Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong shared plans on how Singapore is going to tackle threats from climate change in his 2019 National Day Rally speech.

This was the first time the S$100 billion figure was raised regarding how much it would cost to fund engineering solutions to counter rising sea levels.

In response to this figure, Nominated Member of Parliament and economist don, Walter Theseira, asked in Parliament about providence of such a huge sum of funding.

Through borrowing, reserves and ministry budgets

Lawrence Wong, Minister for National Development and Second Minister of Finance, replied that the S$100 billion funding will come from borrowing, reserves and ministry budgets.

This amount will be used to finance various climate change adaptation measures.

Ministry budgets can be used to fund smaller-scale infrastructures, such as localised flood barriers for public assets that include hospitals and bus depots.

The government will consider borrowing to fund long-lived major infrastructure, such as sea walls, so that the cost will be spread the across generations which will benefit from it.

Land reclamation will be funded from past reserves, in accordance with the Reserve Protection Framework.

Parliament will debate and approve the Supply Bill every year and get the agreement from the president.

The bill provides funding to an estimated expenditure on public services, which include land reclamation costs.

The land created through reclamation will thus be protected as part of past reserves.

When the reclaimed land is sold, the proceeds accrue fully to past reserves.

Top photo from Koon Holdings