I’m an IB student at Dulwich College Singapore, and I feel blessed to have the opportunity to intern at the LRF Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk (IPUR) – my first experience of working at a university research institute.
I first learned about IPUR from a recent news report on the lack of public awareness on Singapore’s Net Zero emission target. This raised my curiosity in public opinions which in turn made me interested in an internship in IPUR. I wanted to understand the factors that form public opinion in times of crisis – such as global warming or COVID-19, and how governments and decision-makers prioritise the severity of problems.
During my time at IPUR, I supported in conducting research for two projects. The first one was for an event in September to raise awareness about how people’s consumption habits are connect to their individual carbon emissions. I looked into Singapore’s food consumption during the 1970s and compared it to recent years, discovering that due to the increase in population and import rates, we are now consuming more food in an unsustainable way. Due to the 2000% increase in food imports from 1970, we choose to eat more imported red meats without paying attention to how it accounts for 40% of greenhouse gas emissions annually. I hope that the data I found can help people understand the seriousness of the issue so that they may make better choices.
For the second project, I gathered information on the upcoming Long Island project to get a better understanding of the potential risks it poses. Since the plans of the project were first unveiled in 1991, there have been many concerns on how or when it would be implemented. Using reclaimed land as a method of coastal protection would result in disruption of marine life biodiversity up to 10 kilometres away from the mainland, as well as blocking the nesting hotspot for hawksbill turtles and horseshoe crabs. Besides environmental risks, the stress on cost and resources could make it even harder for the government to move the project forward. In the future, I want to identify more unseen problems that arise from government plans and, if possible, to become a member of the IPUR research team to address those issues.
By working on the two projects, I learned how to identify risks through comparison. For example, I assessed the increase in food consumption by comparing current data with that from 50 years ago. I also examined the potential challenges facing Long Island by comparing it with previous reclamation projects. I believe that comparison is an effective way to show how risks have developed and to communicate their scale.
During my stint at IPUR, the wonderful team helped me develop my understanding of risk communication. I really enjoyed having social time with them and the other interns. In the future, I hope I will have the ability to play a role, however small, in more complex tasks, such as survey design and data presentation, in order to communicate more risks regarding sustainability.