Fewer homes or fewer homes here?

The government will keep more forest at Maju and Gillman than it planned to.

That is today’s news (Link). Speaking to reporters this morning outside Maju Forest, near Block 103 Clementi Street 14, Minister of State for National Development Alvin Tan said adjustments are being made to both plans after residents, the public and nature groups asked for more greenery to be retained. He said the current plan was never final. The plans are expected to be finalised over the coming month or so.

Four weeks ago the plan was presented as the outcome of careful study and consultation with nature groups. Today it is described as never having been final. Both things can be true and the difference between them is you.

So first and properly: THANK YOU 

Thank you to the more than 44,000 people who signed and to the thousands who went further and filled in a form that took real time and thought to complete. HDB had received 2,712 responses on Sunset Way and 860 on Gillman by 28 July — more than the roughly 1,800 submissions that changed the outcome at Dover Forest in 2021. Thank you to the MPs on both sides of the House who filed questions. Thank you to the nature groups who have spent years learning these sites well enough to specify what a corridor actually needs to be. And thank you to Mr Tan and the agencies for listening while it still mattered and for saying so publicly.

The sentence at the centre

Then, carefully, the line worth sitting with. Retaining more greenery, we were told, means fewer homes can be built on both sites for fellow Singaporeans.

That framing does a lot of work. It sets a forest against a family waiting for a flat and asks us to choose between them.

But no one in this campaign has ever asked for fewer homes. We have asked for the same homes, sited differently — brownfield first, ageing estates renewed at modern densities, the land we have already spent before the land we can never get back. That has been the ask since 10 July and it survives disagreement about almost everything else.

If those alternatives were studied and found not to work, we would genuinely like to read that. Not as an assertion, but as working shown.

What we still do not know

How much more.

The plan currently on the table retains around 35% of Maju’s forested area, and green spaces amounting to about 40% at Gillman. “More than that” could mean a great deal or very little. So the ask this month is small and specific: publish the figure, and publish the baseline it is measured against, so the improvement can be seen rather than felt.

Alongside it, the items Parliament left open on 4 August:

1. The response report the government committed to publishing, summarising agencies’ replies to feedback and any amendments made.
2. The demand projections underlying the yield at both sites and how forecasts have compared with actual take-up over the past ten years.
3. The avoidance criteria and minimum viable habitat thresholds used to decide which parcels are kept.
4. Site-specific heat modelling, and the climate adaptation assessment for the mature canopy being cleared.
5. Monitoring commitments for the forest that remains, after the first tree falls.

General opposition is easy to answer. Specific requests are harder to leave on the table.

What to do now

The formal window closed on 6 August but the government said engagement would continue past that date  and today it demonstrated that. So:

1. Write to your MP again, briefly. One paragraph: thank them, then ask for the number and the baseline. Members on both sides carried our concerns into the Chamber. Keep supplying them.
2. Write to HDB and MND directly with the same two questions. Nothing is capped in an email.
3. Send this to one person who has walked the old railway line.

This Sunday, 16 August

There is a public gathering at Hong Lim Park this Sunday, from 3.30pm — MAJU (progress) For The People, organised by SG Climate Rally [Link]. It brings together people concerned about Maju and Gillman alongside Sembawang, Tengah, Tagore and East Coast Park. Anyone is welcome to come and lend their support.

We’re sharing it because this conversation has grown well past Sunset Way and it should. Maju and Gillman are two names on a longer list. What happens to our remaining green spaces is a question for the whole island, not only for the households who happen to live beside them — and moments where people stand together in the open help the rest of Singapore see how many of us there are.

And then, the part that doesn’t end

A forest moved from 35% retained to an unspecified number larger than 35% because ordinary people were specific, patient and polite for weeks, and then carried on after the deadline had passed. That is exactly what happened at Dover, where the biodiversity-rich western half was kept and its review deferred by about a decade.

So let us be clear with ourselves about where we are. This is progress, and progress is not an outcome. Nothing is settled until it is drawn, published and built. Until the first tree is felled, we will keep speaking for this forest and for the creatures in it, because they cannot attend a consultation, cannot sign a petition, and cannot write to anyone.

These last green spaces were not made by us, and cannot be remade by us. We hold them in trust for generations who had no vote in what we decided this August, and who will only ever know the answer, never the question. That responsibility does not expire on a deadline.

The forests are not saved. The plans are also not final. Between those two facts is the work ahead and we intend to keep doing it.

For the forest,
The Save Maju Forest petition
IG: @savemajuforest