Some Islands Will Rise

Singapore in the Anthropocene

Matthew Schneider-Mayerson

Reading Richard McGuires graphic novel Here in a course on envi-

ronmental literature at Yale-NUS College, my students and I couldnt
help wonder: what will the future hold for Singapore? Here shows the
view from a fixed perspective and location (Perth Amboy, New Jersey)
across eons, ranging from 3,000,500,000 BCE to 22,175 AD. In 2111, wa-
ter pours through the window of a suburban house, and fifteen years
later the area is entirely submerged (McGuire 2014). These scenes in
particular inspired the class to reflect on the future of Singapore, the
sole industrialized small island nation in the world. While most narra-
tives of climate futures focus on the great destabilizations, violence, and
suffering we can expect in the next century, with seemingly doomed
island nations (such as Tuvalu and the Maldives) serving as symbols of
an incipient era of unconscionable environmental injustice, at least one
island will rise. If drowned cities are one likely future, island fortresses
are another. As a wealthy nation with a tradition of environmental engi-
neering, a strong centralized government, and the technological capac-
ity to adapt, Singapores artificial technonature might provide a glimpse
of the future for those lucky enough to survive the rising tides. This es-
say considers the possibility that Singapore is a model, as many scholars
(e.g., Chua B. 2011) have claimed, but for very different and potentially
conflicting practices: climate adaptation, sustainable urbanism, nation-
al greenwashing, and eco-authoritarianism.
The most appropriate place to begin such an examination is the cool,
dark, metallic cavern at the base of the Cloud Forest dome in Singa-
pores billion-dollar supergarden complex, Gardens by the Bay. After
visitors wind their way down the dome, a massive air-conditioned glass
structure that showcases the transplanted flora of mountain forest eco-
systems, they encounter a theater in which the short film +5 plays on
loop. With a quickening crescendo, it depicts mounting scenes of cli-
mate catastrophe as the planet warms to five degrees Celsius above pre-
industrial levels. In 2063 (+2.9 degrees) a childs voice announces that
half of all species are condemned to extinction. In 2080 (+4.3 degrees)
there is a 50 percent decline in freshwater availability. By 2100 (+5.0 de-
grees), a male voice concludes, the Earth is just a dry rock dying in
space. But all is not lost. As the timeline rapidly reverses, the disem-
bodied narrator counsels that this is only one possible future. If we
act quickly, we can adapt our behavior and prevent all this from hap-
pening. Such adaptations would include technology (a photograph
of a solar array), farm practices (a vertical farm), and policies (wind
turbines). A piano plays the last notes of a hopeful coda while a final
image appears: an architects rendering of a night scene at Gardens by
the Bay, with families strolling below Singapores iconic Supertrees.
Through this illustration, the film offers Singapores technonature as a
response to and salvation from its own dystopian forecasts.
As the audience exits, eighteen Supertrees loom before them, each
between 80 and 160 feet tall. By any technical definition they are hard-
ly trees but funnel-shaped concrete pillars with over 160,000 tropical
plants sown into their exteriors and metallic purple extensions as their
clipped crowns. Every evening, they perform a light show in time with
inspirational symphonic music, the center stage of a municipal perfor-
mance hall whose balcony seats are located in the surrounding skyscrap-
ers. Bright lights illuminate the epiphytes in their trunks, and multicol-
ored bulbs blink on and off, approximating the stars. In their artificiality,
their reaching verticality, and their futuristic aspiration, the sci fi bota-
ny (Lim 2014, 443) of the Supertrees is distinctly Singaporean.1 It asserts
that nature, once contained and engineered, is but a medium for hu-
man artifice and amelioration. Beyond their function as scaffolding for a
symphony of lights, the Supertrees are a kind of monumental ecological
edutainment. As diagrams throughout the gardens explain to visitors,
they are vents for the air-conditioned Flower Dome and Cloud Forest,
two of the largest enclosed glass structures in the world, and also con-
tain photovoltaic cells that generate small amounts of electricity.
As with Singapore itself, one can ask whether the Supertrees are in-

Schneider-Mayerson: Some Islands Will Rise 167

teresting anomalies or a glimpse of our Anthropocene (or Capitalocene)
future. From this prophetic perspective, this small island nation is a win-
dow into a future in which the line between the built and the natural
environment becomes blurred beyond recognition. (In many ways this
has long been our reality, as environmental historians have argued, but
in Singapore it structures daily lived experience and permeates popular
consciousness as in few other nations.) Indeed, versions of the Super-
trees may soon dot your own landscape. As negative emissions are ac-
knowledged to be required to limit expected temperature increase to 2
degrees Celsius (Lewis 2015), artificial trees with otherworldly abilities
are a great hope, and institutions such as Arizona State Universitys Cen-
ter for Negative Carbon Emissions are developing machines that seques-
ter carbon dioxide a thousand times more efficiently than actual trees
(McFarland 2016). Though existing prototypes resemble flyswatters more
than they do redwoods, aesthetic adjustments are sure to come, and such
small-scale geoengineering projects are likely to be implemented before
riskier interventions, such as solar radiation management.

Some Islands Will Rise

If the Supertrees are not anomalies but pioneer species, there is much
to learn from them. The existence of the Supertree Grove is a lesson
in the human capacity to resist the literal and metaphorical rising seas.
All 250 acres of Gardens by the Bay is built on what is euphemistically
referred to as reclaimed land. Though the practice of land reclama-
tion is hardly novel to anyone familiar with lower Manhattan or Chi-
nas recent manufacture of islands in the South China Sea, the scale of
Singapores extension is unparalleled. Since the 1960s, the country has
expanded its territory by almost 25 percent, from 581.5 km2 in the 1960s
to 723.2 km2 today, and plans to fabricate another 100 km2 by 2030. This
expansion has been accomplished through the purchase of sand and
aggregate from its neighbors, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar,
and the Philippines (Comaroff 2014). On reclaimed land, Singapore has
built not only towering nature parks but also public housing complex-
es and petrochemical refineries. Terraforming has constituted a central
feature of its national history.2
Of course, even reclaimed land could soon be reclaimed by the sea,
especially given recent estimates suggesting a potential sea level rise of

168 Resilience Vol. 4, Nos. 23

one meter by 2100 and fifteen meters by 2500 (DeConto and Pollard
2016). Thirty percent of Singapore lies less than five meters above sea
level, and ten of its seventeen reservoirs are adjacent to the coast, which
puts them at risk of contamination by seawater. In November 2015 a
report by Climate Central attracted a great deal of attention on Singa-
porean social media, suggesting that a temperature rise of four degrees
Celsius by 2100 could force 745,000 Singaporeans underwater, with
an accompanying visualization painting much of the central business
district a deep blue (Navaratnarajah 2015). This fate may befall some
coastal cities before the end of this century, but Singapore is unlikely to
be among their number. While certain North American nations have
denied and debated the reality of anthropogenic climate change, Singa-
pore has been quietly preparing for sea level rise for over two decades.
Since the early 1990s, new reclamation and construction projects have
been required to double the expected sea level rise (based on the IPCCs
latest estimates), and vulnerable highways are being elevated (C. Tan
2016). Already, 70 to 80 percent of Singapores coast is lined with hard
walls or gradated stone embankments. This is not cheap, but Singapore
has the means. Of the forty-four states in the Association of Small Is-
land States (AOSIS), Singapore, with a per capita GDP of US$85,000,
is almost three times wealthier than the second most productive nation
and six times wealthier than the AOSIS average (World Bank 2016).
Though the Singaporean government is secretive about its long-term
adaptation strategies, it consults with international firms to create con-
tingency plans, which include constructing dykes and seawalls as well
as underground housing and floating buildings. As an editor at the na-
tional newspaper The Straits Times argued, It is our will to power that
will help us cope with one of the big driving forces of the future: climate
change, and the threat that it brings, of extreme weather patterns and
rising sea levels (Chua M. 2015). This Nietszschean assertion might be
dismissed as nationalist bravado, but many others echo her view. A for-
eign hydrologist who works with the Singaporean government told me
with surprising assurance, Singapore will never go underwater.3

A Garden City in a Garden World

Their confidence is justified by the nations history. The ability to manip-
ulate and engineer nature has been a hallmark of the Singaporean state

Schneider-Mayerson: Some Islands Will Rise 169

and has therefore prepared it for survival in the Anthropocene. Though
the island has been a trading hub since at least the fourteenth centu-
ry, Singapores history generally begins in 1819, when the British East
India Company arrived to purchase the island and develop what was
principally a fishing village into a British trading post. Originally view-
ing the island as a site of entrept trade, the British began to transform
and commodify the islands prolific vegetative capability. By 1889, after
only half a century of cultivation, 90 percent of the old-growth forest
had been converted to plantations for gambier and pepper. When the
soil became depleted, production moved to the Malay Peninsula, and
much of Singapore was covered by lalang grass. Soon thereafter, rubber
and agricultural plantations had their turn (Barnard and Heng 2014).
After achieving independence from the British in 1963 and then break-
ing with the Federation of Malaya in 1965, the pace of transformation
accelerated as the independent Singaporean government embarked on
a radical restructuring of the islands topography, landscape, and built
environment. The ambitious government programs of its early years are
famous for the construction of high-density, high-rise public housing
where kampongs (villages) once stood, but Singapores efforts to green
its postcolonial landscape are just as impressive. As founding father and
longtime prime minister (196590) Lee Kuan Yew consolidated power
and molded the nation around his desires, his vision of a Garden City
became official policy. Styling himself the Chief Gardener, Lee initiat-
ed a tree-planting campaign in 1963, with ten thousand trees introduced
every year. In 1971, November 7 became Tree Planting Day, with thirty
thousand trees installed on that day alone. Between 1970 and 1992, over
5 million trees and shrubs were planted.
Though there are a growing number of vocal advocates for the con-
servation of wilderness, sustainability, and environmental values in Sin-
gapore, the primary motivation for the manufacture of a Garden City
came from the top down, as did its execution. As with most other el-
ements of the emerging developmental state, the original purpose of
the greening program was practical. After independence the Peoples
Action Party (PAP), which has held power for the nations entire his-
tory, focused its attention on priming economic growth. The city had
long served as one of the worlds busiest ports, and its attractive free
trade policies would continue. As Singapore had few natural resourc-
es, increased foreign investment was required, and Lee recognized the

170 Resilience Vol. 4, Nos. 23

role that greenery could play as a signifier of stability, prosperity, and
control (Barnard and Heng 2014, 29697). Indeed, Lee acknowledged
the economic function of the tree-planting program in speeches, inter-
views, and his memoir, contending in 2000 that no other project has
brought richer rewards to the region (Lee K. 2000, 77). From lush jun-
gle to short-lived plantations of pepper, gambier, and rubber to a futur-
istic Garden City, the islands modern environmental history is one of
constant reinvention and deliberate engineering. With much of its hu-
man and natural history now bulldozed and buried under malls, pub-
lic housing, and skyscrapers, Singapore is a site of perpetual territorial
transformation (De Koninck, Drolet, and Girard 2008), symbolized by
its ubiquitous construction sites promising bigger and better admix-
tures of concrete, glass, and steel.
Today, Singapore is an ecomodernist paradise: a dense metropo-
lis with manicured green trim. Visitors comment on the injection of
greenery into every nook and cranny, from the billowing rain trees
lining roadways to the bougainvillea draping highway overpasses. The
sheer volume of plant life is impressive; according to a 2011 study, 56
percent of the city is now covered in vegetation. Approximately half of
that is carefully managed as lawns, gardens, parks, and seventeen golf
courses. Though the other half is considered spontaneous vegetation, it
too has been engineered through the purposeful policies and botanical
intervention of the state (Barnard and Heng 2014, 280). The responsi-
bility for the planning and maintenance of nature is shared among a
patchwork of government agencies; but a single agency, National Parks,
actively monitors and maintains 3 million trees and many more bush-
es and flowers. Whether it grows on public or private property, every
patch of grass is scrutinized for adherence to the appropriate shade of
green. In Singapore, then, nature generally exists as the final prod-
uct in a deliberate (but rarely deliberative) process: first as an economic
strategy a national priority a set of policies architectural plans
installation via heavy machinery and finally as an entry in a database
for maintenance, tended by migrant laborers on temporary work visas.
As Tan Wee Kiat, the former CEO of National Parks, put it, the green
veneer of the Garden City has been applied with the deliberateness of a
craftsman applying a coat of lacquer upon a beautifully crafted vessel
(Tan H. 1999).
This command approach to environmental management has made

Schneider-Mayerson: Some Islands Will Rise 171

switched its primary energy source from petroleum to natural gas in
the early 2000s, although this was prompted by the regional availabil-
ity of natural gas as much as emissions considerations. Due to the ab-
sence of freshwater, it became a leader in water management; the com-
plete water cycle is managed by the Public Utilities Board, with recycled
wastewater (euphemized as NEWater) now making up 30 percent of its
water supply and desalinated water another 10 percent. The country is
home to scores of innovative green buildings, and all new and retro-
fitted structures are now required to attain Green Mark certification.
Residents enjoy a cheap and efficient public transportation system, and
motor vehicle ownership is discouraged through high registration and
maintenance fees. Though the PAP has generally been indifferent to the
preservation of the few remaining wilderness areas (Goh 2014), which
contain a tremendous amount of biodiversity, the omnipresent green-
ery does have a number of ecological benefits, such as diminishing the
urban heat island effect and reducing the need for air-conditioning.

A Blueprint for Eco-Authoritarianism?

These achievements have led some authors to champion Singapore as
a model for eco-authoritarianism, a mode of governing in which eco-
logically necessary but potentially unpopular policies are instituted
through autocratic or aristocratic fiat. Eco-authoritarianism has been
undertheorized, in part because it tends to make liberal or leftist en-
vironmental scholars deeply uncomfortable, but it lurks as a distinct
possibility in the Anthropocene and therefore deserves more attention.
In their well-known future-history document, The Collapse of West-
ern Civilization: A View from the Future, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M.
Conway posit a Darwinian logic in which it is in fact inevitable. The
storys narrator, a twenty-fourth-century Chinese historian, recounts
that democratic governments were at first unwilling and then unable
to deal with the Great Collapse caused by climate change, leaving
only authoritarian states as survivors (Oreskes and Conway 2013, 53).4
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith have argued that Singapore,
as an illiberal democracy with minimal parliamentary opposition
and restrictive laws, most closely approximates a benign Platonic ar-
istocracy and would therefore serve as an appropriate prototype for an
eco-authoritarian approach to environmental adaptation, mitigation,

172 Resilience Vol. 4, Nos. 23

and survival (Shearman and Smith 2007, 125). It is perhaps no accident
that in the film +5, viewers are told that sea levels rise significantly by
2090, devastating small islands, low-lying coastal areas, and regional
world cities; but the accompanying video shows a flooded American
metropolis, not Orchard Road (Singapores upscale shopping district).
These assertions deserve consideration. Singapore is a representative
republic with a government that maintains popular accountability, but
it is also a technocratic and managerial state with half a century of ex-
perience in suppressing dissent. Citizens and foreigners who publicly
cross the OB (out-of-bounds) markers for public discourse and action
are regularly sued for libel and defamation (sometimes to bankruptcy),
which produces a chilling effect (Chan 2003) that has led to the em-
igration of dissidents and nonconformists and ensured a certain level
of ideological uniformity.5 The PAP has argued that the nations unique
conditions (in terms of size, lack of resources, and ethnic diversity) cre-
ate a persistent threat of crisis and dissolution, making necessary a num-
ber of potentially unpopular measures (sometimes presented as Asian
values), including harsh penalties for minor criminal offenses and sig-
nificant limits on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom
of assembly. Catherine Waldby has observed that crisis is the mtier of
the Singaporean state (Waldby 2009, 372), and climate change is easily
slotted into this logic as another threat to the existence and stability of
a young nation. In this way, Singapores history might be interpreted as
presenting an opportunity for a radical and unprecedented transition
to a post-carbon future. As Steven Velegrinis and Richard Weller note,
transforming Singapore into a green city could be a matter of survival,
which is an anxiety that Singaporeans are familiar with and one which
in its various forms propels the cultures vitality (Velegrinis and Weller
2007, 32). While American environmentalists are forced to resurrect for-
gotten histories to assert the latent potential of Americans to consider
radical transformations and endure collective sacrifices, Singaporeans
are, for better or worse, accustomed to change and the subordination of
individual desires for the (alleged) collective good.
Though China is considered the most significant candidate for future
eco-authoritarianism (Beeson 2010), perhaps Singapores exemplary
preparation and adaptation suggests that Oreskes and Conways scenar-
io may already be underway. While the term eco-authoritarianism will
rally few supporters, there is little question that given the urgent need

Schneider-Mayerson: Some Islands Will Rise 173

to decarbonize, many environmentalists would find a swift and efficient
top-down energy transition more than acceptable. Indeed, the prima-
ry environmental achievements of the Obama administration took the
form of executive orders and international agreements that deliberately
sidestepped congressional approval. These were applauded by most en-
vironmentalists. As Julie Sze writes, we fear China and its pollution; at
the same time, we are defined by our envy of the power of authoritarian
government to make positive environmental changes (Sze 2015, 7).

Fuzzy Math
However, seeing Singapore as an approximation of potential eco-
authoritarianism elides an inconvenient fact. Despite its Supertrees and
anthropogenic greenery, Singapore is, according to many metrics, one
of the least sustainable places in the world. The World Wildlife Foun-
dations Living Planet Report assigned Singapore the worlds seventh-
highest per capita ecological footprint (World Wildlife Foundation
2014), just ahead of the United States, while another study found that
it exceeds its biocapacity by 12,700 percent (Global Footprint Network
2017).6 Beyond the lovely green veneer, these rankings would not sur-
prise many residents, as Singapore (like most other wealthy nations)
has developed economically by embracing neoliberal capitalism and
fueling its economic growth with a materialist consumer culture in
which status can be measured by the five Cs: cash, car, credit card,
condominium, and country club membership (Ho 1989). Malls are in-
escapable, serving as temples of conspicuous consumption, supplemen-
tal public spaces, and refuges of cool air in a tropical island. Indeed,
Cherian George famously referred to Singapore as the air conditioned
nation for its reliance on artificial cooling, calling it a society with a
unique blend of comfort and central control, where people have mas-
tered their environment, but at the cost of individual autonomy, and at
the risk of unsustainability (George 2000, 15).
The degree of unsustainability is not a simple matter, hinging (like
so much else) on the fine print of carbon accounting. According to the
most common metrics for carbon emissions, such as those used by the
UNFCCC, emissions must occur within a given nation to count toward
their profile. This has particularly significant consequences for major
manufacturersone-third of Chinas emissions result from the produc-

174 Resilience Vol. 4, Nos. 23

tion of goods for exportas well as major importers, such as the United
States and Singapore, which are effectively outsourcing their emissions.
As the government noted in its official rebuttal to the Living Planet Re-
port, Singapores large footprint is partially due to its status as a small
island that contains few natural resources and is therefore dependent
on importation of most goods (MediaCorp Press 2014). This may be a
problem that all small island nations facethough those that consume
less have a much smaller footprintbut the evaluation of Singapores
unsustainability is complicated by a unique factor. Singapore is home
to the second-busiest port in the world, and if marine bunker fuel (the
heaviest and dirtiest of oils) were included in the evaluation of per capi-
ta emissions, Singapores would be approximately five times higher than
the United States (Ng 2012, 195). According to standard calculations
these emissions are not counted, though port business remains the bed-
rock of the nations economy (Hamilton-Hart 2014).
While government officials assert that Singapore is a humble island
with few resources and therefore cannot do much, recent criticism and
actions taken by Singapore as well as other nations have undermined
this claim.7 In official climate negotiations, the country has held on to
its status as a developing nation, which diminishes its expectations for
emissions cuts and contributions to the Green Climate Fund. While this
might have been an accurate characterization in the early 1990s, Singa-
pore now has the fourth-highest per capita GDP in the world. In Feb-
ruary 2017 Singapore announced the introduction of a modest carbon
tax that will apply to thirty to forty of the nations largest emitters (such
as power plants, refineries, and semiconductor manufacturers) starting
in 2019 (Lam 2017).8 While this will be a positive step forward, there
is much that might be done beyond emissions reductions, such as in-
centivizing reduced consumption, welcoming environmental refugees,
and leveraging the countrys considerable wealth. Singapore holds two
sovereign wealth funds with combined assets of approximately US$540
billion. Following the lead of Norways Government Pension Fund, Sin-
gapore might contribute to the ongoing energy transition by redirecting
its investments in fossil fuels toward renewable-energy generation in
the region (Robinson and Fabian 2015).
This seems unlikely in the near future, however. Singapores post-
independence economy grew by securing foreign investment, especial-
ly from oil and gas companies whose construction of refineries in the

Schneider-Mayerson: Some Islands Will Rise 175

1960s and 1970s was crucial to the young nations economic develop-
ment (Ng 2012, 17). Today, Singapore has the third-largest complex of
petrochemical refineries in the world, including ExxonMobil and Shell
facilities located on reclaimed islands. Despite its public commitment
to sustainability, the countrys leadership shows no signs of considering
a divorce; in a 2014 speech at ExxonMobils Jurong Island refinery (the
eighth-largest in the world), Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong went out
of his way to assure all the energy and petrochemicals companies here
that the Singapore government stands fully behind them and will con-
tinue to help them to succeed (Prime Ministers Office 2016). This sus-
tained commitment to petro-capitalist economic growth is particularly
disappointing given the nations potential for a rapid and efficient tran-
sition and its status as a model of successful development throughout
the Global South. As public protests are illegal (outside of a single loca-
tion) and opposition parties have been marginalized, there is currently
little pressure on the ruling PAP to reconsider its trajectory.9

National Greenwashing
Nonetheless, public relations matters. In the postParis Agreement
era, nations have a growing stake in being perceived as environmen-
tally progressive. To do so, they might begin by promoting their recent
achievements and manufacturing doubt about their lamentable inabil-
ity to move more quickly. Favorable metrics are identified and high-
lighted. In its 2015 Intended Nationally Determined Contribution to the
UNFCCC, for example, Singapore pledged to decrease its emissions
intensity (carbon emissions per unit of GDP) by 36 percent in 2030
(from 2005 levels), though its total emissions would continue to rise for
more than a decade, constituting an increase of 39 percent since 2010.10
As Jerome Whitington has observed, the government consistently rep-
resents this as an emissions reduction (Whitington 2016, 417). Once
doubt has been sown, a national greenwashing campaign can proceed
with little interference. Such a strategy is evident in official documents,
such as the National Climate Change Strategy 2012, which disputes ac-
cusations of high energy consumption on a single page of plain text
before displaying a photograph of sunny skyscrapers viewed through
the lattice of a verdant canopy on the next. In the face of Singapores
extensive greenery, as the caption describes the image (National Cli-

176 Resilience Vol. 4, Nos. 23

mate Change Secretariat 2012, 29), dry and contestable calculations are
buried in an epistemological landslide.
In Singapore this question is no small matter. Singapores repu-
tation for environmentalism is an economic boon, but it has also be-
come an element of the countrys national identity. As Goh Hong Yi
noted, Singapores greenness has become a powerful national symbol
of identity and pride, especially in contrast to its regional neighbors
and competing Asian megacities (Goh 2014, 245). As such, reputation
management is necessary, and the National Climate Change Secretari-
at not only pens press releases rebutting criticisms from foreign NGOs
but responds in the comments section of online articles, with officials
full names and titles.11 Given its coordination and duration, it should
come as little surprise that Singapores national greenwashing campaign
has influenced its citizens as well as the visitors and foreign residents
who play a crucial role in framing the nation to the rest of the world.
One regularly hears tourists, permanent residents, and scholars refer to
Singapore as green (environmentally virtuous), despite data and ex-
perience to the contrary; and this claim is frequently mirrored in print
and other media. For example, communications scholar Chris Hudson
recently asserted that Singapore is an economic as well as environmen-
tal oasis (Hudson 2014, 92). Similarly, in the closing scene of the final
episode of the BBCs Planet Earth II series (2016), David Attenborough
described Singapore as the best example of a city living in harmony
with nature, while an ultra-high-definition hummingbird drank nectar
from a creeper wrapped around a Supertree. The lesson is troubling, if
not surprising: leafy optics, fuzzy math, and wishful thinking trump the
invisible march of carbon emissions and the abstract calculation of eco-
logical footprints and outsourced pollution.
As a result of its size, Singapore will never account for a large per-
centage of global emissions, but its complicity and culpability are es-
pecially significant given the immiseration, suffering, and violence that
climate change will bring to the region. As Singapore perseveres in the
Anthropocene, its neighbors will undoubtedly lose land and lives to ex-
treme weather events and the encroaching sea. Forty-two million Indo-
nesians live within three kilometers of the coast, and the Philippines is
considered to be one of the nations most vulnerable to climate change
(Fogarty 2015). Bangladesh is just across the Andaman Sea. All three
lack Singapores wealth, infrastructure, centralized organization, and

Schneider-Mayerson: Some Islands Will Rise 177

capacity for adaptation. These regional relationships are complicated by
Singapores heavy reliance on migrant labor to stay clean and green
the vast majority of the construction and maintenance of the islands
technonature is accomplished by temporary workers from South and
Southeast Asia whose entrance, employment, low wages, habitation
in migrant dormitories, and eventual exit are carefully regulated and
closely monitored by the government. The elimination of boundaries
between nature and culture signifies that all life might be (or already is)
organized and controlled though biopolitical management. The stark
contrast between the futuristic city-state and its neighbors, who provide
migrant labor and serve as an artificial hinterland and source of raw
materials for territorial expansion, will only grow more striking.
While demands for the placement of climate refugees will prolifer-
ate in the years to come, Singapore has historically refused to accept
refugees or stateless peoples. In 2015 a government official reiterated
this position: As a small island country with limited land, Singapore is
not in a position to accept any persons seeking political asylum or refu-
gee status, regardless of their ethnicity or place of origin (Osada 2015).
Meanwhile, its population has grown by over 20 percent since 2000 and
is expected to expand by another 20 percent by 2030 (National Popu-
lation and Talent Division 2013).12 Unless there are unforeseen changes
in the nations policies around consumption, population, and immigra-
tion, Singapore may return to its former status as an island fortress in
the decades to come.

The Future of Us
Thorny questions of environmental justice were absent from the efflo-
rescence of visions of Singapores future that accompanied SG50, the
year-long celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of independence (in
2015). To a scholar of environmental politics and popular culture, these
speculations were striking for their unrelenting optimism. In chorus,
they announced that the nation will endure and prosper on its present
path, whether that requires floating buildings, underground housing,
or satellite cities. This brand of ecomodernist confidence, buttressed by
pseudo-authoritarian execution, was highlighted in a state-sponsored
exhibition called The Future of Us, which I visited with my aforemen-
tioned class. Housed in three temporary tents constructed as geode-

178 Resilience Vol. 4, Nos. 23

sic domes on the grounds of Gardens by the Bay, audience members
learned about the Singapore of tomorrow, which turns out to be an ex-
tension of its present sprinkled with sleek, antiseptic utopianism: verti-
cal agriculture, minimalist dcor, and a knowledge economy achieved
via holographic connections. More green veneer and open space, while
migrant workers and the ports container terminals were noticeably ab-
sent. The title was telling, though perhaps not in the way its designers
intended. For many Singaporeans, this was a privileged and perhaps de-
sirable future. For foreigners, who make up half of Gardens by the Bays
visitors, the titular pronoun served to highlight its exclusivity. The stark
contrast between this vision and the converging predictions of climate
scientists and eco-apocalyptic authors led some of my students to ques-
tion what lay beyond the projected citys borders. Will lucky nations
such as Singapore prosper while much of the world drowns or starves?
Is such business-as-usual imagineering itself a luxury of the wealthy,
possible only when the rapidly materializing catastrophes of the An-
thropocene remain distant abstractions whose responsibility can be
shirked with fuzzy math?
The final dome was astral purple, containing a dozen iPads around
a circular console with blue light radiating from its base. Visitors were
asked to handwrite a few words on what they hoped the future might
hold, with the Environment category proving to be the most popular
(Khamid 2016). White text, bright in the rooms violet light, steered re-
sponses toward a sanitary nationalism. One message reiterated the ne-
cessity of collective sacrifice on behalf of sheer survival: We intend to
see that Singapore will be here a thousand years from now. And that is
your duty and mine. Another cautioned, The future is not only my
own. Was it a subtle reminder that in the Anthropocene no country is
truly an island, or a caution to visitors who might be tempted to express
dissonant visions or political criticism? Answers were not forthcom-
ing, though some of my students noticed that their scribbled hopes and
dreams mysteriously disappeared. After being entered into the touch-
screen, those that passed muster became iridescent globules, momen-
tarily projected onto the ceiling before floating off and disappearing in
deep space. Outside the air-conditioned dome stood the Supertrees
concrete pillars of a future that is increasingly our construction, but
never only our own.

Schneider-Mayerson: Some Islands Will Rise 179

About the Author
Matthew Schneider-Mayerson is an assistant professor of environmental
studies at Yale-NUS College (in Singapore), where he teaches classes on
environmental literature and politics. He has a PhD in American studies
from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and was a Cultures of Energy
Postdoctoral Fellow at Rice University. He is the author of Peak Oil: Apocalyp-
tic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2015) and numerous articles and book chapters on environ-
mental politics, popular culture, and literature.

Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Michael Maniates, Huiying Ng, May Ee Wong, and oth-
ers for their insightful comments on this essay, and to Stephanie Le-
Menager for her support and editorial assistance. All opinions and any
errors are my own.

Notes
1. In addition to Lim, a number of other scholars have published insightful ecocritiques
of Gardens by the Bay. See, for example, Leow (2012) and Myers (2015).
2. In this sense, Singapores closest analogue is the Netherlandsa small, low-lying na-
tion that has used polders and dikes to engineer water and land since the eleventh century.
3. Interview with anonymous hydrologist, February 26, 2016. This individual, like almost
every other person consulted, requested to remain anonymous even though no confidential
information had been disclosed.
4. Similarly, Marshall (2010) pictures a revolution in a hot and flooded England resulting
in eco-authoritarianism, while many scholars have warned of the possibility of a fortress
world (e.g., Parenti 2011).
5. The concept of OB markers arose during the 1990s. According to scholars such as Ter-
ence Lee, OB markers have been used by the Singaporean government as a way to define
acceptable discourse and action and thereby limit political engagement, civic action and
participation, and anything else remotely linked to politics (T. Lee 2002, 110). According to
these scholars, an absence of clarity about OB markers has sometimes led to self-censorship.
On the contrast between the diversity of political ideologies and the freedom of discourse in
Singapores past and present, see Barr and Trocki (2008).
6. While all major metropolitan areas outstrip their biocapacity, Singapore is both a city
and a state. As I suggest in the next section, this dual status creates an opportunity for elu-
siveness that its government can exploit, both rhetorically and materially.
7. Interview with a member of the Nature Society, who characterized this as the tradition-
al response to appeals from environmental advocates, February 3, 2016.
8. According to the announcement, the tax will cover carbon dioxide as well as methane,
nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. It is expected

180 Resilience Vol. 4, Nos. 23

to be between US$7 and US$14 per ton of greenhouse gas, which would be among the lower
rates of taxation around the world, and will fund measures by industries to reduce emis-
sions (Lam 2017).
9. Since 2000, public protests have been permitted at a single location in Singapore,
Speakers Corner, in a small (0.94 hectare) park. However, only citizens are allowed to par-
ticipate, permits are required in advance, all events are monitored, and there are numerous
restrictions on content.
10. Climate Action Tracker, an independent organization that evaluates the pledges and
actions of every nation, gave Singapore its worst rating, noting that it is not in line with any
interpretations of a fair approach to hold warming below 2C: if most other countries fol-
lowed Singapores approach, global warming would exceed 34C (Climate Action Tracker
2016).
11. See, for example, the response to Liu (2015).
12. Given the long history of active intervention in the size of its population, the expected
growth of Singapores population might be described as a goal as much as a prediction. Since
independence, the PAP has utilized both policy and public relations campaigns to influence
the rate of population growth (Sun 2012).

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