The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is about more than physical infrastructure. Beyond the fanfare about ports and railways, the BRI has a technological counterpart with far-reaching consequences for Southeast Asia – the “digital silk road”. While traditional infrastructure has been in the spotlight, the digital...
Titled “The Haze Fighters of Sungai Tohor”, this eco-documentary highlights how Indonesia’s land reform push to redistribute 12.7 million hectares to be managed by local communities can also be a move to empower at-risk communities in their fight against haze. In May 2017, SIIA visited one...
ASEAN’s economy is expected to grow at an estimated 5.1 percent annually, but its energy demand and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will also increase by 67 percent by 2030. To counteract this trend, in December 2017, the Philippines ratified a coal tax in December 2017, after...
Ms. Fawziah Selamat, Deputy Director (Sustainability), Singapore Institute of International Affairs was quoted in an article by Eco-Business on Indonesia's palm oil sector. Can the palm oil sector do more with less to save Indonesia’s forests? by Tim Daubach, Eco-Business More than two years after Indonesia announced a...
Two years since the Paris Agreement, many ASEAN countries are placing increasing emphasis on combating climate change and its adverse impacts. Governments have started to invest in improving air and water quality, low-carbon transport, and better use of resources to shift towards green growth. We...
On 18 May 2018, we held our 5th Singapore Dialogue on Sustainable World Resources at the Grand Hyatt Singapore. Here's some extracts from the media coverage, focusing on comments by Indonesian Minister of National Development Planning Bambang Brojonegoro about how skies in the region will remain...
By Simon Tay and Fawziah Selamat For The Business Times SUSTAINABILITY issues are still often seen as long-term concerns, rather than requiring urgent attention, despite the Paris agreement to take action to address climate change. Within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), there have also been...
Ms. Fawziah Selamat, Deputy Director (Sustainability), Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA) was quoted in a Lianhe Zaobao article on the current fires in Indonesia, and whether there is a chance that they might affect Singapore. Below is her original quote in English. "We are seeing...
By Chen Chen Lee and Lau Xinyi The fight against climate change has notably taken a hit during US President Donald Trump's first year in office. Besides rolling back domestic policies and regulations from the era of his predecessor Barack Obama, Mr Trump also announced plans to withdraw...
As the ASEAN chair for 2018, one of Singapore’s priorities is promoting the region’s growing digital economy. The figures are promising. South-east Asia’s digital economy holds strong potential, and is expected to exceed US$200 billion by 2025. Digital technologies present ASEAN member states with the...