In 1992, Singapore prepared the Green Plan for
Environmental Protection and Improvement. The
Green Plan was a holistic plan formulated with
input from various government agencies, ministries,
private sector groups and members of the public. It
mapped the policies and strategies to transform the
city-state into a model green city with a high standard
of public health and environmental quality conducive
to higher quality of life (see MoE 1993b, and MEWR
2012). The extensive public consultations for the
plan encouraged policy-makers to emulate a similar
type of engagement process for other campaigns as
well. In fact, this was the beginning of ‘public consultations’
as an engagement tool in environmental
issues.
The Plan was subsequently reviewed and updated
in 2002 and 2005, to ensure that it remained relevant for
the city-state. The Singapore Green Plan 2012 was
published in 2006, setting out broad directions and
strategies, the end objective of which was to achieve
environmental sustainability (MEWR 2006).
During these years, the Government had become
aware of the importance of further involvement of the
public in the protection and conservation of the limited
water resources available. Strategies that
included massive awareness programmes and social
campaigns, as had been done for decades, were reinforced
by additional education campaigns with the
objective to make the public more water-responsible
(PUB 2004a, Tortajada and Joshi 2013).