SINGAPORE has been rated the world’s second greediest guzzler of natural resources, but this rating is flawed, says the Environment Ministry.

Much of this is "apparent consumption", it said of the recent ranking by the Swiss-based World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). It wrongly assumes that whatever Singapore imports is consumed in Singapore but, in fact, much of it is exported for consumption elsewhere.

ENV also questions WWF’s ranking of Singapore as the second most prolific producer of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, at 19 tonnes per person. Not so, says ENV, which says the right figure is 8.7 tonnes.

Heading the greed list in the WWFs Living Planet Report 2000, released in Hong-kong last week, was the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with Singapore next, just ahead of the United States. The UAE, Singapore and Kuwait were ranked one, two and three in terms of carbon dioxide emissions.

To measure consumption, the Swiss-based WWF uses the ecological "footprint". This is the biologically-productive area needed to produce the food — including seafood and animal products, and wood and paper —each person in a country consumes.

It also counts land used for roads and other infrastructure, as well as the area of forest needed to absorb the carbon dioxide released from the energy an individual consumes.

The programme director for WWF-International in Geneva, Dr Chris Hails, said in a telephone interview: "If you have a high-quality lifestyle that requires, for example, high-quality cereals and products, then the footprint will be very high.

"If everybody alive tod had the quality of life oft average Singaporean, would need two planets sustain ourselves. One Ear is not enough.

"We are not saying that people should not have high quality of life, but we are looking to see if we could have those standards at lower price, or lower the standards a bit."

The ENV’s spokesman said that the study does not distinguish between production waste and consumption, so figures can be distorted.

"It estimates each country’s consumption by adding its imports to its production and subtracting its exports," she said.

"Resources such as fuels, raw materials and machinery that go into the production of the goods for exports are thus counted as Singapore's consumption, even though the goods are actually consumed in another country. This would obviously inflate our ‘apparent consumption’.

And ironically, as Sing~apore becomes more successful as a manufacturing hulb,this apparent consumption would increase, she said.

Using per capita consumption as a measure weighs against countries with small populations which are heavily dependent on fossil fuels, said the ENV

Explained the spokesman: "Singapore is totally dependant on imported fossil fuels to meet its energy needs and is mindful of the need to contain carbon dioxide emissions."

WWF’s Dr Hails said Singapore was ranked second because it consumes a lot of oil and "most of its carbon dioxide comes from fossil fuels— for cars, aeroplanes, transport and air-conditioners".

But he did concede that not all was consumed domestically but was also used to refuel aircraft and ships.

-By Sharmilpal Kaur

Source : The Straits Times, Oct 26, 2000

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