I was just reading the article “Nature Society slams land-use plan” on ST. It was about how the land-use plan doesn’t keep enough land for preservation of nature in Singapore.
It started off like this:
The Nature Society (NSS) has taken issue with the Government’s latest land-use draft masterplan, calling it “embarrassingly negligible” in its commitment to conserving biodiversity.
In a strongly worded document posted on its website last Friday, the society said that only 4.4 per cent of Singapore’s projected 76,600ha land area in 2030 was seriously committed to preserving the country’s wealth of plants and animals.
This falls well short of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, which Singapore ratified in 1995. The UN recommended that by 2020, at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas should be conserved.
Then at the end there was this paragraph:
Government Parliamentary Committee for National Development and Environment chairman Lee Bee Wah said Singapore is a country and city with competing land uses. “We should not harp on the percentages. It is more important to strike a balance,” she said, adding the 17 per cent target may be more achievable in other places with more land.
I don’t know but to a layman like me, isn’t this saying that, after I sign a UN agreement, I can back out of it when it is inconvenient?
Has enough been done to try to adhere to this UN agreement? I think if I signed a contract with an employer, I won’t be able to get out of the contract unless I renegotiate the terms. I can’t just say times have changed or others have an easier time sticking to the contract than me so I don’t need to follow the contract exactly.
Maybe I’m just being anal, but what this Lee Bee Wah said doesn’t seem right to me.
Singaporean