Adopted by United Nations (UN) Member States in 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer countries a blueprint towards achieving the shared goals of peace, prosperity, and sustainable development while leaving no one behind. The Voluntary National Review (VNR) of the SDGs is the main avenue for countries to review their own progress towards the SDGs.
As a small island city-state with limited natural resources, sustainable development has been a cornerstone of Singapore’s development. We continually identify and develop innovative policies and practices to promote sustainable development, improve the well-being of our citizens, and chart our path towards a sustainable, resilient, and inclusive society. Singapore is focusing on the following priorities:
- Embedding sustainability across our national policies and in our everyday lives. We adopt a Whole-of-Nation approach to ensure that the SDGs are at the heart of our policy objectives. In February 2021, we announced the Singapore Green Plan 2030, a national sustainable development agenda to build a greener future and strengthen our commitments under the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement.
- Advancing towards a fairer and more inclusive society. In April 2022, Parliament unanimously endorsed the White Paper on Singapore Women’s Development, setting out 25 action plans by the Government and the community to empower Singapore women, such as enabling more women to participate more fully in the workplace, better protection for women from violence and harm, and enhancing caregiver support as the majority of caregivers in Singapore are women.
- Leveraging digitalisation as a key enabler of the SDGs. The onset of COVID-19 forced us to adapt quickly and harness technology to support the nation-wide pandemic response. These include disseminating timely and accurate information to the public, distributing vaccines and masks, approving business processes, and contact tracing.
- Building resilience against external shocks. We import more than 90% of our food from over 170 countries and regions around the world. To diversify our import sources, we have established a “30 by 30” goal to build up our local agri-food industry’s capability and capacity to sustainably produce 30% of our nutritional needs by 2030. On energy, Singapore will continue to harness our “four switches”, namely natural gas, solar energy, regional power grids, and emerging low-carbon alternatives, to support the transition towards cleaner energy for our power sector.
- Addressing the existential threat of climate change. Climate change is the most pressing global challenge confronting humanity. As a small and low-lying island state, we are particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change, including rising temperatures, sea-level rise, and extreme weather events. While our share of global emissions is small, we take our climate change obligations very seriously, and have raised our climate ambition to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. We are also the first and currently only country in Southeast Asia to implement a carbon tax.
- Supporting international efforts to achieve the SDGs. We firmly believe that it is more important than ever to forge cooperation to confront our shared challenges. COVID-19 has shown us that multilateral cooperation is fundamentally in the interest of all nations in preparing against shocks. We continue to support efforts to implement and achieve the SDGs at the international and regional levels.
We are proud to announce that Singapore will present our second VNR at the UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) in July 2023. The theme of the 2023 HLPF is “Accelerating the recovery from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at all levels” and it will focus on SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG 7 (clean energy), SDG 9 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure), SDG 11 (sustainable cities), and SDG 17 (partnerships).
The VNR is an important platform for Singapore to share our experiences and best practices in sustainable development with the international community and learn from other countries.
Our presentation will be an opportunity to showcase our commitment to sustainable development and our progress towards achieving the SDGs.
Download our VNR Brochure for a quick summary of Singapore’s VNR Report here. The full Report can also be downloaded here.
. . . . .
