Singapore – For at least three decades, Joanne Teoh, 68, has woken to views of a “pure green canopy” from her flat overlooking Maju Forest in Singapore’s Sunset Way estate. Teoh has watched her mother grow old and her sons grow up in its shade, alongside long-tailed macaques, ambling monitor lizards and critically endangered straw-headed bulbul. Earlier this year, Teoh, who has been documenting the forest’s flora and fauna since 2021, glimpsed Himalayan vultures for the first time, causing a stir among Singapore’s birding community.
Teoh now fears that this habitat will soon be lost forever due to the government’s plans to turn much of the forest into a residential area. Last month, Singapore’s Housing and Development Board announced plans to clear roughly 15 of Maju Forest’s 23 hectares (37 of 56 acres) to build homes at Sunset Way, as well as at least 10 hectares (25 acres) of Gillman Forest, located about 6km to the south. The proposals have stirred unusually vocal opposition among the public in a country where planning decisions are typically top-down and rarely contested openly.
Teoh and her neighbours are among many residents spurred into action, strategising online and over coffee about how best to advocate for stronger environmental safeguards and greater transparency. Public petitions calling for the cancellation or revision of the projects have attracted more than 60,000 signatures. The fate of the developments has become an unlikely focus of reflection in the period around Singapore’s National Day, which falls on August 9.
The debate has led to a rare bout of soul-searching over what kind of progress Singapore, one of the world’s wealthiest countries, wants to see, and a wider conversation about land use and public involvement in planning. Tensions between development and conservation have surfaced before, most notably when public pushback over the planned rezoning of Dover Forest, a 33-hectare patch in the west of the city, led the government to retain a large portion of the development as a nature park. A new outpouring of concern followed on August 23, when Prime Minister Lawrence Wong used the National Day Rally to unveil plans to merge several southern islands into a larger landmass for industry, power infrastructure and defence in the coming decades – reclamation likely to depend on imported sand, long a contentious trade in Southeast Asia.
Conservation groups have raised concerns about the impact the reclamation will have on reefs, marine life and remaining traces of the history of the sea-dwelling Orang Laut ethnic minority. Rachel Tan, an organiser with independent advocacy group SG Climate Rally (SGCR), said she has been struck by the “sustained attention and care from the public” over the plans, from residents running town halls to environmental groups leading heritage walks through the forests. Earlier this month, more than 2,000 people gathered at Speakers’ Corner, the sole venue in Singapore where citizens can legally assemble and speak publicly without a permit, for a rally opposing the development projects.
Tan, whose group organised the event, said Singaporeans are becoming increasingly aware that the environment affects everyone’s wellbeing and that there is a need to preserve green spaces for future generations. Official environmental impact assessments have found that Gillman Forest supports 178 animal species, and Maju Forest supports 113 – among them the critically endangered straw-headed bulbul, a bird numbering just 600 to 1,700 worldwide, a third of them in Singapore, and the Sunda pangolin. A 2023 study in the journal Sustainability estimated Singapore is on track to clear 7,331 hectares (18,115 acres) of forest for new development – 1.2 times the size of all its existing parks and nature reserves combined.
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