em, said Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan on Monday .
Dr Balakrishnan was speaking at the United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon, where he co-chaired a high-level ministerial roundtable on water.Today, 3.5 kilowatt hours of electricity is able to generate 1,000 litres of desalinated water, but Singapore is working on projects to bring that number down to about 2 kilowatt hours for the same amount of water, said Dr Balakrishnan.
"This will be politically sensitive and unpopular, but without the right pricing of water, you will not get sensible and rational resource allocation and you will not incentivise the conservation of scarce water resources," he said.
There is also a long-term plan being put together to protect Singapore's coastlines against rising sea levels due to climate change, which could leave Singapore vulnerable, added Dr Balakrishnan.He noted that sea levels around Singapore have risen by about 14cm between 1970 and 2019 and could continue to accelerate significantly in the second half of the century, going by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
On this rock of 713 sq km, population of 5.5m. How much space do we have on this rock if we don't invest and have JVs on uninhabited islands in Asean to supply the green energy? Solutions?