Mr Speaker, I support this Bill.
Our identity as a nation is inseparable from our identity as an island. We were a small coastal settlement before we were a colony, and a natural harbour before we were a nation. The Singapore River made us prosperous. The Strait of Malacca—through which roughly a third of global seaborne trade passes—made us globally relevant. This is not incidental to our story. It is the whole story.
It is not unique to us either. Wherever human beings have built something lasting, they have built it near water. And today, 40% of the world’s population lives within 100 kilometres of a coast. The world’s most beloved cities—Shanghai, New York, Barcelona, our own Marina Bay—sit at the meeting point of land and water. This Bill is protecting that relationship between this island and the sea that made it.
Mr Speaker, the decisions we make as we implement this Bill will be felt not by us, but by Singaporeans who are today in primary school, in their parents’ arms, or not yet born. Singapore’s own climate scientists project sea levels around our island could rise by up to 1.15 metres by 2100, and up to 2 metres by 2150. To put that in perspective, a 2 metre rise would submerge most of Kallang and Marine Parade, and parts of the CBD as well. We are legislating, right now, for people who will live in that world. That is the reason I want to speak today about what we are defending for, and what we can become in the act of defending it.
I want to make two arguments. One, that how we design our coastal defences matters as much as whether we build them. And two, that what Singapore builds here has the potential to serve not just our own shores, but the shores of nations across our region—and in doing so, build a new pillar of Singapore’s economy.
One: designing with water, not just against it
Mr Speaker, I want to begin with a question of philosophy—the design philosophy that will be embedded in the Code of Practice flowing from this Bill.
The conventional framing of coastal defence is adversarial. Water is the threat. Infrastructure is the shield. We build the wall, we hold the line, we keep the sea at bay.
But this Bill already contains the seed of a different philosophy. It introduces the concept of the transiently floodable area—a coastal zone designed to accept water periodically, rather than resist it permanently. It opens the door to designing with water, rather than purely against it.
My question to the Minister is about execution. Will the Code of Practice merely dictate technical details like the height of sea walls and the specifications of drainage pumps? Or will it actively incentivise developers and landowners to think about what these spaces can be for the 99% of the time they are dry? A transiently floodable area that is well-designed becomes a park, a waterfront promenade, a community space. One that is not becomes a fenced-off eyesore. Which Singapore are we building?
This is not a novel ambition. Some of the world’s most admired cities have already shown what designing with water looks like in practice. Rotterdam’s water squares are sunken public plazas that fill during heavy rain and function as parks and markets the rest of the time. Copenhagen has redesigned entire boulevards to channel floodwater while remaining fully functional streets. These are not compromises. They are celebrated urban transformations—places people actively want to be—that also happen to function as flood management systems.
Singapore already knows how to do this. Marina Bay is simultaneously a reservoir, a tidal barrier, and one of the most iconic public spaces in Asia. We did not choose between flood defence and urban liveability. We achieved both, together.
The Long Island project—800 hectares of reclaimed land off the East Coast, with 20 kilometres of new waterfront—is an opportunity on the same scale. The engineering case is being made. What I would ask is that the design case be made with equal ambition. Not just: how do we protect this land from the sea? But: what kind of coastline do we want future Singaporeans to inherit?
Designing with water does not prescribe a single solution. It is a broad philosophy that can encompass built solutions, hybrid structures, or nature-based solutions. But the last category, nature-based solutions, deserves special mention because the scientific case for it is strong. A 2025 study in Nature’s Communications Earth and Environment found that mangrove forests wider than 500 metres dissipate at least 75% of incoming wave energy. Coral reef restoration costs roughly one-fifteenth the per-metre cost of artificial breakwaters. Singapore’s own 100K Corals Initiative, launched in December 2024, is already integrating living reefs into our coastal protection strategy. The science is clear: nature-based solutions are, in many cases, superior to hard engineering on cost, on performance, and on liveability.
I would ask the Minister: will the Code of Practice embed an active design philosophy—one that goes beyond technical standards to incentivise integrated, water-positive solutions, especially nature-based ones? And will the Long Island development brief explicitly task designers with maximising public waterfront access and ecological richness alongside coastal resilience?
Two: our tropical obligation to the world
Mr Speaker, let me turn to what I think is the most forward-looking dimension of this moment.
Singapore is committing S$100 billion over 100 years to coastal protection. We are building legal frameworks, engineering standards, a digital Coastal Protection Interpretation Plan, and technical codes of practice. We are adapting polder technology for tropical conditions at Pulau Tekong. We are generating what the Centre for Climate Research Singapore describes as the world’s highest-resolution climate projections for Southeast Asia.
We are doing all of this on a tropical island, in an equatorial climate, surrounded by the ecosystems—mangroves, coral reefs, tropical peat coastlines—that define coastal defence in this part of the world.
No one else is doing this, at this scale, in this geography.
That matters because the countries that need coastal resilience expertise most urgently are not the Netherlands. They are our neighbours. A landmark 2019 study in Nature Communications found that by 2050, land currently home to 300 million people will experience annual coastal flooding—and five of the six most exposed nations are in Asia. Jakarta has 40% of its land below sea level, with some districts sinking at 179 millimetres a year. Ho Chi Minh City already loses $1.3 billion annually to coastal flooding. The Maldives faces projected damages of up to 12.5% of GDP by 2100. Tuvalu, nearly 60%.
These nations need solutions. And the dominant global expertise in coastal protection—the Dutch model, built over centuries—was designed for temperate conditions. For clay soils and North Sea storm surges. Not for tropical peat that subsides at 5 centimetres per year. Not for monsoon hydrology and compound flooding. Not for the mangroves and coral reefs that must be both engineered and ecologically sustained. Researchers have documented what they call the ‘impasse’ in transferring Dutch delta plans to Jakarta—the soils, the institutions, and the ecological conditions are simply too different.
The Dutch have built something remarkable. Their water export sector generates nearly €10 billion annually. The Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100, the Mekong Delta Plan, the rebuilding of New Orleans after Katrina—Dutch expertise sits at the centre of all of them. They turned centuries of necessity into a global industry. That is a model worth studying, and worth emulating.
Singapore is positioned to do for the tropics what the Dutch did for the temperate world. We have the research infrastructure: the Earth Observatory of Singapore, the Tropical Marine Science Institute, the Centre for Climate Research Singapore. We have the training networks: the Singapore Cooperation Programme has trained close to 150,000 officials from over 180 countries. We host the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre. We lead on green finance through the Singapore-Asia Taxonomy. And we now have—through this Bill—a legal and regulatory framework for tropical coastal protection being built from first principles.
The intellectual property being developed through this programme—the engineering standards, the legal frameworks, the climate models—represents enormous potential value. The question is whether Singapore captures that value, or whether we simply execute the work and let others package and export it.
I would ask the Minister: is there a deliberate strategy to position Singapore as the global centre of excellence for tropical coastal resilience? To ensure that the expertise developed through this S$100 billion programme generates not just a protected coastline, but a new export industry—one that creates high-value jobs for Singaporeans, and allows us to serve Jakarta, Manila, Dhaka, and the small island states of the Pacific with solutions designed for their conditions, not borrowed from someone else’s?
And there is a dimension beyond commerce. Singapore does not exist in isolation. The SIJORI growth triangle—Batam, Bintan, Johor Bahru—is deeply integrated with our economy, our workforce, and our daily life. Flood risk in those communities is not an abstract concern for us. Helping our immediate neighbours build resilience is, straightforwardly, in Singapore’s interest. A Singapore that exports coastal resilience expertise is not being generous. It is being strategic.
Conclusion
Mr Speaker, let me close where I began—with the water.
Every generation of Singaporeans has wagered on this island’s future. The founding generation wagered that a city with no hinterland could become a nation. The generation that built our water infrastructure wagered that necessity could become self-sufficiency. Both were right.
The generation now in Parliament is being asked to protect this island—and the relationship with the water that made us—for the generations that follow. I believe we can do more than just protect what we have. We want future Singaporeans to look back at this moment and see a generation that designed with the water, shared what it learned, and left a coastline more alive than the one it inherited.
That is the compact worth making. We are not the owners of this coastline. We are its stewards. And future generations will judge whether we kept it.
