A very small state surrounded by seas and one of the territories most at risk from rising waters. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sea levels might rise more than one meter globally by 2100 – a direct consequence of global warming. Faced with this phenomenon, Singapore, a small island state of 6 million inhabitants between Malaysia and Indonesia is on the front line.
“In a scenario where CO2 emissions remain high, the water might rise by around 90cm,” says Jędrzej Majewski, a researcher at the Earth Observatory Singapore. According to these forecasts, the waters might therefore soon engulf the iconic monuments of this state largely built on the sea.
Even more worrying: combined with torrential rains during high tide, the rising waters promote another devastating phenomenon, “sudden floods”.
Walls in the sea, dams, locks…
So, since 2019, to fight once morest rising waters, the Singaporean government has decided to make the fight once morest global warming one of its priorities. Its climate budget is thus estimated at 70 billion euros for the next 50 to 100 years.
“For us, coastal protection is an existential issue. About 30% of Singapore’s land is less than five meters above sea level,” says Ho Chai Teck, deputy director of the Coastal Protection Department. . In total, a third of the country’s land is at risk of flooding.
“The different solutions we have put in place include walls in the seas, protective barriers, dams, locks for the tides,” he explains. The government has also raised the minimum level of the ground floor of many buildings built on the sea by one meter.
