Cities in Nature: Transforming Singapore into a City in Nature

The talk a) showcases some cities that have incorporated biodiversity conservation successfully, b) shares how the National Parks Board of Singapore (NParks) implements its City in Nature vision and c) illustrates how NParks identifies problems, crafts specific problem statements, works with the scientific community to design research projects that seek nature-based solutions, interprets the data, translates the results to policies, operationalises the recommendations on the ground and devises evaluation and monitoring programmes – all in one government agency collaborating in an interdisciplinary manner and comprehensively with multi-governmental agencies, academic community, and the public (NGOs, citizen scientists, etc.).

Speaker bio

Dr. Lena Chan is the Senior Director of the International Biodiversity Conservation Division, National Parks Board (NParks) of Singapore. Some initiatives that Dr. Chan has worked on include the development and updating of the Singapore Index on Cities’ Biodiversity, drafting of NParks’ Nature Conservation Masterplan, and supervising the Pulau Tekong Coastal Protection and Mangrove Enhancement project, etc. Dr. Chan’s current official duties cover being the National Focal Point for the Convention on Biological Diversity, a Governing Board member of the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity, Co-Chair of the ICLEI City with Nature Knowledge & Research Hub, a member of the Biophilic Cities Network’s Advisory Board, etc. She has published scientific papers on ecology, parasitology and women and the environment, and chapters in books on conservation biology. She co-edited supplements of the Gardens’ Bulletin Singapore that were dedicated to a biodiversity survey of the Central Nature Reserve published in 1997 and a comprehensive biodiversity survey of the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve published in 2019.