The South-East Asian country Singapore is situated only five meters above the sea-level. Even though in the list of most vulnerable cities to get affected by sea-level rise, the city-state's name is not mentioned in the top 10, scientists believe that if the global warming continues, an area as large as 3,400 football fields in the centre of Singapore could be flooded by 2100.
During the 2019 National Day Rally, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong promised the citizens that the government will focus on several issues including climate change. He mentioned that protecting the republic from the rising sea level could cost S$100 billion or more over 100 years as the low-lying island-state makes preparations to mitigate the impact of global warming.
Coastal cities under threat
Recently Antarctica has recorded nearly 64.9 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a new temperature record on the continent. While scientists have detected warm water under Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier, which is also known as Doomsday Glacier since it is another fastest melting glacier, Pine Island Glacier as just lost another huge chunk of an iceberg twice the size of Washington DC.
Recently after the ice melted away from Antarctica it left behind an unknown island which was buried in ice over the years. The hidden island was found by the researchers at the international Thwaites Glacier Offshore Research project that is only about 1,150 feet long. This discovery took place because the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest-warming regions on earth and scientists earlier revealed that in future the global temperature rise would cause more loss of icebergs.
However to deal with sea-level rise threat Singapore is asking current taxpayers to share the cost of the battle against climate change, even though the world will witness the worst-case scenario if Antarctica and Greenland lose all of the ice in the second half of the century.
Battle against the Climate Change crisis
But there are some countries who are currently under the serious threat of flooding who are not as rich as Singapore. As per the reports, while Philippines is moving government offices from disaster-prone capital, Manila to the higher ground of a former US Air Force base in Clark City, Indonesia has decided to relocate its capital from fast-sinking city Jakarta to the jungles of Borneo.
If we take Singapore as an example to get an answer for 'how to deal with the threatening sea-level rise situation,' then it should be known that the Republic is determined to invest in developing the city-state. While some of its real estates is standing on soft marine clay in reclaimed lands in downtown Singapore, scientists said in a study that the clay is subsiding. To fight against the odds the government has already started innovating the city-state by expanding an outlying island.
Even, six months after PM Lee's speech about the climate change measures, Singapore government put S$5 billion into a coastal and flood protection fund which is a bold move for the country which is currently battling against the Novel Coronavirus outbreak.
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