Page 6 - Towards A Sustainable Future 2024

FOREWORD

Prof Jeff Obbard

Climate Change Advisor
National Youth Achievement Award Council

The second phase of our project, ‘Towards a Sustainable storms, rising seas and wildfires increasingly threaten
Future: In Support of the Singapore Green Plan 2030,’ our way of life, our youth are knocking ever more loudly
has endorsed what we already discovered in the on our door to demand that we take action.
first round, i.e. that cutting carbon emissions at SME
companies in Singapore goes hand-in-hand with Singapore has embraced a whole-of-nation approach
cutting business operational costs whilst providing to sustainability under the Singapore Green Plan 2030,
training to our youth to prepare them to join Singapore’s and the government, in partnership with the private
rapidly growing green economy. This is a clear ‘win-win’ sector and civil society, has strengthened its efforts to
for the environment and business. mitigate and adapt to climate change and transition to
a more sustainable, low-carbon future. As a signatory
As a small, tropical island nation close to the Earth’s of the 2015 Paris Agreement, Singapore has committed
equator, Singapore is vulnerable to the impacts of a to a pathway to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions
changing climate, particularly in terms of increased heat and reach net-zero emissions by around mid-century.
stress and rising sea levels. In March 2024, the United
Nations’ weather agency, the World Meteorological This goal is essential if the world is to limit global
Organisation (WMO), issued a ‘Red Alert’ on the state of warming to less than 1.5⁰C and avoids severe impacts
the Earth’s climate system as records were broken for on our shared climate system. Yet, the latest science
every single climate change indicator in 2023, ranging from the United Nations under the Intergovernmental
from the level of greenhouse gas concentrations in Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tells us that we
our atmosphere, to record heat over land and in our need to go much further and faster in cutting our
oceans, to new lows in the planet’s ice cover. The WMO emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases from
confirmed that 2023 was the hottest year on record the combustion of fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal), and
and that there is a “high probability” that 2024 will be from the destruction of nature. In its final statement, as
another record-hot year. In a world where heatwaves, part of its latest 6th Assessment Report, completed in

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