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The Singapore Biodiversity Accounting (SGBA) metric bridges a gap that existing environmental conservation assessments are unable to adequately fill in Singapore:
Two stages of environmental assessments are executed to monitor developmental impacts. Before development begins, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is carried out to evaluate potential environmental impacts. Thereafter, an Environmental Management and Monitoring Plan (EMMP) is formulated to manage and monitor those impacts during project implementation and operation. However, these do not offer a practical method that allows for quantifying biodiversity habitats in a way that facilitates a form of compensation or trading expediently.
Singapore’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) has led to initiatives to transform Singapore into a sustainable ‘City in Nature’, resulting in the Singapore Index on Cities’ Biodiversity as a monitoring tool for biodiversity conservation efforts 1, 2. However, the index represents a broad assessment tool for which only one third of measurement indicators account for native biodiversity, with the majority reserved for administrative oversight. Furthermore, it was not designed to measure pre- and post-development habitat-specific changes in biodiversity.
In light of the above, the Singapore Biodiversity Accounting Metric (SGBA) emerges as a necessary alternative metric which acts as a proxy measure of biodiversity in the face of on-going development, being specifically designed for a tropical setting undergoing continual urbanisation. Funded by the Singapore Economic Development Board and co-developed by Camphora Singapore Pte. Ltd and AECOM Singapore, the SGBA has been used in both public and private housing and other development projects.
The following sections document the SGBA's ethos, origin, development, technicalities and comparisons with extant metrics of other developed nations as of the time of publishing.
1 : Chan and Lim, 2023;
2: Woon, 2023
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