ensuing decades provided broad-based prosperity; every crisis was dealt head-on.
As a distinct political entity, the crisis brought about by COVID-19 is a severe one. We have never seen anything like it. The 2003 SARS Crisis was thankfully, a much shorter one as Singapore reported no case at all by July. The recession brought about by the Great Financial Crisis was also thankfully a short one, at least in Singapore. In recent years, the US-China trade wars caused uncertainty, but that has not quite been fully reflected in the markets. Here in Singapore, COVID-19 is under control as the authorities stamp out clusters in migrant workers' dormitory and the general population remains cooperative in wearing masks and companies enacting safe-distancing measures. As global vaccine developments mature, we might indeed see an effective vaccine before too long, and we can carry on with our lives as we had before. The "ordinary" lives that we had enjoyed before will be seen as precious now.
COVID-19 would be unprecedented in the lives of many today. There is now probably no one left from the previous pandemic in 1918 to compare meaningfully with the lived experience before after it. SARS was too short for longer-lasting effects. Public health systems certainly took note, but the effects of ordinary lives were little. Possibly the only change we experienced was the addition of the thermometer in households as a way to self-diagnose. Looking ahead for the next few years though, things will certainly change. If the current generations of vaccines are found to be ineffective, then the world will truly switch to a new gear. Current trends of digitalising society and economy will continue; much of the things that enrich our lives - entertainment, sports, arts, and so many other little things will have to change. Global value chains will also change as companies shift production sites around. The things we consume will also naturally change, and so too will be the way we work. We will be making all kinds of other changes we can't foresee for now.
Sign of Things to Come
Rather than seeing COVID-19 as a rupture however, one could also see COVID-19 as a harbinger for the things to come in the next decades. There are various trends that are barreling down our way that could create further disruptions in how we have conceived our world from today. We can see the effects of these processes beginning to surface already, and some of these effects will intensify as we go along.
Climate Change
Other than COVID-19, there is another global phenomenon that is happening, with various kinds of manifestations: climate change. The changes in climate mean that the kinds of weather we experience on a year-from-year basis will change. What used to be term once-in-x-decades kinds of weather might become more frequent as we go along. Past meteorological models are no longer guides to the future. Rather they increasingly become a reference for how strange our weather has become. Agriculture will be severely affected from where we are in Southeast Asia. Rice yields might change or be disrupted [1]. Our food agency will have to work harder, especially when food supplies are disrupted by poor weather and when food can no longer be bought from the global market. We can imagine ever more tighter supplies of crops. There might come periods when there might be global disruptions of food supply, from a combination of factors. We have to be ready for shocks.
Changing weather from the climate also creates economic disruptions through floods and storms. Floods in Thailand some years back created production issues for cars and electronics across the whole of Asia [2]; there will be more events like these, and companies and governments will have to harden their infrastructure against these extreme events. Singapore too, will also have to be prepared for the occasional "once-in-a-century" weather events.
There will be more humanitarian disasters, and in addition to that, rising sea levels. Singapore is already hardening our infrastructure against rising sea levels and is making more transformation plans ahead. The entire region is affected too. We have to make contingencies against large-scale humanitarian crises as they occur. Across the region, disasters might create temporary refugees moving across borders and the possible geopolitical crises. Future leaders of Singapore will have to be deft in their diplomacy as they move from one crisis to another. Some of it might even directly impact us, as people move borders through land and sea.
Across the region then, climate change will have slow-rolling consequences. It will a region buffeted literally by waves and storms. These changes will then have adverse consequences - loss of life, and disruptions to the economy. How will Singapore respond to these crises?
Carbon tax - shifts in economic structure
Addressing the challenge of climate change involves both adaptation and mitigation. The adaptation challenge is the more straightforward since the locus of control is on ourselves and what we can do. This involves implementing strategies to maintain food security from a diversity of sources. With sea levels, this involves various strategies such as raising the level of critical infrastructure and to maintain the water handling capabilities of the sewage system. The economic system will also have to adapt as well. There will have to be a greater drive towards energy efficiency in all aspects of operation.
As the global movement for climate action becomes more intense, so will there likely be global efforts to standardise carbon taxes. Singapore already has carbon taxes, and they are starting from a low base. As global cooperation on climate change intensifies, so will the demand to harmonise global carbon taxes at an elevated level. Singapore's economy and economic policy planners have to get ready for the day when carbon taxes could be raised high enough that energy and carbon-intensive industries might become uncompetitive in Singapore. This isn't just about the use of fossil-fuels to generate electricity, but could include the petrochemicals industry, and could also involve every fabric of our lives, given that most of the things we import come from ships and planes that still burn fossil fuels. Of course, Singapore also has a good case to make for why we should be exempt from these restrictions, given how Singapore is a small island nation that is alternative-energy-disadvantaged, and also given our export-dependent economy where most of the things made here are made for overseas markets. Both of these arguments combined provides a strong case of exemptions; but given a strong global drive and the possible inclusions of such clauses in more and more economic agreements, even Singapore's diplomats and negotiators might not be able to withstand such pressures. Should these things genuinely come to pass, we should be ready for a wrenching transition away from fossil-fueled-based economic activities and lifestyles, and find alternative routes to generate prosperity and the literal material basis of our everyday lives.
The foundations for such alternative routes are already here, from a variety of directions. In terms of energy, we might have to consider the radical proposal by some Australian entrepreneurs to export electricity from solar panels in Australia to Singapore by way of Indonesia. Other such routes might be nuclear energy - which might seem ridiculous at face value, but should be reconsidered given how routinely America's aircraft carriers (itself nuclear-powered) visit Changi Naval Base. For the production of plastic products, we may have to consider genetic engineering, using tools such as CRISPR, to create organisms that can produce the feedstock for further chemical processing. For high-heat applications, creating organisms that can generate hydrogen, and thereafter using hydrogen fuel cells could be part of the solution. All of these approaches are nascent and still inefficient, but more funding for scaling will be the key for an alternative material and energetic basis for our us.
Part 2 to come!
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/5/120502-southeast-asia-climate-change/
This post will be published on the Medium page of Open Source Futures.
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