Singapore is more prone to sea-level rise than ‘virtually any country’ on Earth. So what’s being done about it?

Roughly one-third of Singapore is less than five metres above sea level, making some US$50 billion worth of prime real estate vulnerable to flooding

Its leaders have described the threat as ‘existential’ – and are pouring billions into shoring up the city state’s defences against the rising tides

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Lights of Singapore’s skyline and Marina Bay are reflected in the waters of the Marina Barrage. Photo: Reuters

Published: 12:14pm, 10 Oct 2023

During a half-century of independence, Singapore has fought to expand its territory, inch by hard-won inch. On the tip of the Malaysian peninsula, the island city state piled up sand to expand its coastline and reclaim land from the sea.

In that time, Singapore has grown by one-quarter, adding land mass more than twice the size of Manhattan. At 736 sq km (284 square miles), Singapore is now approaching the size of all five boroughs of New York City. It plans to grow an additional 4 per cent by 2030. It’s a striking accomplishment, given that many other coasts are receding because of rising sea levels, a result of climate change.

“We are not planning to lose any inch of land permanently,” said Ho Chai Teck, a deputy director at PUB, the government agency coordinating the effort to save the nation’s shores. “Singapore will build a continuous line of defence along our entire coast. This is something that we take very seriously.”

The Marina Bay Financial District in Singapore. Some of the city state’s most prized property sits on low-lying land that’s vulnerable to flooding. Photo: Bloomberg

Roughly one-third of Singapore is less than five metres (16 feet) above sea level, low enough for flooding to cause punishing financial losses. Some of its most prized property sits on vulnerable land: the skyscrapers overlooking the Marina Bay waterfront, known for its luxury mall and casino, and the towers that house giant banks such as Singapore-based DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Southeast Asia’s largest, and UK-based Standard Chartered Plc.

Assuming 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, prime real estate in the city worth S$70 billion (US$50 billion) faces a high risk of flooding, according to Bloomberg estimates using data from real estate company CBRE Group Inc. Another endangered, and vital, part of the country is Jurong Island, where Shell Plc and ExxonMobil Corp. have oil and petrochemical operations.

“You’ve got small island nations, but they don’t have this much economic wealth,” says Benjamin Horton, a professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore who studies sea-level change. “The actual value of every square metre in Singapore is off the charts. This is a country more susceptible to sea-level rise than virtually any country in the world.”

In 2019, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that Singapore would need to spend S$100 billion over the next 100 years to protect against rising sea levels. The government has since put S$5 billion towards a coastal- and flood-protection fund. “Both the Singapore Armed Forces and climate change defences are existential,” he said then. “These are life-and-death matters. Everything else must bend at the knee to safeguard the existence of our island nation.”