Launch of Singapore’s inaugural Sustainable Solutions Network (SSN) conference to promote collaboration and develop environmental solutions

Guest-of-Honour Dr Amy Khor, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Environment and Water Resources & Ministry of Health, to deliver opening address and participate in plenary panel discussion

Yale-NUS College will host the Singapore Sustainable Solutions Network’s (SSN) inaugural conference on 20 August 2016 for more than 150 registered participants from tertiary institutions in Singapore, representatives from the public sector, private businesses and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) interested in environmental sustainability. Centred on the theme ‘Synergisms from the Ground-up: Building Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration for a more Sustainable Singapore’, the conference will consist of a plenary panel discussion and various problem-solving exercises to allow stakeholders to better understand one another, and generate real solutions and commitments from all participants.

Organised by I’deCO, Yale-NUS’ first sustainability student organisation, the conference aims to promote a culture of collaboration in Singapore between environmental stakeholders to develop environmental solutions, and to ignite conversation among different stakeholders on selected topics on sustainability. These stakeholders include the public sector, private businesses, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and educational institutions.

The conference will begin with an opening speech by the Guest-of-Honour Dr Amy Khor, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Environment and Water Resources & Ministry of Health, on social innovation and collaboration in the environmental scene. A panel discussion on ‘Barriers and Solutions to Collaboration’ in Singapore will follow thereafter. Panelists include: Dr Khor; Mr Wilson Ang, Executive Director of Global Compact Network Singapore; Dr Shawn Lum, President of Nature Society; and Ms Anbarasi Boopal, Deputy Chief Executive of ACRES. The panel will be moderated by Professor Michael Maniates, Head of Studies of Environmental Studies at Yale-NUS College.

Tan Weiliang (Class of 2018), President of I’deCO, shared that the overall goal of SSN is to facilitate collaborations between interest groups, social enterprises, government agencies, and all other stakeholders working on sustainability to create sustainable solutions for the future.

He said: “Even though all these groups are working on separate issues and have different viewpoints, ultimately, we all have perhaps one united aim of creating a better planet for ourselves, for others and for our future generations. We hope that the SSN will be the first step in creating a culture of collaboration in the Singapore environmental scene, one that is really important for significant environmental progress.”

There are two components to the SSN: annual flagship conferences and an online networking platform where stakeholders can engage with each other and build on their ideas for collaboration beyond the conferences. The SSN is supported by the Ministry of the Environmental and Water Resources (MEWR), the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU)’s Global University Climate Forum, and Yale-NUS College, with advising support from the Yale-NUS Environmental Studies department. For more information, visit www.ssnsingapore.org/.

11 June 2019: Links have been updated.