https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skMfX8xK8fE&feature=youtu.be

What is the issue?

The Housing and Development Board (HDB) has engaged an environmental consultancy firm to conduct an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on Bukit Batok Hillside Park in the western region of Singapore, in view of planned housing development.

Why is this issue of great concern to you?

While I commend HDB for initiating the environmental study in their proposal to build more housing units, I have several concerns about the potential impacts of deforestation in Bukit Batok Hillside Park:

1. Loss of biodiversity and natural heritage
2. Risk of soil erosion and landslides
3. Loss of natural cooling effect and increase in urban heat effect
4. Loss of cultural and historical heritage
5. Loss of connection to Nature and increase in stress and anxiety associated with urban claustrophobia
6. Increase in dengue fever cases due to conditions favouring increased reproduction of disease-carrying mosquitoes

(Click here for the full details of the above concerns, which include perspectives on our public health, population growth trend and so on.)

For a summary of Bukit Batok Hillside Park Proposed Developments EIA feedback gathered by Singapore Youth Voices for Biodiversity (SYVB), click here.

How can you help?

By signing the petition and sharing it with others, you can help to:

• add your voice to let HDB (and other relevant authorities) know that you are concerned about ensuring a sustainable future for ourselves and our future generations.
• create awareness for more people about the need to conserve our fast-dwindling forested areas, which serve as a home for our flora and fauna, which we are all interdependent on
• ensure that we will not let another natural habitat disappear under our nose, and hopefully prevent future cases of deforestation and their negative consequences from happening
• advocate the need for creative solutions, such as considering brownfield sites and underutilized lands (such as golf courses, abandoned buildings awaiting redevelopment, etc), as alternatives for housing development instead of sacrificing our endangered natural habitats.

"We need to change our way of thinking and seeing things. We need to realise that the Earth is not just our environment. The Earth is not something outside of us. Breathing with mindfulness and contemplating your body, you realise that you are the Earth. You realise that your consciousness is also the consciousness of the Earth. Look around you–what you see is not your environment, it is you."

- Thich Nhat Hanh's statement on climate change for the United Nations

Click here for the poem A Cry for Nature by Alan Ardy. 

P.S. Click here for the open petition letter.