Flood-Wise Community Workshop - Ms Goh Hanyan

1. Good afternoon, everybody. It's so nice to see all of you today and thank you so much for having the Ministry of Sustainability and Environment as well as the PUB here. We are very happy to see that the community is stepping forward to be part of this flood-resilient future that we hope to work towards.

Increasing need to prepare for flash floods

2. Adviser Dinesh put it very well: looking at the past and looking at the future, we see what we can do together. In the past, as Adviser Dinesh mentioned, in the 60s and 70s, there were a lot of flood-prone areas in Singapore. To give you a statistic here, we used to have around 3200 hectares of flood-prone areas in Singapore. Over the years, through the hard work of the government agencies, citizens and companies, we have managed to start raising certain pieces of land and building specific infrastructure to make sure that we don't flood that often.  We can all see that, especially those who were around in the 60s and 70s.

3. Today, there is a lot less flooding happening in Singapore. From 3200 hectares, we have reduced flood-prone areas to less than 25 hectares today. But 25 hectares is still something, which is why we need to think about how to make sure that our community can respond when things happen.

4. Looking ahead, we are all trying very hard to think about climate action and mitigation. This means trying to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that goes into the air. But we all know that Singapore is just one player in a massive global system and climate change is still happening. Hence, what our ministry is trying to do is think about climate adaptation. Adaptation means that if things change, how can we adapt to that change.  

5. One example of that is how we are looking at heat adaptation or heat resilience. We started issuing heat advisories, to guide the public on ways to minimise the risk of heat stress and better cope with increased temperatures. At the same time, the government is trying to come up with other ways to reduce temperatures.

6. Likewise for climate change, as it pertains to flooding and rising sea levels, what we expect is that the mean sea level rise could go up to two metres by the year 2150. That is rising sea levels. Much of Singapore is not at that level at this point in time, so we are investing a lot in coastal protection to protect the coast.

7. But beyond protecting the coast, when rain falls, we also have to enlarge our drains. In FY 2025 alone, we will spend about $150 million dollars on improving our drainage infrastructure so that we can reduce instances of flooding. Closer to home here, for instance, there is a nearby drainage improvement project – the Siglap Canal, which will be completed by the end of 2027. Upon completion, a section of the canal between Marine Parade Road and East Coast Park would be widened by 10 metres and deepened by 1.5 metres. We hope that this would help to reduce the risk of flooding in the Siglap area.

As a community, we can do our part to be flood-ready

8. That's why we are here today. We can do the best we can, but like Adviser Dinesh said, you never know when things happen, and we need to be prepared as a community. That is why PUB is going around, partnering with different residents’ networks. Thank you so much to the C2E, as well as the residents’ network here for stepping forward to be prepared for your community. I am very happy to see that.

9. I hope that today’s session will engender a great discussion around the plans that you can have in place. In fact, I think you're one of the first few to have taken this up, and it is good to be thinking of this on behalf of your residents. We would love to be part of the conversation.

10. Thank you.