Interview: No time for climate change complacency, Singapore's minister warns

by Chen Junxia and Martina Fuchs

ST. GALLEN, Switzerland, May 7 (Xinhua) -- A senior Singaporean official has warned that an attitude of complacency and lack of responsibility are blowing a hole in the global fight against climate change and urged more individual action.

"Very often people say that yes, we need to do the right thing for the climate, but why should I pay more? We need to change the narrative and cause a behavioral change," Grace Fu, minister for sustainability and the environment, told Xinhua.

"Each of us should adopt the philosophy that we are individually responsible for consumption, for the electricity we consume, for the air conditioning in our buildings," she said on the sidelines of the St. Gallen Symposium.

The Switzerland-based conference, serving as a platform for cross-generational dialogue and collaboration, brought together 700 participants, 120 speakers, and 250 young talents from around the world for this year's annual meeting.

"Then only can we start having that change, as an individual, as business leaders, as community leaders, and as the government as well," she said.

Singapore rolled out last year the Singapore Green Plan 2030 which aims to advance the national agenda on sustainable development.

The plan charts targets over the next 10 years to strengthen the country's commitments under the United Nation's 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and Paris Agreement and help it to achieve its long-term net-zero emissions aspiration as soon as viable.

"We believe that in the next phase of Singapore's development we really need to look at sustainability as a sort of overlay across all sectors," said the minister.

"Very often it's not a technological solution, very often it is a behavioral solution," she noted.