Speech by Mr Chan Chun Sing at the Amazing Science-X Challenge Awards Presentation Ceremony

Good afternoon distinguished guests, teachers, colleagues, students and our future scientists. It is always a pleasure to come back here and join you. I have already lost count of how many times I have come to the Science Centre to join you. It is an important thing; important for you, important for me. I have always been excited to come back to see your projects because your imagination always inspires me on what we can achieve as one people, as a country, for Singapore. Today I am not going to give you a long speech but I am going to share with you two stories and at the same time, I am also going to pose you two challenges. Maybe that will ignite something in you and maybe one day, one of you seated on the floor now will come up here on stage to give away the prizes.

The two stories I'm going to share with you has to do with how we, as a country, survived over all these years. Many of you will know that in 1965 when we first got our independence, we did not have enough water and water is essential for the survival of our country. We didn't even have enough water to drink, not to say to support our industries and all the other things that we will like to do with water. We had a dream then, we had a long-term dream. We knew that we had two water agreements with Malaysia at that point of time. One would expire 50 years later in 2011 - which has already expired - another one would expire in 2061. At that point in time, our then-Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his team of leaders asked themselves, "How can we be self-sufficient with water?" They made a very simple observation, that if we can save and recycle each drop of water that falls onto Singapore, our water supply will continue to grow year after year and can almost be an infinite supply of water for all of us. That began their program to use science to make sure that we collect each and every drop of water, to make sure that each and every one of our rivers do not flow into the sea, wasting the water.

Today, more than two thirds of our land surface is in some form or other, helping us to collect every drop of water, and we have not stopped. In fact, we are aiming to go beyond two thirds of our land surface. At the same time, we have used the latest technology - reverse osmosis, desalination, NEWater. Every one of these new types of technologies has helped us recycle and collect as much water as we can. So today, we are confident that in time to come, we will be totally self-sufficient with water, even if we do not have to import a single drop of water from the external sources. That is how a simple, powerful dream supported and enabled by science can do.

Now I am going to share with you yet another story. This one is perhaps a bit more sensitive, but I guess by now it is no longer that classified. That has to do with the way we store our ammunition. Once upon a time we stored our ammunition in hardened surfaces across many football fields. Each of them was a simple shelter and because we were afraid that the planes will come and bomb the ammunition dump - causing even more explosions - we had to pour layers of concrete and soil on top to protect the ammunition. It was very inefficient, it took up lots of space and it cost us lots of money. When we had to move our ammunition dump, we asked ourselves, "What can we do and how can we do better?" Someone at that point of time came up with a crazy idea and said, "Why don't we store our ammunition deep underground so we no longer need tons of concrete to be poured on top of the shelters, and yet at the same time we can free up tons of land on the surface for other purposes that were more useful?" But the challenge was this: How to dig underground and yet at the same time, have the requisite safety standards? At the point of time, the team that came up with this dream went around the whole world and they could find no safety standards, no safety manual and no safety instructions that could satisfy the safety requirements. This team did not let it hold them back; instead this team went about creating those standards required for us to build an ammunition dump deep into the surface of the earth.

Today, we have the underground ammunition facility in Mandai - I cannot tell you where but it's somewhere deep in Mandai. Today, that set of standards for underground safety has become de facto standard for the world. Even the European countries who are doing some of these things are adopting the kind of standards that we have built over all these years. With that set of standards, today you hear about the Jurong Rock Caverns that was opened recently by the Prime Minister. Today, you hear about our dreams to build an entire science city under the surface of Singapore so that we can free up land and use our energy more efficiently. All these would not have happened if not for a group of dedicated people who had a dream but never let the current limitations stop them from realising their dream. When they had a dream and realised it could not be fulfilled because there were no standards to achieve the dream, they created the standards. That is how we survived and thrived as a country.

As a country, we have continually turned our constraints into opportunities for us to thrive. What we have achieved for water today is exported to many Middle Eastern countries as a new technology to help them solve their water problems. What we have overcome in underground ammunition storage has become the new standards for underground living in many parts of the world. That is what a small country like us, with creative people, with determined people, can achieve.

But having shared with you these two stories, we're not done. In fact, there are many more challenges for our society that science can help to overcome in the years ahead. I will just highlight two to share with you and tickle your mind. Perhaps one day, you may be the one sharing the story on how you have worked on this. The first has to do with energy. What we have achieved from self-sufficiency with water has been converted into dependency on energy because water purification, NEWater, reverse osmosis, desalination - all these require energy. Everyone says that Singapore is in the tropics - we have the sun with us most of the time, but we also have the clouds with us 80% of the time, which reduces the efficiency which we can collect solar energy. Can we one day turn the entire Singapore island into a collector of the sun's rays and energy, just as we have collected each and every drop of water?Today, we have already taken some initial steps. If you ask some of the scientists seated in front here, they will tell you that we already have one of the largest solar panels or collecting stations on the surface of a reservoir in the north-western part of Singapore. People think that the reservoir is just to collect water. For us, an open surface is also a place to collect the sun's rays and the energy, the solar power, that comes with it. But we're not done. Every day we build a new building, a new high-rise building, we increase the surface area of Singapore from a flat, two-dimensional surface into an uneven three-dimensional surface. Can the skin of each and every one of our new buildings become a collector of energy? If one day, our dream to become self-sufficient or near self-sufficient with energy comes true, that will be a tremendous breakthrough that will free us from dependency on external energy sources. This is a long-term dream, but this is something that we want to do better at. Even if we cannot achieve total self-sufficiency in energy, the fact that we can use an uneven three-dimensional surface to house greenery to cool the island, provides us with tremendous opportunities to meet our energy needs.

Someone called Dr Liu Thai Ker, a very distinguished architect, once said that Singapore can house 10 million people. He may be right, he may be wrong, no one knows. Actually, we can already house 10 million people today, but that is not the real issue. The real issue is, how do we house however many people we want, with a good quality of life on the finite land area that we have? If we can solve our energy problem, we'll be halfway there. The other thing that I would like to challenge you to think about is this: If Dr Liu Thai Ker is correct, and we are able to double the amount of living space in Singapore, how would we do it? How many of you think that today we invest more land area in Human Development Board (HDB) flats than building roads? Which one do we spend more on? Land to build HDB flats or land to build roads? How many of you think it is HDB flats? How many of you think it is roads? Actually, the amount of land committed to build roads is almost as high, almost equivalent, to the amount of land we have committed to build our HDB flats. Can you imagine a future where we do not need roads as we know them today? We only need the roads that we need today because we have cars. But what if we transform the entire way which our people move around? What if everybody can have a Segway Plus with a little air-conditioned bubble that keeps away the rain, smoke and everything else, and suddenly we free up the same amount of land that we use to build all our existing HDB flats. That would be exciting! That would make us the first of our class in the entire world because not many countries dare to dream that big, and not many countries can do that, because no matter how hard they try to control the car population, there will be some cars that come in from elsewhere. But we have this unique advantage as we are an island nation. If we decide that no cars come over here, no cars will come over here.

These are the type of dreams that we hope will inspire your interest in science and technology, and help us fulfill the dream of being an advanced nation at the forefront of leveraging technology for a better quality of life. The future is in your hands. You are the future of our country. When we grow old, we hope that one day all of you will stand here and give away the prizes, one day all of you will be there to guide the next generation of young Singaporean scientists to do even better for our country. On that note, I wish you all the very best in your onward journey to explore the potential of science and technology to bring forth an even better quality of life for your fellow Singaporeans. Thank you very much.