5 - THE POWER OF PROTESTATION: DEGAZETTING THE LOWER PEIRCE RESERVOIR CATCHMENT AREA

Summary

INTRODUCTION

This chapter analyses a proposal made by the government in 1990 to build a golf course in a gazetted nature reserve, the reaction this proposal generated from NGOs and the public, how the decision to halt the plan was eventually made in 1992, and how the case has affected subsequent nature conservation versus golf course development debates and decisions. After the precedent set by the conservation of Sungei Buloh, the type of interaction structures institutionalized among the actors of engagement, the organizational forms established, and the strong support the project received from the public, the mere idea of the government proposing degazetting a nature reserve to build a golf course was unthinkable. Nevertheless, the inconceivable happened.

This case is chosen since, while also reflecting a powerful instance of engagement between the government and NGOs, it contrasts with the Sungei Buloh case in terms of the motivation for NGOs to get involved, the strategies employed by government and non-government actors during the course of the debate, the type of interaction resulting from the engagement, and the structures institutionalized thereafter. If Sungei Buloh was conserved through proactive persuasion, reactive protestation was required to preserve the Lower Peirce Catchment Area. NGOs would have to adjust continuously to the government's ad hoc approach to land use planning and conservation. As with the Sungei Buloh case, this case further expresses the practice of disciplined governance as an application of the theoretical governance approach to governing discussed in Chapters Two and Three and further expanded in Chapter Seven.

BACKGROUND

The Lower Peirce Reservoir, formerly known as the Kallang River Reservoir, is a major public works project that was started at the end of the nineteenth century by the British colonial government to supply water to the island's growing population (see Appendix II: Singapore Green Map 2000).

The forest around the reservoir has long been recognized as rich in flora and fauna (Ecology Asia 2004). The catchment area of Lower Peirce is 123.8 hectares, part of the 1,622 hectares which make up the Central Water Catchment Area protected under the Nature Reserves Act (repealed Cap. 205). Together with the Upper Peirce and MacRitchie Reservoirs, Lower Peirce is managed by the Public Utilities Board (PUB), a statutory board under the Ministry of the Environment since April 2001. In Table 5.1, a description of the Central Catchment Area is presented.