That the environment, development and disasters are linked should now be widely accepted. The recent floods were not just the result of high rainfall, but environmental degradation interlinked with challenges of development.
As the territory grew, urbanisation expanded our built or grey infrastructure with its impervious surfaces such as roads, driveways, parking lots and rooftops, which all generate large volumes of stormwater runoff after rainfall. However, our drainage system was not expanded enough to handle these increases. Instead, our natural or green infrastructure was made to yield to urbanisation, resulting in a scarcity of permeable surfaces such as soft soils and green areas in and around our urban centres, which multiplied significantly the volume of stormwater runoff generated during the recent intense rainfalls. These highly destructive, large volumes of swiftly moving stormwater — together with our steep slopes, weak rocks and human activities such as deforesting hillsides for homes and roads — caused erosion and landslides, transporting rocks, soil, vegetation and other debris into our drainage system, which led to the severe flooding that we experienced.
So what can be done? Although physical hazards such as tropical waves, storms and hurricanes cannot be prevented, the likelihood of potential damage or risks can be limited or managed more effectively. Intuitively, we know that working with, and not against, nature will help in protecting us from the impact of extreme natural events. So, then, let us seek a “green solution” to reducing the problem of stormwater runoff.
Going ‘green’
Firstly, as was stated in the opening sentence, the link between the environment, development and disasters should now be widely accepted. So with the increasing expansion of both our population and grey infrastructure, we are now more than ever in need of stronger enforcement of the provisions afforded in our Physical Planning Act for the protection and restoration of forests and trees during home and road construction.
The soils of these forest ecosystems serve an important water storage function that buffers against stormwater runoff in real, sustainable and cost-effective ways. This can easily be seen from areas of intact forests, which suffered little to no effects from the passing tropical wave other than, perhaps, becoming a bit greener.
‘Solution plan’
Secondly, with the aid of public participation, we need to develop a “green solution plan” for sustainably reducing stormwater runoff to be added to our Physical Planning Act. The plan should lay a framework for the use of cost-effective green solutions such as landscaping features like “green streets, rain gardens and porous pavement,” which promotes the natural movement of water. Instead of stormwater going into our drainage system, it is directed into these landscaping features specifically designed and engineered to capture, filter and control stormwater by allowing it to filter into the underlying soil. The plan would make it mandatory for property developers to deal with stormwater runoff on site in order to reduce the volume of stormwater entering the public drainage system. Further, as part of the plan, a “green solution task force” would be established to identify areas of public infrastructure that are in need of these green solution retrofits.
Finally, to obtain local buy-in to these measures so that they can be more effectively integrated into our land-use plans, we need to develop an education programme to raise awareness and change public attitudes and behaviour towards stormwater management. The programme will also focus on encouraging the formation of businesses specialising in green or nature-based building solutions.
Learning from nature
To close, the recent storm provides a sobering example of the consequences of not learning from nature. With our irregular rainfall patterns causing both floods and droughts, and with greater climatic uncertainty and increasing numbers of extreme weather events projected, these boom-and-bust cycles will be exaggerated. With the human and economic losses of disaster events projected to grow, and with more lives and property at risk, we can no longer allow bad practices that we once ignored.
What is needed is a change in mindsets toward more sustainable ways of development. There is now a greater need to think and act differently about the risk we face and the available forms of actions that could be harnessed for reducing these risks. Applying green or nature-based solutions entails a call for behavioural and institutional changes. A key challenge is how to integrate this knowledge into policy, planning and practice. With a multidisciplinary approach that combines ecology and engineering, we can help reconcile environmental and development priorities in our urban planning, which will contribute significantly to creating safer, more sustainable towns.
If we are to maintain a “survivable society,” we will have to make the territory’s built infrastructure more sustainable and better at managing stormwater and mitigating urban flooding in the years to come. To this end, it is vitally important for property owners to reduce their vulnerability and safeguard their investment by engaging in environmentally sound building practices. After all, as we have just experienced, environmental degradation induced by poorly managed urbanisation was the main driver of the recent floods. Or put another way, it took the human element to turn bad weather into a disaster.
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