Severe floods, intense heat waves, withering drought—the drastic effects of global warming are increasingly seen and felt around the world, lending urgency to the call to limit global temperature rise within this century to two degrees Celsius. Tackling this complex challenge demands solutions on all fronts—and NUS researchers are harnessing a solution in their proverbial backyard.

Since 2020, Director of NUS Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions Professor Koh Lian Pin (pictured below, on the right) and his team have been exploring how to harness nature and natural processes to reduce or remove greenhouse gases. Restoring mangroves, for example, can help to absorb carbon at high densities, while also defending coasts from rising sea levels. Protecting our forests can reduce carbon emissions as well as preserve biodiversity, especially in Southeast Asia and South America.

“Unlike technologies that may not be ready for upscaling, nature-based solutions are, at the moment, our most feasible and cost-effective means to quickly avoid further emissions,” said Prof Koh, who added that the Centre hopes to equip decision-makers in Singapore and the region with the science and tools needed to respond to climate challenges and opportunities.

CNCS is also at the forefront of a significant five-year research initiative known as Carbon Integrity SG. The S$15 million project monitors natural habitats around the region to map nature-based projects that can be developed as potential sources of high-quality carbon credits.

Using tools such as light detection and ranging technology, the team can generate more accurate estimates of carbon stocks that are specific to this region and its varied ecosystems. This could help allay the uncertainty that developers and investors have about the amount of carbon stored in a natural habitat, and through inspiring confidence, spur investment in such projects.

“Carbon Integrity SG will enable high environmental integrity for nature-based carbon projects, by ensuring that credits generated from these projects represent real and additional emissions reduction,” said Benedict Chia, Director General for Climate Change at the National Climate Change Secretariat.

“Given the large potential for nature-based abatement in the region, this initiative can play an important role to accelerate climate action here.”

Besides avoiding millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide, such projects also offer a host of other benefits, including water purification, food security, and biodiversity conservation. To Prof Koh and his team, it represents another step in their drive to meet the challenges and opportunities of climate change, in service of society.

Low recycling rates are often caused not by the lack of recycling, but by inaccurate recycling practices. At NUS, plastic recycling bins had a whopping 57% contamination rate in early 2020. In other words, more than half the items in the recycling bin couldn’t be recycled, a problem that persists across Singapore.

These were the findings of a group of students from different disciplines—industrial design, engineering and statistics—in partnership with the NUS Zero Waste Taskforce in 2020, as part of a study into recycling at NUS.

Hamashree A, a statistics student from the team, applied methods learned in class to produce evidence-based recommendations, while Bao Xinjing, an engineering master’s student, led the contamination analysis and data collection process.

Based on the study’s data and subsequent tests, the team proposed various recommendations to promote recycling on campus. These include a more intuitive recycling bin design with physical “speedbumps” reminding users of the right recyclables created by the industrial design students in the team, methods to step up recycling education, and the gradual phasing out of single-use plastics on campus.