This
is a C N A
podcast. Hi welcome back to the climate conversations. We start a brand new season with me julie you during the day. I present the flagship morning show ASIA first on C. N. A. And as part of my work, I've been reporting on climate change related stories from doomsday predictions, the climate catastrophes around the world almost on a daily basis.
And at times the challenges just didn't feel all that personal to me, Perhaps because climate change is invisible, slow moving and can feel so far away, especially here in Singapore where we are spared much of the effects of climate change currently.
But recently I was given the chance to produce a 12 part series on sustainability and had a chance to talk to amazing eco heroes, visited companies focused on delivering brilliant ideas and solutions for a greener planet and also looked at ways that each
of us can do to fight climate change. I was deeply inspired to delve into these issues and I'm certainly looking forward to taking you on this journey with me to learn from the people who are in the thick of things, the people who used their time, their effort and money to do their part to make a difference and maybe like me, you'll be inspired as well Today we welcome someone who was knee deep in this space even before climate activism became a buzzword made famous
of course by a young Swedish teenager. This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here, I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean.
Yet you all come to us, young people for hope how dare you and that of course was 16 year old Greta to Hamburg addressing world leaders at the U. N. Climate action summit and since then she has become a social media force and the times 2019 person of the year, her powerful words also demonstrate how climate change conversations are often set up to pit the young against the old.
After all. The common narrative is that climate change is a problem that previous generations have created and which is now dumped onto current and future generations to deal with. And also activism is often seen as a pursuit for younger people, the ones who have higher stakes in the future of the planet. So is there still a place in the climate scene for older activists? What can we learn from them who jumped aboard a green bandwagon way before it became fashionable.
My guest today is N Siva Soc, a climate activist who has been immersed in mangroves and wildlife for research, education and conservation at the National University of Singapore since the late 19 eighties and as one of the earliest adopters of eco blogging in Singapore. He has contributed his expertise to numerous wildlife conservation communities and also inspired many around him to support the cause. Siva welcome Good to see you. Before we start, I couldn't help but notice the nickname
you use online. The otter man, I guess we ought to know why that's your nickname. Tell me the story behind it because I really do not see the resemblance.
Well my friends will contest it. There's a photo of me on the other side by side and they say okay it's really close. But really it came about in a time when people were really unaware about nature in Singapore. So when I started doing my auto work also was giving talks about mangroves and wildlife and having a monocle
is really useful. People get excited. They are curious and of course the photographs I use, my friends photographs, they take better photos and that really wild audiences everywhere in schools, in corporate boardrooms overseas. So that was meant to mobilize people to realize we do have things worth protecting right at the doorstep and to pay a little bit more attention.
Yeah. Otters. I mean I'm fascinated by them too because how they just integrate into urban space and pop up here and there and rush hour traffic and condominium pools. But let's start with a little background about the work you do. You wear many hats as a senior lecturer at the En US Biological Sciences, the Director of studies at Ridgeview residential college and a research associate in the lee kong chian natural history museum.
Just to name a few. You've also been heavily involved in many wildlife conservation groups, some of which you are even the founder of what drives you in all these activities. Do you see them as a separate efforts or do they all form part of your passion for conservation and wildlife.
So Singapore is a highly urbanized city, it's a capitalist based economy. So the nature of such residents in such cities is they will become divorced from nature and you'll see it in the public, you'll see it in policymakers and you'll see it even in students. So it's such a big mountain to climb. So you apply yourself to any and every opportunity now
in the 80s no one was interested. So you would have to fight your way in and once they hear your stories then the images and the stories of nature and wildlife, it will take their due effect. You know, everyone has this biophilia element within them and they connect very well. Of course. Later on, as I get older, I'm in a position where I can
influence scenarios which are not directly connected. So for education there are plenty of avenues to be part of and you can inject your specific expertise and then working groups. I work with colleagues who were scattered all doing their own thing to rescue wildlife or to educate people. And then as we come together and synergize there was also an increasing interest and appetite for these things by the public, the government's manner of addressing all of these kept getting more
and more sophisticated. So in fact now when a volunteer comes to me, I point them to the impact web page and we've collaborated impacts on certain schemes. So as long as you toss them into the pool there's plenty of opportunities and eventually will meet the space is still quite smaller. If you want to make comparisons f one like 200,000 people that we can ping dot was 20,000. And then climate change rally was 2000. Of course. Then my instagram influences maybe about 20.
So as you spend time in the field, you look to wherever you can provide partnership. What has been quite extraordinary is in the past two decades or three decades, the interest has simply heightened. So certain years on Earth day weekend, I just give talks. It's every day there's an appointment to go to until I'm exhausted. Now during covid it's diversified. Just came from tree planting. We are recording this program and there's
youth programs which are going on. So when you have these expertise and it's really kind of niche, then you go and find partners, whoever's interested and then they can amplify your reach.
You've been deeply involved and you said a leading environmental organization and events, climate activism seems to be in your blood. And your D. N. A. As one of the pioneers give us a sense of how far this movement has come grown and changed. It must have been quite different from when you started.
Yeah, I guess there are two elements. One is this great extinction that we are seeing in our time. So that's what occupied me as a biologist is the sixth great extinction on the planet. And as I cycled around Singapore, I could see land use change and it's very dramatic very fast. So that personal motivation came from the biopsy sector. We are losing forests, not just in Singapore. Everything you see in Singapore is reflected in Southeast Asia and the world.
So that fueled our desire to share what we had, which was worth protecting and what you can do about it with the larger masses. But then sustainability, climate change sort of raised and took over. It became now a predominant issue. So then we hook our cause onto that because the biodiversity loss by the sea conservation is a subset of Having a sustainable future. So the push from sustainability exemplified by Singapore's Green Plan 2030 where you see five ministries
or getting into the act. So we're not just going to think about how we recycle plastic, but also what we do about green financing. It's quite holistic. So that movement has taken on a very different force. It's very powerful force and we in the sector got to make sure we are part of it
when we think about extinction and most of us probably imagine Armageddon and the dinosaurs being swiped out by the rain of asteroids or volcanic eruptions. But could you paint a picture for us like what this would have looked like for Singapore and Asia and how optimistic are you about this fight
Iran 65 million years ago. There's great extinctions, mammals which were really tiny, then begin to dominate. So that periodic disappearance is something we are seeing today. Except that the force is not a meteor or climate change, it's actually just action of men. And you can see that locally as well, not just regionally or globally.
So in Singapore growing up, I've seen many spaces disappear and then action by originally the colonial government to maintain a catchment and then subsequently independent Singapore to set aside certain spaces has actually seen an improvement. So we are actually better shape than we used to be. But still there's going to be lost as the land bank is used for various purposes of society. And so the tension is there still but massive extinctions
that could have happened happened. And then we are dealing with how to restore and mitigate for current biodiversity. Our job is to make sure it's not silent forest. So there's poaching pressure in various places. So you can't even hear the birds sing in Singapore. At least we don't have issues of poaching. And so animals like the pangolin. The straw hit the boo boo, the hornbills that you see, right,
these are in serious threat regionally. But in Singapore, they can flourish so that they turn up in En us. You know, it's crazy when I was a student, Oh you'd have to go to the forest. Be very patient. And then, oh, you might have a glimpse of a pangolin or a hornbill. Right? And now they're turning up on campus. So it means that in the areas we've protected, they're doing well and now they're trying to find spaces outside and then we're trying to figure out how well can we accommodate them.
This generation is lucky in that although we've lost a lot of things, there's a lot of restoration. There's a lot of reflection on how we deal with land and government is responsive and they're inviting in for dialogue. So it's actually a good time to have a feeling for nature and be able to contribute towards its conservation.
Let's talk about some of the work, you've been involved in, the work milestone event. I guess a case could be, you're part of the 2001 petition to protect Chek jawa and Polo you been, which was a historic example of how activism can work to influence major decisions and tell us why this was an important part of the Singapore story.
The Singapore public was not aware of the environmental costs of our lifestyle that began to change show at check java in 2001. Well I knew how to make a web page. I just knew about five or six. Html commands. And then we just said there's a tour, you can come and people were searching the web. Not so much social media right at the time. But the web and they came and their interests surprised us. Previously. We were resigned to the fact that everyone was wrapped up with the 5Cs. So if you go to
in the morning, it's dead quiet. Very nice actually. Right. But that would dramatically change in the 2000 and check. Java seems to be a very iconic example of that change. So when we told people, okay, you can come, you can see these kind of creatures. They came in the hundreds and actually it freaked us
out because we're having to do coordination of groups. You often see me in an orange cap and that orange was so that I could see my volunteer guides on the landscape and if I need to run an evacuation because of lightning threat, then I could coordinate. So that really blew our minds that people were so interested. They come all the way to change. I take the ferry, take the van and then they were all in improper footwear. And they was fascinated were like, wow, this is very different.
And so we made sure the government was aware of it. We took video and photos and we shared reports and then independently the government said, hey, this is important, This is people actually connecting with the land and they reversed the decision for reclamation that we were resigned to. We're quite shocked. So first they said, okay, we're gonna
keep check java. Then later on they say no we're gonna keep all of pull out open And so the pullout bin that I take my students to today is actually in a much healthier state than it was in the past when there was a lot of quarrying. There were 2000 people on the island. It's
now actually like a nature paradise. It's quite beat up because of its history of land use but because it's been left alone and enhanced, my students are simply amazed when they go we make sure their binoculars and when they are walking in you can already hear all the bird calls. You know does this idea of a livable city and it includes having nature present. Not in a cosmetic way but in a railway. So you have forest reserves, you have nature parks and then
you have greenway's right. So if these are all interlink then the kind of fauna you don't expect to see at the doorstep turns up there passing by as they reach a larger fragment. So connectivity in built up areas with greenery within the built up area to support it is the reason why I'm seeing strong and red jungle fowl and authors in the US which I never imagined would happen. So how we connect things. Everyone is going
to do a reading. It's not just the nature of people we provide the fundamental information right? So it's the architects and the engineers and the land use allocation that needs to integrate this?
We're going for a show break. We'll be right back. Hi, my name is Sarah Khaldi and I'm the host of a new podcast called Money talks. Yes, we will be talking about money but more than that, we'll also be talking about life, personal choices, lucky breaks and how money is the thread running through it all. So look out for our episodes wherever you get your podcasts. I'm sure there's no secret of course to the challenges of activism, pushing for policy change, trying to motivate others
dealing with critics or naysayers. What were the hardest ones that you had to deal with and has that changed gotten better?
Yeah, if a livable city is not on the table then you're beating your head against a brick wall. So the nature people are used to rejection in the 80s and the 90s. I mean there are plans which are submitted that probably went to the shredding machine immediately. But you keep trying because the landscape change. The people are dealing with may change, they may get educated locally, they make it educated by what they see overseas.
And so you keep talking and interacting and there's a general shift. It's not in a perfect state by any chance today. So then you decide what your role is? Where do you want to project ideas? Are you shouting on the streets? Are you inside a room in private, restricted dialogue. Do you want to write openly in blocks? So there are various mechanisms you have to decide which niche am I going to
fill in? Nothing was achieved without a large number of people operating from their various spaces and then collectively it comes along. So the important message from that is that anything you do individually will get amplified. So the thing is for us to try and do something
you talked about different mechanisms but when you look at climate activism it continues to evolve in a young activist or championing new models and tactics of activism. Social media of course is certainly playing a big part in raising awareness and inspiring greater action nowadays. What are your thoughts on digital activism? Is it as important as rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty in the real world.
For sure because digital activism raises public awareness. So then climate change activists at school who decides let's take simple action might get completely ignored or the ground might be softer and said, okay I've heard about these things. If you can show me the way we don't mind giving you some support so that environment has definitely changed in terms of familiarity with concepts. A deep understanding is hard to achieve just from digital activism.
A subset will take it up, read the details and be highly functional, but the majority will just get exposure. But then what happens is the exposed public more supportive of activists who decide to take some kind of action
because I recently had a conversation with an indian water conservationist, Arun Krishnamurthy, he said there's just too many desktop conservationists and not enough true activists in the field as a person who has been both active on the ground and online. When you look at the local activism scene, would you agree
local activism is usually they roll up their sleeves and then they go and charge at windmills. I mean it's tough work, the environment is not supportive. So mostly they have the experience on the ground. Then they know that just doing stuff on the ground may reach a small select audience. So to amplify their reach, then they turn to the digital interface. So it's more a case of they're doing something and then they add in the digital interfaces.
Now some people will find that hole and getting some kind of traction, then they may focus more time on communication on a digital interface. But if you talk to them they are connected to a network of people who try things. There's something that is worth mentioning is that there are two different threads, there's a nature scene and there's an environmental scene.
The nature scene are people who look at wildlife that's found in our green areas and then they try and bring people to realize it's there tend to be very strong in education for the environment seen, they're very strong in application. So they focus on the big picture but bring it down to the simple action that you can do. So that group of people I would say is maybe around a decade old and
they are phenomenal. They're really phenomenal. So they, unlike the nature groups which had maybe a stronger association, stronger interaction with government through em parks, especially the environment groups were on their own. But because of that, they really got themselves organized and they turned up at a conference of parties nor Latrina even was the youth representative of the world.
My name is last
rena, I'm from Singapore and I have the honor of speaking on behalf of the
youth constituency.
So their understanding of political mechanisms was I felt superior and because they were not having maybe enough people listening, they took it all the way to the global scene. Once I sat down with them, we organized, what do we call it? It was acts of love. So that means You see someone who's wrapping a donut 10 times and you're a customer and then you'll say, hey, you know, I'm your customer and actually just rap one time can
now the impact of that can be very high. But now that relationship has changed now we have a ministry of sustainability and Environment and the engagement level is quite high and these activists are being tapped for the potential that they have towards solution ng,
it's not that the ministry environment wasn't doing anything. They were targeting like big picture, you know, so an incredible thing that happened was the extended producer responsibility act So around the world, everyone says, okay, you the individual, what are you doing? What burden are you presenting? And then the industry was free of any responsibility.
But now people are saying, wait a minute, there's a social cost and environmental cost, that society is picking up the tab, you got to be part of it. And so extended producer responsibility spreading around the world, right? And in Singapore, we've passed the law already. So that was brilliant. But it's good that now there's greater cohesion between the ground and the ministry and with SGP 2030, right, I can't even keep up with the meetings whenever I'm invited, I said, have you heard of
this person? Because they're young and energetic, they got energy and they're well read, you know, and when they address sustainability issues, they're really holistic.
And speaking of young activists, we see young activists often at the forefront of the climate debate, they're more visible and the environment movement. And a survey showed that older generations are often accused of caring less about the climate than younger people like the gen Zs and millennials. What's your thought on that is age a factor in climate process? Or is this just an unfair stereotype?
You know, I was at the funeral and then we're helping to clean up after the flowers will be disposed of naturally. Right? And then my aunt said, go through all of it and take out the little bits of plastic and I'm not talking about any of these topics. So that sensitivity to environment can be present in older generation. The people who are much older, they conserve resource use due to maybe lack of influence. So they're more careful
about use of materials. So I inherited all these like, oh, you know, switch off the lights, right? Is something ingrained in us from young don't waste electricity, the kind of thing. So they have that outlook for food waste, for use of water use of electricity and that all
contributes towards sustainability. So the modern movement is not something they will find very foreign, but then you have, I guess a layer that also infused in capitalism essentially that your mind is filled up with what you need to do at work and ignore everything else. And what you look forward conveniences. We didn't realize that we didn't have landfills anymore in Singapore. They were is filling up. It's not only going to last what 2030, 2025, we got to think about how
much waste we're disposing. So I think there is a layer that focus on prosperity with convenience and so all these environmental issues, they didn't get exposure so much to it. Yes, okay, we have limited water supply, but it's not very strong. So that generation, Yes, they will focus on something quite different. We are so used to convenient and in a fast paced lifestyle, we got to stop and think about things. So in your pantry or still everyone put any kind of ways, even the recycling bin.
So we have to strategize how we get them to think before they throw because one coffee cup into the paper bin means your contractor will dispose it as rubbish, it doesn't get recycled. Right? So we see that everywhere in Singapore, there's a big struggle how to just recycle properly. And that means just slowing down and thinking. But we live in a very fast paced society with the younger generation. They get quite a lot of exposure to issues that they're familiar.
But you live in fast paced society. I tell you climb one floor to throw your recycling. It's like what? Really? So we test our neighborhoods, we find out what's possible and then we slowly can improve recycling, reduce recycling contamination is heartbreaking when it happens siva
And based on your experiences, how do you see climate activism evolving in years to come?
Well, climate activism has really burst on the scene these past few years. Right? The way it's done by many youth groups now, they organize themselves, they write position papers, they are really well informed and then they address it to relevant authorities, authorities are interested to hear what young people have to say. So that's maturing, but can we reach targets which are meaningful and, you know, the moment Sgp 2030 was out. I think this series had a conversation with Winston child and
he says, oh, it's not enough. So that's very dramatic. Right then the government company and said, hey look, it's an evolving document. If we have better methods, then we'll evolve. In fact, there have been updates since. So it's a more transparent discussion. There are a lot of hard truths that everyone has to look at divestments of your investment. So they're looking at specific action that has very big impact. It's hard
to bring about change. But when everyone's trying, I feel more optimistic about it.
What is your target then
My personal target? Oh, for me, I always try to rethink what I'm doing. Whether it's the most effective use of what I should do, how to reach out to partners to amplify effect. But at the same time carry on the small actions that you do. This is reading week at the university. So I invited my class who has questions about conservation.
You can ask me anything. So only three students to dogma and we had our full two hour session and I told them this conversation is as important as if there were 30 people, 100 people because the ones who want to know what we can do better are coming for the conversation. So that's as important as going and engaging a large group of people somewhere else. And you find that a lot of the activists, they have this resilience. I've arranged things and I say, Hey, I think only
like 10 people come. They say no, that's excellent. So to keep at it because when you engage and activate minds, you're hoping that people will exceed you for activists. It's quite funny. We went for some meeting and it's to do with Marine Little and I was like so excited, it's the first time we're having this big meeting, multiple entities were present and all that. They took down everything we had to say and say we'll get back to you and one of the young activists said
so when will that be? Will it be next week? So the impatience of youth right, because they've heard these stories in their education then we want to see change immediately. I think it's a very important and valuable contribution to this whole activism scene where we're running out of time. So we need to act with greater urgency
and to end off. What message do you have for our listeners. Perhaps one unshakable truth you've discovered and your decades of climate work
just do something. Anything
great message to end on. I must say, thank you very much for sharing your journey and your insight with us. Great to see you. Thank you. Well we hope you enjoyed this episode of the climate conversations will fancy a juicy burger with no meat will join me next week as I talked to a plant based butcher and enticing meat lovers to reduce their carbon footprint. This episode was researched by ho painting. Our sound engineer is Danieli
and the podcast editor is Christina robert. You've gotta refresh slate of audio material, you can listen to on your commute or your workout, go to the C. N. A. Website or app and look for to listen button and subscribe to the podcast you like. If you have thoughts, ideas or even stories you'd like to share, please write to us. The details are in our episode notes. Until next time. This is julie you. Mhm.