October 22, 2024
SINGAPORE – Mr Muhammad Nasry Abdul Nasir would like to be resourceful and adaptable like the greater racket-tailed drongo – a forest-dwelling bird with a pair of eye-catching pendant-like tail extensions.
But it is not the bird’s plumage that endears it to him. Instead, Mr Nasry appreciates the animal for its ability to mimic other birds’ calls, which it uses to its advantage.
“The greater racket-tailed drongo learns the purpose of the calls of other birds. If it sees that another bird has food, it will mimic the call of a predator to make that other bird panic and drop its food, so it can swoop in instead,” he said of his favourite animal in Singapore.
“I admire the drongo for its resourcefulness and adaptability, and I try to embody these traits as I work to conserve biodiversity.”
The 25-year-old Nanyang Technological University (NTU) environmental earth systems science student is one of two young Singaporeans who will attend COP16, the biennial UN biodiversity conference, which will be held in Cali, Colombia, from Oct 21 to Nov 1.
Governments, indigenous groups, businesses, youth groups and non-governmental organisations from almost 200 countries will be attending the conference to negotiate, among other things, ways of tracking progress at halting nature’s loss and decline.
Mr Nasry, the executive director of Singapore Youth Voices for Biodiversity (SYVB) – the local chapter of a global youth network concerned with tackling nature loss – would like nothing more than for more people to know that climate change is not the only planetary crisis.
“Biodiversity policy lacks the same buzz and attention that climate policy locally has – (which is) odd, considering how the two issues are deeply linked,” he said.
Climate change has affected ecosystems worldwide, resulting in the loss of species and increased risk of diseases. For example, coral reefs have decreased by almost half in the past 150 years because of rising ocean temperatures.
According to the latest report by the World Wide Fund for Nature published on Oct 10, global wildlife populations of monitored animal species have declined by 73 per cent between 1970 and 2020.
In Singapore, advocacy work for nature conservation tends to focus on raising public awareness and educating youth, Mr Nasry noted.
This awareness raising is necessary, but it may not lead to immediate changes, since time is needed to change perceptions.
“Raising awareness is about sowing seeds for the future. In the meantime, what are you going to do? Because, realistically, the Government is not going to wait for these kids to grow up and listen to them. It’s going to listen to the stakeholders of today,” he added.
What he wants to do is to influence policymaking through his work at SYVB, including making recommendations to the authorities.
“Policy is the only immediate instrument that can work in Singapore. To me, in the Singapore context, if you don’t work directly with policy… if you don’t engage with it, you’re not going to make an impact, at least in the short term,” he said.
SYVB collaborated with the 2023 cohort of youth leaders from the Asean Youth Biodiversity Leaders Fellowship and submitted a 38-page document to the National Parks Board’s International Biodiversity Conservation Division in March 2023, outlining how Singapore’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan should be structured.
Mr Nasry said that while Singapore has made significant strides in preserving its biodiversity, with recently announced initiatives including the nation’s second marine park, the focus has primarily been on the Government to protect specific species and habitats within the country.
There has been less emphasis on how other stakeholders, such as private companies, can help to address biodiversity loss, he said.
As a result, there has not been as much discussion on the other mechanisms that can be used to tackle this issue, such as conservation finance – a field that focuses on raising and allocating financial resources to support conservation efforts.
Nature finance is a topic that is gaining traction globally, amid growing global recognition that government funding alone will not be sufficient in funding programmes that can help to protect or restore nature at scale.
Mr Nasry added that Singapore is extremely reliant on trade and imports so it has a vested interest in ensuring that ecosystems outside its borders flourish as well.
More than half of the world’s total gross domestic product – an annual value of US$44 trillion (S$58 trillion) – is dependent on nature and its services, according to the World Economic Forum.
COP16 is the first conference since the Global Biodiversity Framework was adopted at COP15 in 2022. It is the biodiversity equivalent of the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change.
The framework outlines 23 targets for countries to aspire to meet by 2030, in order to achieve the goals of the Convention, which is to stop and reverse nature’s decline by 2050.
These global targets include protecting 30 per cent of land and seas by 2030, and restoring at least 30 per cent of degraded ecosystems by that same timeline.
Ahead of COP16, countries were urged by the UN to submit new national targets – dubbed National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans – for nature conservation aligned with the Global Biodiversity Framework.
Singapore’s updated plan has 20 targets, including one to restore 80ha of forest, marine and coastal habitats across Singapore, and another to incorporate elements of native biodiversity education into school programmes at primary, secondary and pre-university levels.
Out of the 23 targets in the Global Biodiversity Framework, Mr Nasry believes the most important target is Target 14, which highlights the urgency of “biodiversity mainstreaming”.
This refers to the process of integrating biodiversity considerations into various sectors and industries, rather than treating it as a separate or isolated issue. It also involves incorporating biodiversity into decision-making processes at all levels, from individual businesses to governments.
“Until we take a coordinated, comprehensive, whole-of-government and industry approach to combating loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, we will not be able to successfully conserve biodiversity,” he said.
Upon returning from COP16, Mr Nasry and Ms Gretel Seet, co-lead of SYVB who is also attending the conference, plan to share their experience with the rest of the nature community in Singapore.
Founded in 2019, SYVB is the local chapter of the Global Youth Biodiversity Network – the official youth constituency of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
SYVB engages with policymakers in Singapore by participating in engagement sessions, such as those that are held to discuss the environmental impact of a development on nature.
Ms Seet’s participation at COP16 is funded by the Global Youth Biodiversity Network. Mr Nasry is paying his own way to attend the UN conference. He declined to reveal the total estimated expenditure, but a round-trip flight ticket to the South American city is estimated to cost about $2,500.
Mr Nasry, who had wanted to be a wildlife veterinarian, intends to pursue ecology research after graduating from NTU.
His interest in ecology was sparked when he was studying veterinary bioscience at Ngee Ann Polytechnic – he was exposed to Singapore’s wildlife for the first time when he helped to take care of rescued birds at the old Jurong Bird Park during an internship.
“We’ve got about 10 to 15 nature groups in Singapore, but they tend to focus more on citizen science education, awareness-raising campaigns and domestic conservation issues,” Mr Nasry said.
It is important, he added, to integrate nature into policies in a way that recognises “the hidden role that biodiversity and nature plays in our lives”.
“This allows nature to continue being part of our lives.”