Geosphere 2021: The Space Between

The Space Between Geosphere 2021

Geosphere 2021 The Space Between MCI (P) Published in March 2021 Publisher NUS Department of Geography Faculty of Arts and Social Science AS2-0301, 1 Arts Link, Kent Ridge Singapore 117570 Director & Editor Tan Yi, Bryan Executive & Designer Lee Yue Yee, Colette Executive & Editor Muhammad Adib Amali Bin Rohaizat Print iPrint Express

Geosphere is an annual publication by the National University of Singapore (NUS) Geographical Society. We love all things geographical and wish to share our passion with all who have geographical interests.

For enquiries or possible partnership opportunities, drop us an email at nusgeosphere@ gmail.com or message us on Instagram at @ nusgeosphere.

The NUS Geographical Society is a nonprofit organisation dedicated to serve the needs, welfare, and aspirations of geog raphers in NUS. The society maintains a strong and close relationship between the student community and faculty at the Department of Geography, whilst promoting the discipline of Geog raphy amongst the Singaporean student community.

Inside this Issue 2 Director’s Note & Meet the Team

Chapter 1: Borders 6 9 12 15

My Geographical Journey: Dr Menusha De Silva A Pandemic: Hard Lessons in Geographies of Life and Death Volunteered Geographic Information and its Role in Disaster Management The Altered Geography of the Global Economy

Chapter 2: Spheres

20 The First Step: Crummy Shoes and Carbon Footprints 23 From Roots to Reefs: Community-Based Restoration in Southeast Asia 28 Living in Harmony with Our Wild Neighbours

Chapter 3: Stages

34 Honours Thesis: Digital Geographies 38 Independent Study Module: Dance Geographies 41 A Graduate Student’s Experience: Undertaking a Master’s Degree

Chapter 4: Pathways

46 Alumni Feature: Centre for Liveable Cities 50 Alumni Feature: DHI Water and Environment (SG) 53 55th Management Committee: Navigating the Pandemic 56 Acknowledgements and Appreciation

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Director’s Note The past year has been a tumultuous one for us all where change has been the only constant and we are continuously being forced to navigate new and uncertain terrains.

Geosphere 2021: The Space Between is a reflection of our current times, where uncertainty and apprehension have become increasingly folded into our everyday lives. This edition seeks to provide a deeper understanding of these tensions and in-between spaces, showcasing the role that Geography has in our world, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

work and recount how they arrived at their current employment.

For many of us, being stuck in these inbetween spaces and not knowing the next step can be an incredibly scary and paralysing feeling. It is thus my greatest hope that through these articles, The Space Between can act as one of your guides, illuminating the road ahead.

In closing, I would like to use this opportunity to extend my gratitude to all who made The Space Between possible. Firstly, to our staff advisors Dr Menusha De Silva and Dr Carl Grundy-Warr, thank you for your continued guidance, support, and affirmation throughout this entire process. Having you both as our advisors has been a privilege. Next, to all our contributors, thank you for taking the time to connect and collaborate with us. Your effort and enthusiasm towards this magazine have certainly motivated our team and it was truly a pleasure to work alongside all of you. Finally, to my amazing executives Adib and Colette, I count myself lucky to be able to work alongside such dedicated and talented teammates. Thank you for these warm memories.

The first section of the magazine is titled ‘Borders’, housing articles that discuss how geographic boundaries are being breached through migration and technology. At the same time, ‘Borders’ will also showcase how the pandemic has resulted in the reinforcing of these same boundaries. Our next section, ‘Spheres’, captures issues related to the land, sea, and air. The articles here elucidate the role that humans have in shaping and conserving the intersecting realms of the biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere.

‘Stages’ features interviews from Geography majors, past and present, where they share their stories and experiences of tackling different individual research projects. In the final section of ‘Pathways’, we look to our Alumni as they share about their professional

Bryan Tan Tan Yi, Bryan Director of 55th Management Committee Publications Cell

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55th Publications Team Photograph by Goh Rui Ting

Tan Yi, Bryan Year 3 Undergraduate

Lee Yue Yee, Colette Year 2 Undergraduate

Muhammad Adib Amali Bin Rohaizat Year 2 Undergraduate

Director of 55 th Publications Cell and Editor of Geosphere

Executive of 55 th Publications Cell and Designer of Geosphere

Executive of 55 th Publications Cell and Editor of Geosphere

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Photograph by Gordon Oh (Ersfjordbotn Village in Tromsø, Norway)

Chapter 1: Borders Borders suggest an arbitrary division between two imagined sets of space that encompasses both tangible and virtual spaces.

In this section, we look at the fluidity and repercussions of these borders brought about by their disintegration and reinstatement, as exhibited by but not limited to the current COVID-19 global pandemic.

My Geographical Journey and Cultural Geographies Dr Menusha De Silva

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A Pandemic: Hard Lessons in Geographies of Life and Death Dr Carl Grundy-Warr 9

Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and its Role in Diasaster and Crisis Management Dr Yan Yingwei

12 The Altered Geography of the Global Economy Glenn Yeo

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MY GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNEY: DR MENUSHA DE SILVA 1) What spurred you to become a Geographer?

My decision to study geography was rather fortuitous. As a 16-year-old, I was keen on a career in the Sri Lankan Foreign Service, and decided to follow the Languages stream that was offered for A-Levels. As I was required to study two language-based subjects and one from social science, I selected English Literature, Japanese, and Geography. This was my first exposure to Geography since I was only taught Social Studies for O-Levels. I thought, if I am to work in foreign countries, Geography seems like a logical choice. But over the course of my A-Levels, I developed a love for the subject that surpassed my enthusiasm for languages.

This motivated me to major in Geography for my undergraduate degree and pursue a career as a researcher and educator of Geography.

cultural g eographies 2) What is your research centered on and how did you decide on this research interest?

When I reflect on my research journey, I’m always reminded of a quote by the renowned feminist scholar Sara Ahmed – the personal is theoretical. O ur variou s identities, preferences, and interests shape the issues we choose to examine and the knowledge we produce. My research broadly focuses on the social and cultural aspects of transnational migration.

Dr De Silva on a walk-about interview

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T he personal is theoretical.

- Sara Ahmed

3) What links does Cultural Geography have with other subdisciplines within Geography?

Being a migrant from the age of one, many of the themes and issues that constitute this literature resonate with me. My family circumstances influenced the decision to narrow my research to intersections of ageing and transnational migration. At that point in time, my grandmother was frequently crossing continents to care for her grandchildren, and concerns over how I would fulfil my own eldercare obligations in the future made this less examined area a very compelling topic for study.

My research examined Sri Lankan-Australian families’ experiences of providing eldercare across transnational space. I have also studied first-generation Sri Lankan-British immigrants’ return to their home-country as a form of elite retirement migration and how trans-national citizenship and identity politics shape their retirement decisions.

These projects adopted qualitative research methods that asked participants to take photos to complement their interviews, and I occasionally walked with participants to places that have emotional significance to them, such as a small wood in Derby that one of my participants frequently visited because it reminded her of the areas where she used to play as a child in Sri Lanka.

Originally, cultural geography constituted the study of cultures, how the physical landscape shapes its practices, and the spatial distribution of ethnic, religious, and language groups. However, since the 1980s, cultural geography expanded its focus to the interrelations between culture and politics, economics, and nature. Culture is no longer understood as a fixed phenomenon that a geographer might go to a particular place to study, such as a museum or a remote village. Culture is a process that is constantly evolving and can be represented differently depending on who has the power to create the narrative, which in turn is implicated in people’s everyday lives and spaces.

This ‘new cultural geography’ transformed geography as a discipline, where it is now recog nised that the study of economic, political, and even environmental geography should consider a more integrated approach that takes cultural processes into account.

4) How can we apply Cultural Geographies to our perception of this COVID-19 pandemic?

More recently, cultural geographers have engaged with theories that help us understand phenomena that are overlooked in everyday life because they are not immediately perceptible or visible. Among these, affect and emotions are particularly helpful concepts to understand our responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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g e o s phe re The tangible changes to landscapes, such as the relatively empty airports and other public spaces, temperature scanners, and the ubiquitous SafeEntry QR code posters also shape the intangible ways in which we are affected by certain spaces and how we now feel differently about occupying them.Affect focuses on our bodily and at times unconscious reactions. For example, hearing a person sneeze in a crowded bus might now make us intuitively hold our breath, while after such an incident we might associate congested public transportation with negative emotions such as fear and anxiety.

However not everyone’s reactions to and emotions regarding COVID-19 are the same.

For instance, why did some people find the circuit breaker rejuvenating, while others found it stressful? Why do some people refuse to wear a mask? While economic and social factors, such as inadequate income, increased care responsibilities, and misinformation about the gravity of the virus would answer these questions to a certain extent, a focus on people’s affective and emotional responses of fer anot her layer of understanding.

Cultural geography highlights how people’s intersecting identities and subjectivities such as gender, age, race, and health status would lead to complex and differing ways of emotionally and physiologically relating to the global pandemic and various nations’ coping strategies and regulations.

-Empty public spaces, temperature scanners and SafeEntry QR Code Posters shape the intangible ways that we are affected by certain spaces.

-5) What would you say to prospective students who are considering Geography?

The scope of Geography is very broad and gives you the space to learn about nearly any topic through a spatial lens. COVID-19 has created ambiguity about most aspects of our lives, and predicting the pathways for successful careers are more challenging. In such circumstances, studying topics that you are passionate about would be the best inspiration and strategy to excel. Geography is a subject that gives you the tools to gain a holistic understanding about various phenomena by recognising how issues and trends that occur at the individual, family, community, national, regional, and global levels are interconnected, which is a valuable skill for any sector. As you explore Geography, be willing to have your views challenged, and be open to new ways of understanding the world.

Dr Menusha De Silva is a lecturer at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on the intersections of transnational migration, care, and ageing. She was the 2019 winner of the Area journal prize for New Research in Geography for the co-authored paper titled, ‘“Daughter” as a positionality and the gendered politics of taking parents into the field’. She teaches GE1101E: Geographical Journeys: Exploring World Environments, GES1003: Changing Landscapes of Singapore, and GE4213: Cultural Geographies.

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A PA N D E M I C : H A R D L E S S ON S I N GEOGRAPHIES OF L I F E A N D D E AT H

By Dr Carl Grundy-Warr Altered Geographies of Everyday Life Nobody will forget COVID-19. It has disrupted life, daily patterns, behaviours, and human interactivity. Face-to-face teaching was suddenly deemed dangerous, and students became stuck in their own rooms using e-learning to connect with peers and teachers. Isolated learning is a new abnormal as many dreams of exciting overseas exchanges were dashed (Figure 1). Beyond our rooms, everyday life is affected by new territorial regimes and biopolitics associated with public health during a pandemic. Social distancing, marked-out spacing in queues, lockdowns, circuit-breakers, social bubbles, temperature checkpoints, empty airports, and closed borders are all aspects of myriad geographies during a deadly pandemic.

Alexander B. Murphy writes in Geography: Why it Matters (2018) regarding the need to ‘think knowledgeably and critically about geographical patterns, to consider why things happen where they do, and to appreciate how geographical context influences what happens.’

This essay explores reasons why geographical thinking is imperative in a pandemic.

Uneven Geographies of ‘ The Dashboard Pandemic’ We should be proud of the contributions of geospatial analysis in relation to public health measures, yet as geographers, we should also try to see what lies behind the maps we help create. The global and national dashboards of the pandemic produced by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and John Hopkins University create a readily accepted multiscalar geographical imaginary of COVID-19.

These dashboards enable us to graphically visualise an unfolding disaster, but while they draw attention to certain aspects, other issues may inadvertently or deliberately be concealed.

To understand the medical geography of COVID-19, Danny Dorling writes in The Guardian that we have to first understand how the country lives and works. In doing so, we need to examine how and why underlying socio-economic and racial inequalities relate to uneven disease incidence and burden.

-Beyond our rooms, everyday life is affected by new territorial regimes and biopolitics.

-Figure 1: Dashed hopes and dreams of student exchanges abroad Drawing by Feng Yikang

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Figure 2: Migrant workers in Punggol S11 dormitory during a COVID-19 outbreak Drawing by Feng Yikang

Michael Marmot, Professor of Epidemiology at University College London (UCL), observes that ‘Inequalities in health, and in the social conditions that lead to ill health, have been revealed and amplified by the pandemic and the response to it.’ Socio-spatial disparities in health are long-term political, economic, and structural issues. In the UK, USA, Italy, Brazil, South Africa, and elsewhere, there are clear signs that widening inequalities in wealth are leaving large segments of people more vulnerable to sudden health crises, which COVID-19 cruelly exposes with highly uneven socio-spatial implications.

Foreign Bodies within the Geo-Body In an era of a boundless pandemic, we see the fragility of a so-called ‘borderless world’ as our territorially sovereign national geobodies view the virus as national security threats and turn into epidemiological boxes.

Some of the scariest geo-body maps produced during 2020 were disease cluster cartographies displayed by Channel News Asia (CNA),

revealing alarming high rates of infection among the migrant worker population living in dormitories throughout Singapore (Figure 2). These categorisations of COVID-19 cases as “imported” (from overseas), “community” (Singaporean and PRs), and “non-community” (literally “foreign bodies”) became part of public health lexicon. COVID-19 reveals migrant well-being as essential for the health of a nation’s geo-body. Providing healthy living spaces for migrants and recognising every critical cell that make up the geo-body is a vital lesson of this pandemic.

Maritime Flows and Trapped Seafarers Maritime trade geographies and flows are more crucial than ever in this pandemic. For Singapore, sea cargo (including food, fuel, and now, vaccines) are critical lifelines as land and air transport declined sharply. This has prompted the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) to develop innovative “safe corridor” procedures for enabling crew changes at sea. What we landlubbers do not

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-Providing healthy living spaces for migrants and recognising every critical cell that make up the geo-body is a vital lesson of this pandemic.

-see are the geographies of everyday life at sea.

COVID-19 has posed huge logistical challenges, strict controls on seafarers, and changing schedules along shipping routes. Globally, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITWF) reported on hundreds of thousands of seafarers forced to spend months aboard their ships, often beyond their contracts, following border closures, suspended visas, mandatory quarantine orders if any crew tests positive for the virus, and stringent ship docking restrictions.

COVID-19 Geopolitics and International Cooperation One arena where biomedical response meets geopolitics is in what Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group, calls ‘vaccine nationalism’.

Whilst viable vaccines coming onstream raise enormous hope for combatting COVID-19, aspects of vaccine control and competitive distribution may be deployed for geopolitical leverage in some parts of the world. COVID-19 reveals why multilateral mechanisms are critical to human health and security, such as international health regulations set by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Within Asia there is growing recognition, following the impacts of prior infectious diseases over the decades, of the need for international information sharing and coordination through bodies like ASEAN and the Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases (APSED). Retreating into geo-bodies is insufficient to meet future borderless microbial and ecological threats.

More-than-Human Geographies If nothing else, COVID-19 reminds us all that understanding nonhuman matter has implications for human well-being. At its heart, much of Geography is the study of human-nature interactions, and there are countless urgent geographies that relate to it, not least ecological security, public health, and climate change. As Murphy notes: ‘Grasping the nature of the changes that are coming, much less anticipating them, will require a sensitivity to the evolving geography of the planet, as well as the capacity to think geographically.’

Dr Carl Grundy-Warr researches and writes on cross-border conflict and cooperation, particularly in the Mekong region, with a strong interest in more-than-human geographies and ecological security issues. He’s also a lecturer at the NUS Geography department who teaches GEH1022: Geopolitics: Geographies of War and Peace, GE3210: Natural Resources: Policy and Pracices, GE3230A: Field Studies in Geography: Southeast Asia, and GE4219: Environment and Development in Southeast Asia.

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VO LU N T E E R E D G E O G R A P H I C I N F O R M AT I ON A N D I T S R O L E I N D I S A S T E R A N D C R I S I S M A NAG E M E N T

By Dr Yan Yingwei For more than a decade, there has been an explosion of interest from the general public to share geospatial contents online. Professor Michael Frank Goodchild has termed this as volunteered geographic information (VGI) in his article entitled Citizens as sensors: The world of volunteered geography. Scientific publications in the field of VGI have been booming since the coining of the term. Today, VGI has become one of the most important research topics in Geographic Information Science (GIS).

The rapid development of the field of VGI is attributed to Web 2.0 technologies which favour participation and collaboration over the Internet. Web 2.0 websites emphasise user-generated content and participatory culture for end users in contrast to Web 1.0 which limited people to viewing contents

of websites in a passive manner. Web 2.0 websites such as OpenStreetMap and Wikimapia have empowered citizens to establish virtual networks over the Internet to work on common mapping tasks in either a synchronous or an asynchronous fashion.

In addition, social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Flickr have enabled citizens to share huge amounts of geographic data in cyberspace in a near real-time manner.

Hence, the VGI phenomenon defies the traditional asymmetric power structure of geospatial information production and consumption, where there has previously been a concentration of knowledge creation from an expert’s point of view. The traditional division between data consumers and producers thus blurs through VGI, with local communities empowered to share and contribute their own indigenous knowledge.

Word Cloud of Various VGI Applications discussed by VGI Research Community 12 | Borders

the s pa c e be tw e e n A review article titled Volunteered geographic information research in the first decade: A narrative review of selected journal articles in GIScience features five major application domains of VGI, including • • • • •

Disaster, crisis, emergency, and hazard management — earthquake response Social sciences — studying human activities Location-based services — navigation and routing Land use/ Land cover — validation of land use/ land cover maps Environmental monitoring — species monitoring

In this article, I will dive specifically into the application of VGI in disaster and crisis management. In this domain, VGI can be an invaluable source of data because the data is cost-effective to collect, and their richness in volume and spatiotemporal coverage is unrivalled when compared to traditional data sources. One famous example is the important role that OpenStreetMap served in the 2010 Haiti earthquake response. The disaster relief for Haiti was challenging because comprehensive databases of infrastructure, population, and geospatial location were minimal. However, with the introduction of VGI, people around the world realized that they did not have to be physically present in Haiti to provide meaningful assistance.

-The Haiti Quake is the first disaster in which open-source, online platforms are being heavily utilised.

- Patrick Meier, Director of Crisis Mapping at Ushahidi

OpenStreetMap users performed online mapping during the Haiti quake and contributed critical geographic data for the disaster response. In recent years, scientists have explored VGI and developed methods to better use VGI based on social media feeds for • • • •

Facilitating disaster and crisis responses — rapid flood inundation mapping and wild fire detection Disaster and crisis early warning — earthquake and tsunami early warning Post-disaster and post-crisis recovery — understanding tourism recovery status Capacity building for disaster and crisis prevention — tourist distribution modelling for prioritizing areas in tourism destinations that should be better safeguarded from disaster and crisis events

During this COVID-19 global pandemic, VGI has once again proved its importance in disaster and crisis management. For instance, during the fight against COVID-19, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team facilitated the contribution of extensive health infrastructure data as well as maps of places most at risk. Social media data has also been used to understand the differing sentiments of residents during the pandemic, which also allows mental health issues to be addressed. For example, I have personally been working on a research project that aims to use Twitter text data to investigate the emotional impacts of COVID-19 on the Singapore society based on natural language processing1 and sentiment analysis approaches.

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a process where the computer learns to understand human languages

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Moreover, social media data has also been adopted to explore the effects of human mobility on the COVID-19 transmission. For instance, an article entitled Use of Twitter social media activity as a proxy for human mobility to predict the spatiotemporal spread of COVID-19 at global scale has been published in July 2020.

In sum, VGI, which can be described as usergenerated geospatial contents or crowdsourced geographic data, is an indispensable source of data (or Big Data) to understand the surface of the Earth and the spatial dynamics taking place on it. Its importance has been recognized not only by researchers but also by practitioners.

It can not only be used to discover previously unknown knowledge in general, but also to address disaster and crisis management problems. In addition, it is worth noting that we should be mindful of the possible data quality and bias issues of VGI, as the data is generated by the general public rather than by any authority. As such, researchers have been exploring various ways and developing methods to enhance the quality of VGI. Lastly, I would like to highlight that potential future endeavours of the VGI research community can be related but not limited to VGI contributor behaviour studies, privacy protection, tools and methods for VGI big data processing and analysis, and user empowerment enhancement.

Dr Yan Yingwei joined the Department of Geography of the National University of Singapore (NUS) in October 2020 as a lecturer. He received his PhD in Geography in 2017 from NUS. After that he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the GIScience research group at Heidelberg University in Germany. His research interests include volunteered geographic information, citizen GIScience, big geospatial data mining, and computational social science. He teaches GE3238: GIS Design and Practices and GE4214: Remote Sensing of Environment.

Photograph by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash

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J C E S S AY W R I T I N G CO M P E T I T I ON : “ COV I D - 1 9 H A S A LT E R E D T H E G E O G R A P H Y O F T H E G LO BA L E CON O M Y. ” D I S C U S S .

Winning Entry by Glenn Yeo (Temasek Junior College) Although the novel Coronavirus is not the deadliest virus that we humans have seen, it still manages to disrupt our highly globalised society at an unprecedented scale and forces us to rethink the network of associations making up the global economy. This essay explores the multi-scalar impacts of the novel Coronavirus on the various sectors of our global economy and attempts to provide an explanation of how its geography may be altered in both the short and long run.

On a macro scale, we can investigate the disruptions that COVID-19 has caused to the Global Production Networks (GPNs). The GPN approach is a meso-level theory focusing on governance, dynamics, and value capture and/or creation. COVID-19 has interrupted network nodes of the GPN across the globe.

On the upstream production end, both inputs and outputs were affected. Factories were forced to shut down, disrupting delivery and manufacturing schedules in highly-integrated intra-firm networks. Downstream, retailers and consumers also experienced disruptions and delays. As a result, GPNs were forced to make rapid reconfigurations or face complete shutdown.

In particular, COVID-19 has highlighted the need for a shift from large production sites concentrated in low-cost countries towards having multiple smaller facilities around the world to diversify firms’ risk reduction strategies. This could lead to either greater fragmentation or denser networks as firms

reconfigure the locations of their intra-firm networks to better absorb supply shocks. As such, the global economic map is set to shift towards having less geographical dominance as governments draw up new regulatory frameworks to fall back on nationalism, creating reverse flows.

At the sectoral level, COVID-19 has struck the aviation and travel industries particularly hard due to the implementation of government travel bans as well as tourists’ concerns for their own well-being. The aviation industry is a key enabler of many economic activities with strong inter-industry linkages across different upstream and downstream sectors, hence making it a vital part of the economy. Air travel is a key component of the midstream sectors, enabling global supply chains through the smooth movement of goods from one geographic location to the other. However, with increased governmental trade regulations, movements of midstream goods were slowed down or even halted, prompting the slowdown of upstream manufacturing processes and an eventual slowdown in economic growth.

Concomitantly, there was a decline in demand for tourism as a result of border closures to contain the virus. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), international tourist arrivals fell by 72% from January to October 2020, translating into a loss of US$ 935 billion in export revenues from international tourism.

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g e o s phe re With that, it has raised the need for a reimagination of tourism through border regulatory changes. Disease-free tourist profiling and specialised travel bubbles have altered the geography of travel and tourism in the short-run. Hence, it is imperative for the aviation and travel industries to become more resilient in order to withstand any future shocks in the long term.

While the geography of economic activities will have to be remapped, the capitalistic economy continues to address the challenges brought about by COVID-19 through spatial fixes. The ensuing bust of the brick-andmortar retail industries, coupled with the lucrative nature of e-commerce, manifested in a spatial fix represented by the shift from the physical to the online. Cross-border e-commerce transactions expanded export opportunities, facilitating more international trade for smaller companies. Consequently, Transnational Corporations (TNCs) in the logistics industry would shift towards being key players in the global economy and exert control over the value chain. Logistics hubs

will begin to re-emerge at the regional level instead of at the global level, eliminating single-source dependencies. Over time, logistics TNCs would wield greater power even rivalling incumbent TNCs, evolving from merely playing a supporting role in businesses to being key strategic partners of TNCs. In conclusion, COVID-19 has not altered the fundamentals of a capitalist economy, which is to resolve crises through spatial fixes. Power and influence are still unequal. The pandemic has, however, played a key role in shaping the geography of our economy, resulting in the decline of incumbent superpowers and the rise of new market leaders in the future. Stakeholders, especially governments, thus play a complementary role in altering the economy as they are the ones with the power to enact laws and regulations. This will inevitably lead to trickle-down effects in the decision-making process of firms and hence have an extensive spatial impact on our intricately-linked global economy.

About the JC Essay Writing Competition: The competition is held anually for all students in Junior Colleges and IP schools, with the aim of encouraging students to critically consider how geographical perspectives can contribute to the analysis of real-world issues. This year, the winning entry is submitted

by Glenn Yeo from Temasek Junior College (TJC), who has demonstrated an excellent use of geographical concepts and thoughtfulness in his approach to the essay.

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“The global economic map is set to shift towards having less geographical dominance as governments fall back on nationalism, creating reverse flows.”

Photograph by Alec Favale on Unsplash

Photograph by Alvern Mak (West Bali National Park in Bali, Indonesia)

Chapter 2: Spheres Our biodiversity is the nexus of the interlinked realms of land (lithosphere), air (atmosphere), and sea (hydrosphere). In this section titled Spheres, we examine the intersections of nature with climate change, coasts, and concrete urban areas. We also highlight the roles that humans play within these intersecting spheres.

The First Step: Crummy Shoes and Carbon Footprints Willis Lau

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From Roots to Reefs: Supporting Community-Based Ecosystem Restoration Around Southeast Asia During COVID-19 Dr Gretchen Christina Coffman 23 Living in Harmony with Our Wild Neighbours Dr Andie Ang 28

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THE FIRST STEP: C RU M M Y S H O E S A N D C A R B ON F O OT P R I N T S

By Willis Lau It’s the smell that hits you.

When you first step amongst the mangroves, that’s probably what you will think of first — the smell. And rightly so.

We have studied about mangroves since secondary school. We learnt how valuable they are as protectors of our coasts, important habitats for a variety of species, and vital carbon sinks. However, I was not ready to face the current state and reality of mangroves that would soon hit me.

As part of the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore (ICCS) movement, the Bachelor of Environmental Studies (BES) Student Committee organised a clean-up at the Sungei Pandan mangroves, located near Pandan Reservoir in the West Coast. As this was my first time visiting a mangrove forest, I naively thought that the inaccessibility of the place would mean there wouldn’t be much litter found there but I could not be more wrong.

Litter collected at Sungei Pandan Reservoir 20 | Spheres

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“About half of all documented mangrove species in the entire world have been observed in Singapore !”

Within seconds of forging into the mangroves and dodging branches that threatened to make me faceplant into the mud, I saw the overwhelming amount of litter that resided in every crevice. From cigarettes to Styrofoam packaging to an entire shoe, my group went around cleaning the area assigned to us and documented the type of trash we picked up.

While we like to think that Singapore is a clean and green city, the overwhelming amount of waste we found seems to reflect our cavalier attitude towards the environment and the consequences of our actions. Excessive amounts of plastic in mangrove forests have been found to negatively impact the ecosystem services that mangrove forests provide by increasing stress on the mangroves themselves and decreasing their viability as habitats for wildlife. Mangrove trees inadvertently trap litter very well due to the presence of aerial breathing roots. This plastic pollution prevents them from obtaining oxygen for respiration, suffocating them and stunting their growth and restoration. This in turn prevents mangroves from providing ecosystem services, which results in an even greater loss for coastal communities outside of Singapore which depend on these ecosystems.

Hence, being aware of the history and current state of our mangroves is the first step we can take to understand how we can contribute to mangrove recovery. Before I went for the clean-up, I didn’t know that Singapore had mangroves in the West Coast. Historically, 27 species of mangroves have been observed

in Singapore – that’s around half of all documented mangroves species in the entire world! What is more shocking is that from 1819 to 1969, over half of all mangroves in Singapore had disappeared. Mangroves in Singapore are being threatened because of intense urbanisation efforts that have caused their numbers to dwindle to less than five percent of their original numbers in the 1800s.

This is alarming considering that mangroves provide significant benefits to the environment.

For example, mangroves protect our coasts from rising sea levels and storm surges by slowing down the incoming waves and preventing our shorelines from being eroded.

This potentially saves us millions in coastal restoration costs down the road. Besides coastal protection services, mangrove forests are being recognised as key players in our fight against global warming, particularly in its ability to retain blue carbon, which refers to carbon stored in coastal and marine ecosystems. Recently, blue carbon research has been focusing on maximising the carbon sequestration ability of mangroves to remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, in hopes of reducing global warming to 1.5 – 2 degrees Celsius. Mangrove reforestation, although potentially unfeasible in landscarce Singapore, could be the front liner in humanity’s search for nature-based solutions to climate change.

What then can you do to help protect the protectors of our shores?

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While there is little we can do to prevent urbanisation in Singapore, individual action does play a significant role in humanity’s fight against global warming. For starters, we can all seek to minimise our impact by using less single-use items. From carrying around a reusable bottle or Tupperware to refusing plastic straws, these are simple ways to reduce our impact on the environment. The best takeaway (pun intended) should be to refuse these day-to-day single-use items and bring your own containers, bottles, and bags.

Although it may be hard to see any tangible improvement from adopting these lifestyle changes, we must remember that climate change and global warming are decadal processes. The positive effects of our actions will play out over multiple generations, making it difficult to justify any inconvenience to ourselves. As such, becoming more aware of these issues and using our knowledge to enact a difference in our lives allow advocacy and sustainable change to find its place in society. A great place to start would be to care for our mangroves and local biodiversity as these are nature-based solutions to climate change that deserve our attention.

Willis Lau is a Year 2 Environmental Studies major! Passionate about sustainability, he hopes to be able to find new ways to make sustainable living more widely adopted. He enjoys spending his free time watching latte art videos on Instagram. If you’re looking for him, you’ll easily find him at the ice rink or at Tembusu College!

Photograph by Anton Lecock on Unsplash

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F R O M R O OT S TO R E E F S : S U P P O RT I N G CO M M U N I T Y- BA S E D E CO S YS T E M R E S TO R AT I ON A R O U N D COA S TA L S O U T H E A S T A S I A D U R I N G COV I D - 1 9

By Dr Gretchen Christina Coffman The highest marine biodiversity in the world is found in Southeast Asia’s coral triangle — from the roots of mangrove forests, through seagrass meadows, to the coral reefs. The interconnection of these intertidal ecosystems is essential as they act as nurseries for many fish species and coastal protection for surrounding communities. According to the United Nations (UN), over three billion people depend on marine and coastal biodiversity for their livelihoods, this amounts to about 5% of global GDP. However, these ecosystems have been significantly impacted over the last century by coastal development, aquiculture, agriculture, poaching, fish bombing, and climate change. The coronavirus pandemic has

created additional environmental impacts. In this article, I explore ways to take action and support both the ‘roots to reefs’ ecosystems and the most vulnerable communities that rely on their ecosystem services.

Communities throughout coastal Southeast Asia lived in harmony with their surrounding marine environments for millennia when populations were relatively small. As populations grew, communities relied increasingly more heavily on surrounding coastal resources to sustain their families. Recently, a shift from poaching and overfishing to ecotourism and community-based restoration has created more sustainable livelihoods for people and

Spatial extent of Coral Triangle across Southeast Asia Map by Dini Aprilia Norvyani 23 | Spheres

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Sea turtle in a healthy coral reef ecosystem in Indonesia Photograph by Scuba Zoom

healthy habitats for wildlife. In an article entitled Are mangroves worth replanting? The direct economic benefits of a community-based reforestation project, mangrove restoration in the Philippines was reported to have resulted in an annual revenue benefit to the local communities of more than US$ 315 ha−1 yr−1 from mangrove fisheries, tourism and timber.

capacity building, encourages greater local participation, and creates a sense of ownership.

Several elements are critical in developing effective community-based restoration efforts, including identification of local champions, incorporating local cultures, tapping into a traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) base, and integrating sustainable ecotourism.

Accordingly, the Mangrove Action Project (MAP) has developed an effective strategy named Community-Based Ecological Mangrove Restoration to restore abandoned shrimp aquiculture along the Andaman Coast in Thailand (see https://mangroveactionproject. org/mangrove-restoration/).

When it became evident that the coronavirus pandemic was creating serious environmental issues, I thought deeply about how we could help local coastal communities in Southeast Asia. As a restoration ecologist, I began thinking about several novel and innovative ways to start supporting coastal sustainability during the pandemic through communitybased ecosystem restoration.

MAP trains community members to collect baseline ecological data, plant mangrove propagules, and monitor restoration success.

This community-based approach instills a sense of empowerment and involvement in resolving their own environmental, social, and economic issues. This bottom-up approach creates more sustainable and resilient ecosystems than the standard top-down approach; it promotes local

During the second half of 2020, my graduate students from NUS Department of Geography worked remotely to develop a Roots to Reefs community-based ecosystem restoration plan with a nonprofit environmental organisation called Sustainable Oceanic Research, Conservation and Education (SORCE) (see

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the s pa c e be tw e e n https://sorce.org/). SORCE actively restores coral reef ecosystems and conducts outreach education to local communities in the new Gita Nada National Marine Park (GNNMP) with international science interns, students, and voluntourists. However, these restoration efforts and funding from ecotourism came to a screeching halt when the pandemic travel bans were implemented.

Although my first-year graduate students were stuck in their home countries of Indonesia, Borneo, Hong Kong, and Singapore, we wanted to help remotely. As a team, we formulated a strategy to work with the nearby Sasak community to restore, protect, and carry out research on the interconnected coastal ecosystems (mangroves, seagrass beds, and coral reefs) within the GNNMP near their village.​We connected on zoom meetings weekly with SORCE, collaboratively developing our restoration goals and objectives.

project has attracted more than USD$50 000 in funds that would directly help with the implementation of the restoration plan in the second quarter of 2021. My students and I hope to work with the local community soon to help conduct restoration training, mangrove planting, and ecosystem monitoring in person.

In reality, it may take a while before we conduct field trips and international field work due to travel logistics and COVID-19 restrictions.

As schools and universities around the world prepare to conduct distance learning into 2021, showing films of community-based restoration and coastal sustainability can help engage students in their own homes.

All our work was conducted remotely, including literature research, interviews and analyses.

The Roots to Reefs CommunityBased Restoration Plan was recently completed in December 2020 and will immediately be used by the SORCE team. This

ou r

Coral reefs survey in Lombok Photograph by SORCE

fou

r

e ectiv j b o • • • •

s were:

To develop a community-based restoration plan for degraded coastal ecosystems (mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass beds) Empower and train locals, especially women, to help protect and restore these ecosystems Develop strategies for local marine protection management and ensure enforcement of existing Indonesian laws To promote and fund restoration activities through an online store selling Sasak handicrafts to fund community-based restoration

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“this bottom-up approach encourages greater local participation and creates a sense of ownership.”

Top left: Mangrove restoration area Top right: Sasak woman foraging in the seagrasses Bottom: Mangrove restoration area in Lombok

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the s pa c e be tw e e n Due to COVID-19 restrictions, many film festivals went online and were free this year like the 17th Annual International Ocean Film Festival (IOFF) (see http://intloceanfilmfest. org/).

The following are samples of communitybased coastal ecosystem restoration and conservation films from this year’s festival (Refer to QR code for links to the films): • • •

“Tahiry Honko”, Matthew Judge (Blue Ventures), Madagascar, 2020 “Alice in Borneo’s Wonderland”, David McGuire, USA, 2018 “We Live Underwater”, Hendrik S. Schmitt, Germany, 2016

I have great hope for the future of communities and their nearby coastal ecosystems if we all join in to support community-based restoration in whatever way possible. There are so many ways to get involved, not just academically, but also through film, donations,

and active participation right here in our own Singapore community. Join the community effort and help transform Singapore to a “City in Nature”, while restoring coastal ecosystems.

For example, you can help in this effort by planting mangrove trees with TreesSG on Pulau Ubin, an island located Northeast of Singapore (refer to the QR code below for more information on different ways you can contribute!).

We are all suffering right now from a nature deficit during the pandemic, no matter where we live in the world. Connecting to our own communities to improve ecosystems while enjoying the great outdoors is good for our health and nature. Like ecosystems, we are all connected on this planet despite the pandemic. Now is the time when Southeast Asian communities need us the most. Let’s get engaged and promote community-based coastal ecosystems restoration to support sustainability of the whole planet.

Ways to get involved in community-based restoration

Dr Gretchen Christina Coffman is a wetland restoration ecologist who teaches wetland restoration ecology, biogeography, applied ecology and research methods in Physical Geography. Throughout her career, she has worked on wetland and riparian restoration projects internationally for more than 28 years. Dr Coffman has also led National Geographic Expeditions in the Annamite Mountains of Laos to document and begin restoration of the Critically Endangered Asian swamp cypress trees! In 2021, she will be teaching the following NUS undergraduate modules: GE2101: Methods and Practices in Geography, GE2220: Terrestrial and Coastal Environments, and GE4224: Applied Biogeography.

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L I V I N G I N H A R M ON Y W I T H O U R WILD NEIGHBOURS

By Dr Andie Ang Since the easing of the COVID-19 restrictions, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of people seeking relaxation and enjoyment in nature areas and green spaces. At the same time, we have also witnessed a rise in wildlife-related news in Singapore in the past few months, though not all were pleasant. Last November, a long-tailed macaque took a Koi bubble tea from a woman at MacRitchie bus stop. A week later, a Pasir Ris resident suffered leg injuries when a wild pig emerged from the forest and charged in her direction. How then do we manage our interactions with our wild neighbours?

The recent change in Singapore’s commitment to transform the nation from a “Garden City” into a “City in Nature” marks a shift in perspective on what nature means to us and how we envision Singapore in the future. We are moving away from manicuring our forests to suit our needs, to weaving nature into our daily lives. Hence, two major considerations need to be taken into account.

Encroachment on forested areas has increased human-wildlife interaction

Firstly, simply adding greenery to our built environment is not enough for a “City in Nature”.

We must begin to understand nature as an all-encompassing entity. The interconnectedness of intact wild habitats and the preservation of the ecological roles of their inhabitants are essential to the integrity of a healthy ecosystem. There is an urgent need to restore wild habitat connectivity to facilitate gene flow in wildlife populations. This includes the communities of seed-dispersers, which need to move within and between our wild habitats as important drivers of forest regeneration.

Roads allow for the movement of people and facilitate the needs of their daily lives, from travelling to school and for work, to outdoor activities, grocery shopping, and the like. Roads also play a role in the day-to-day lives of wild animals, albeit mostly negatively. Roads and traffic limit wildlife mobility, making it unsafe to move from one forest to the next, resulting in fragmentation of populations, limitation in food resources, mating opportunities and 28 | Spheres

the s pa c e be tw e e n shelter, and injuries and mortalities in vehicular accidents. We need to examine how our transportation infrastructure affects the structure of ecosystems and explore mitigation measures to restore fragmented ecosystems and ensure safer roads for people and wild animals.

Forested habitats can be reconnected with large structures such as overpasses. When the Bukit Timah Expressway (BKE) was completed in 1986, it disconnected the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve (BTNR) and Central Catchment Nature Reserve (CCNR) such that the flora and fauna were physically and ecologically separated.

Nearly 30 years later in 2013, a 62-metre eco-link was erected to re-establish the connectivity between our two largest green lungs. Other artificial aids such as rope bridges were installed over some sections of Old Upper Thomson Road to help arboreal animals such as Raffles’ banded langurs to cross safely. Ultimately, however, artificial structures such as eco-links and rope bridges

“to have a city in nature, we must understand nature as an allencompassing entity.“ should only serve as complements rather than as alternatives to preserving habitat and maintaining natural forest connectivity.

Secondly, the concept of a “City in Nature” has the intent of bringing people closer to nature. With that in mind, we need to ensure that our communities are ready for nature, not only with our Insta-worthy otters and fluttering butterflies, but also with our less charismatic and highly adaptable wild animals such as long-tailed macaques, pythons, wild pigs, and junglefowls. The lack of knowledge on appropriate human behaviour when entering green areas or encountering wildlife continues to create an unsafe environment for both people and animals.

One of the core reasons for the conflicts between people and wild animals such as macaques is that people give food to them, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Intentional feeding is providing food, usually given directly by people taking it out of plastic bags to give to the macaques or throwing it from vehicles. This feeding can lead to unintentional feeding, as macaques lose fear of people over time and associate plastic bags and vehicles with food. Consequently, macaques approach people with plastic bags and look for vehicles, resulting in conflicts in the form of increased physical contact and road incidents. Unintentional

A long-tailed macaque sitting on an artificial structure 29 | Spheres

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“most of the time, wild animals go about their daily routine of grooming, playing, and searching for food in the forests.“ feeding can also happen when waste bins are not properly secured or fruit is not harvested from gardens, especially in residences near forested areas. When media outlets report these incidents, it creates a biased perception that monkeys are aggressive animals and that interactions with them are always unpleasant. Most of the time, however, wild animals like macaques go about their daily routine of grooming, playing, and searching for food in the forests. When people do come across macaques, observations are usually non-confrontational and no one is harmed.

These mundane activities will not be reported in the news. These one-sided reports in the media highlight an urgency to

inculcate a better understanding of humanwildlife interactions and the do’s and don’ts when encountering wild animals (such as keeping food and plastic bags away when in nature areas), so that true co-existence can be achieved and an appreciation of our natural heritage can be attained. While there is progressively more inclusion of topics relating to climate change, nature, and environment in our mainstream school curriculum, our education efforts about biodiversity should also pivot towards the ecology of wildlife and human-wildlife interactions, especially within the local context. This undertaking needs to start upstream in our school curriculum.

Roads and traffic limit wildlife mobility which results in fragmentation and other challenges 30 | Spheres

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A better understanding of human-wildlife interaction allows for better appreciation of nature

The COVID-19 global pandemic has taught us an important lesson: we are closely connected with our environment. The clean air and water that all living things, including us, rely on come from an intact and healthy ecosystem. Nature provides us with not only the tangible sustenance, but also assuagement and pleasure. Studies have consistently shown that spending time in nature improves our mental health and increases happiness. Ultimately, by taking care of our natural world, we are taking care of ourselves and our loved ones.

Dr Andie Ang pursued her M.Sc. at the National University of Singapore studying the ecology of critically endangered Raffles’ banded langurs, before completing her PhD at the University of Colorado Boulder working on the conservation of leaf monkeys in Vietnam. Dr Ang serves as the President of the Jane Goodall Institute (Singapore) since 2018, overseeing outreach and capacity-building programmes which aim at promoting greater awareness and protection of nature and wildlife. She has over 10 years of field experience studying wild primates in Southeast Asia and continues to work closely with various government and non-government agencies in Singapore and the region, particularly Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam for the long-term research and conservation of endangered species.

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Photograph by Gordon Oh (Loch Lomond, Scotland)

Chapter 3: Stages Many of us may find ourselves in a state of limbo at each step of our academic journey.

In this section, we provide a platform to spotlight the various stages in academic pursuits — in navigating what to write in an Honours Thesis, bridging our passions and academic research through an Independent Study Module, and deciding to pursue a postgraduate degree.

Honours Thesis: Digital Geographies Gordon Oh

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Independent Study Module: Dance Geographies Ling Jia Hui

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Postgraduate Studies: Master’s Degree Liu Weiting

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urs Thesis o n o H

WITH GORDON OH

Gordon’s Honours Thesis (HT) topic was inspired by his interest in sourcing for various promotions and codes online

Could you briefly research interests?

describe

your

My research interest is centred on digital geographies, specifically code/space hacking.

The genesis of how I got into digital geographies began during my exchange in London, where I sought out a lot of online deals and promotions. Through my own expeditions sourcing for the best deals, I realised that many consumption spaces relied on payment systems and deals were run on code and software, which was used to produce a certain code/space. Something that may be helpful in thinking about these code/spaces would be to use the analogy of an airport. In the event that the digital systems

in the airport were to break down, processes and systems such as check-ins, scanners, and security systems would be heavily disrupted.

Hence the code and software that runs all these programs are actually integral to how these ‘emergent’ spaces are being produced and used. Code/space hacking refers to how these digital systems actually have loopholes which can be exploited because these systems are not always secure. Thus it was during the process of trying to find discounts for myself and relating it to geography when I decided to read more about digital geography and focus on it.

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the s pa c e be tw e e n What motivated you do do a Honours Thesis (HT)? Have you always wanted to do it?

I was hesitant about undertaking a HT during the first 2 years of my Undergraduate studies.

However, towards the end of Semester 1 in Year 3, I came to the realisation that unless you do a master’s or PhD, it would be very rare for you to have the opportunity to write something that belongs to you with your name attached to it. As such, this was the impetus behind my decision – to try writing a publication and be invested in the whole process.

What are some things you enjoy about undertaking a HT? One of the benefits of writing a HT is that I did not have submissions to complete or final exams to study for during the semester.

This freedom from not having to abide by the timetable of modules was a welcome change of scenery for me. You also have great breadth in deciding what to do and choosing a topic that interests you enables

you to explore the topic in greater depth, conduct your own interviews, and decide how to frame your research and address certain issues. I really liked that there was a sense of ownership throughout the whole process, as the independence attached to being able to set your own deadlines and taking charge of the entire process was important to me.

What were the challenges you faced in undertaking a HT? During the various rounds of coming up with ideas for my HT, I realised that not every topic could be academised and hence it was a challenge to find a viable topic to write about. Initially, I wanted to do research related to Personal Mobility Devices (PMDs), but it was no longer significant after PMDs were banned in Singapore. My second idea was about code/ space and how it changes the way people interact with fitness consumption spaces, but this was also not the best topic due to COVID-19 public health concerns (there are many more entry restrictions into places such as gyms, for instance).

Gordon’s HT submission at the start of 2021 35 | Stages

g e o s phe re I eventually found a viable research topic about platform urbanism, which pertains to how delivery platforms like Grabfood, Deliveroo, and Foodpanda restructure the way space is being arranged, and what difficulties and adaptations merchants apply in using these platforms. Of course, I encountered certain challenges during the process of collecting primary data.

One instance was finding willing respondents to conduct interviews with. I wanted to find out how merchants and restaurant owners are adapting to the new circumstances brought about by the pandemic. However, it was hard to find people who were willing to do it because they are hard-pressed by other issues as well. For my case, I contacted over 60 people, but I only got 21 responses.

Another challenge I faced was having to learn new concepts from scratch and read up widely on my own as there were no specific modules pertaining to Digital Geographies.

I recall doing roughly 150 readings just to figure out what to do and which angles to approach the topic from. Thankfully, my supervisor Dr Lin helped me to focus and direct my efforts.

What advice would you give to students who are unsure about doing a HT? The first thing I would say is to be very malleable during the ideation process and

what comes after. Sometimes, you will have to let go of unfeasible ideas and take advice from your supervisor during this process. My perspective is that knowing nothing is just a chance to learn something, so my suggestion is to be gutsy and be willing to try new things. Individually, we will all have our own approaches and processes to undertaking a HT, so you don’t have to confine yourself to a certain way of doing it or compare yourself to your peers. And most importantly! Your entire life does not revolve around one thesis, so do allow yourself the freedom to pursue your interests. Go and travel (hopefully soon), go and sail far away, go for other things you want to do!

Another thing to bear in mind would be that you are only limited by how much you know.

Even if it seems aimless, my advice would be to just read everything you can about a topic that you might lean towards, because when you read about what has and has not been done, you will be able to acquire more ideas on what new perspectives you can bring or even which concepts to use.

Being exposed to more ideas places you in a better position to figure out what you want to do, but don’t fret if you find yourself lost or terribly swamped; it’s a very normal feeling. I only conjured my eventual idea when others started their fieldwork too. Finally, surround yourself with friends who also do HT and have people with whom you can discuss your ideas with. Just have fun in the whole process.

About the Honours Thesis (HT): GE 4401: Honours Thesis is an opportunity for students to craft and embark on a research project independently under the guidance of a HT advisor. Students who wish to do a HT are required to read GE3240: Geographical Research: Developing Ideas that is presently offered only in Semester 2. For HT, students are required to submit a 12 000word research paper using primary and secondary research.

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“Places do for the spirit sometimes what other people cannot.”

- Rohit Brijnath

Photograph by Gordon Oh (Tallinn, Estonia)

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pendent Study Module e d n I WITH LING JIA HUI

Jia Hui’s Independent Study Module (ISM) topic focuses on dance as a reflection of Chinese identity in Singapore

Could you elaborate research interests?

on

your

Why did you decide on doing an ISM?

For Independent Study Module (ISM), my research interest is about how Chinese dance is a reflection of Chinese identity in Singapore, and how dance is a space whereby these identities that change over time can be seen. I was really interested in incorporating my passion with what I’m doing in school, and having practiced Chinese dance for around 18 years made me consider Chinese dance as a topic for my research.

Between doing an ISM and doing a Level 4000 module, I preferred doing an ISM because you can pick your research interests. With regard to workload, it is also significantly shorter, so if you are considering an honours thesis but unsure of whether your topic could cover such an extensive piece of publication, ISM could be a good place for you to experiment and try out.

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“Place is security, space is freedom: we are attached to one and long for the other.”” other.

- Yi-Fu Tuan What were some challenges you faced during the research process?

The main difficulty was teasing out the significance of my research and finding the angle to go about writing my ISM. I had to work closely with my supervisor, Dr Kamalini Ramdas, to negotiate and discuss this process. Throughout the entire process of writing my ISM, my research focus was scrapped four to five times, and that posed a challenge for me as I had to research a different aspect of Chinese dance and Singaporean identity each round.

A second challenge I faced during the research and writing process was that the novel and specialised nature of my research interest meant that there was barely any academia or secondary research on this topic.

As the guidelines for ISM do not permit the use of any primary research, I had to learn to incorporate different parts of existing literature together to synthesise my own research paper.I overcame this challenge by using alternative sources, and not limiting my sources to just Google Scholar and existing papers. I referred to other platforms as well, including existing interviews and National Archives Singapore for historical data on Chinese dance.

As dance geographies is unique, were you able to use what you learnt from prior modules in the research process?

GE2231 (Introduction to Sociocultural Geographies) and GE3241 (Geographies of Social Life) helped me significantly in crafting my ISM and in the writing process as I managed to utilise and apply the concepts learnt in these prior modules into my research on dance geographies. One instance would be adopting the concept of hybrid space that I learnt from GE2231 and applying it to Chinese dance in Singapore to see how dance is actually a hybrid space which is constantly changing. By amalgamating that Singaporean identity along with the longstanding tradition of Chinese dance in Singapore, it creates a new identity and culture that varies temporally across the sociospatial dialectics.

What were your key takeaways from the process of doing an ISM? Firstly, I learnt to be very resourceful because when you face limitations like a lack of secondary research, you need to look to other areas and platforms where you can garner these resources. Another thing that I have learnt from this process is having the persistence and courage to charge on even though it might not seem to work out at first.

Secondly, prior to doing an ISM on Chinese dance, I was focused on the technical side of performing Chinese dance, and less about the significance of doing it. Through this ISM, I learnt about the hybridity and distinctiveness of Singaporean-Chinese identities and how Chinese dance represents the grey area that Singaporean-Chinese identity finds itself in – having to progress with the modernity that comes with globalisation while retaining

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its traditional cultural roots. Seeing these historical processes and learning about how Chinese dance could be academised was a key takeaway for me. This also changed my perspective of how I would approach or choreograph Chinese dance pieces in the future.

What advice would you give to students who are considering undertaking an ISM? Ideally, passion and interest would be a good place to start. If you are interested and passionate about a topic, regardless of what obstacle you may face, you will have the motivation to work through it. Lastly, remember to be open-minded and adaptable to new concepts or ideas that you might discover along the way!

Jia Hui’s findings has influenced the way she choreographs and performs her Chinese dance pieces

About the Independent Studies Module (ISM): GE4660: Independent Study is where students get the chance to academise and explore a particular topic that they are interested in with more depth. Students are also are allowed to pursue an ISM with their Honours Thesis (HT) supervisor should they withdraw from the HT after taking GE3240: Geographical Research: Developing Ideas. For the ISM, students are required to submit a 4000-word essay on their topic using available secondary research.

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graduate

student’s experien c

WITH LIU WEI TING

e

Weiting’s master’s studies revolves around human-tiger conflict in Sumatra

What does a typical day of being a graduate student look like?

Graduate students have to juggle numerous responsibilities, so a typical day would depend on the roles you have to play. On top of being a graduate student, I was a teaching assistant (TA), and in a week, I would run tutorials and lab sessions, mark the assignments, and work on my own research afterwards. This includes doing my readings, creating questionnaires, and talking to my collaborators.

What do you think of the flexibility in being able to have your own routine and schedule?

I think flexibility is a double-edged sword, and it really depends on how disciplined you are. I must admit that I am not as disciplined in following the schedule I planned for myself.

However, it’s important to remember that graduate studies are not a last-minute race but a journey that spans two years. When things don’t go as planned, it may be a reminder for us to do something that we enjoy, such as exercising, going out into nature, or taking photographs. When it’s time for us to get back to work, we’ll thus be more fulfilled and motivated to continue with the research.

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g e o s phe re Were there any particular experiences or reasons that made you decide to pursue a master’s degree?

The decision to pursue a Master’s degree was influenced by my Honours Thesis (HT). For Geography undergraduates, we begin on our HT in Year 3 with reading the module GE3240 (Geographical Research: Developing Ideas), and we eventually submit our HT by the end of Semester 1 of Year 4. My HT focused on human-wildlife conflict and interactions in Singapore and I became more determined to pursue the topic at the graduate level after talking to people and understanding their perceptions of wildlife.

Currently, most of the research is done from the biologists’ point of view, which focuses on conserving the wildlife and animals, but we also have to be aware of the people who are affected by the animals as well. In my case, my purpose was to find out and bridge the

gap between the animal scientists, biologists, ecologists, and social scientists. The emphasis of my research is geared towards people who are more disadvantaged, or have had their lives threatened by wildlife. Hence, my focus shifted to Sumatra, where natives have been killed by tigers before. Although there may be natives who appreciate tigers, the kind of experiences or stories told about tigers have led natives to be defensive against tigers if they are in the village. I am hence interested in understanding more from the natives’ point of view.

What advice would you give to students who may be thinking about pursuing a master’s degree or a HT, but are unsure of the commitments?

I think the most important thing would be your interest in the subject, as this allows you to carry through with working on the research over an extended period. Secondly,

Weiting attending field school in January 2020 42 | Stages

the s pa c e be tw e e n an important thing to keep in mind is that research isn’t easy. You must be very disciplined and motivated as doing a HT doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll have more time to work on other things. You have to set a huge amount of time into doing background research, crafting out your methodology, and finding out what are the best methods that would give you the most relevant results. In short, you’ll need interest, motivation, and discipline. Don’t be afraid to start on this new project because at the end of the day, you will feel that sense of achievement in completing your thesis with the help of your friends and professors.

There’s something that’s very satisfying about having created your own publication.

As you were deciding to pursue a master’s degree, were there moments when you felt unsure of your decisions as other batchmates entered the workforce?

While I’m currently in my second year of masters, most of my friends have been in the industry for two years, thus our conversations would revolve around what they have learnt in the working world as well as their future plans. Personally, this master’s journey and Geography education has allowed me to see things differently and be more critical and observant of the issues around us. Ultimately, I do appreciate my time as a master’s student; I think this journey is very fulfilling and something that I would look back fondly on.

About Postgraduate Studies: NUS offers 3 types of graduate programmes. Graduate diplomas allow students to receive professional training in a specific niche without having to commit to longer-term further studies. Master’s degrees train students to a high level of expertise in an area of professional practice and also serves as a precursor to doctoral training. Finally, doctoral degrees are primarily research-based and equip students with the skills to contribute knowledge in their respective fields.

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Photograph by Shawn Lee (Suðuroy, Faroe Islands)

C h a p t e r 4 : Pa t h w a y s When we reach crossroads, feelings of uncertainty regarding the future may cause us to stop in our tracks. As we find ourselves faced with many different pathways, learning about the roads taken by those who went before us can help to quell our fears. Thus, in this section, we shed light on two careers requiring a diverse set of skillsets, ranging from urban studies to Geographic Information Systems.

Centre for Liveable Cities with Michelle Low

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DHI Water & Environment (Singapore) with Desmond Soh

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ALUMNI FEATURE: Michelle Low In this feature, Michelle (class of 2019) relates her experience in her role as a manager at CLC, and her journey in NUS Geography that allowed her to deepen her interests and have a clearer picture of what she would look forward to in a working environment.

Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) seeks to consolidate Singapore’s expertise on sustainable urban development across various industries, government agencies, and academia in order to facilitate the sharing of best practices with cities situated regionally and globally!

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Centre for Liveable Cities 1

What does a typical day at work look like for you?

My role in the International and Advisory team involves working with stakeholders and knowledge partners to curate capability development programmes for foreign city leaders such as governors and mayors. The capability development programmes draw on the Singapore Liveability Framework to share Singapore’s urban developmental experience and other best practices worldwide and most importantly, aim to identify potential solutions to address the challenges faced by other cities.

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During the programme, distinguished urban pioneers would be invited to share the key guiding principles in managing the diverse urban domains (e.g. integrated master planning and development and waste management) and offer advice to city leaders on their urban projects. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been conducting our international programmes virtually, allowing us to connect and share urban knowledge across space.

On that note, what is something you currently enjoy about the work that you do at CLC?

One thing I enjoy is being able to interact with city officials from all over the world as it allows me to understand and hear about some of the urban challenges and their projects to address those issues. Reading CLC’s research publications, such as the Urban System Studies, reminds me not to take the Singapore today for granted as it is the fruit of the hard work of our urban pioneers and leaders.

In addition, I enjoy the dynamic nature of the work at CLC as it offers diverse opportunities to build up one’s skillsets: from networking with city leaders from various regions and cities, to organising capability development programmes, to launching research publications. It is the multifaceted work at CLC that keeps it exciting.

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Michelle with the NUS Geographical Society 52nd Management Committee

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What motivated you to pursue this line of work?

I’ve always been interested in urban and feminist geography since my undergraduate days and enjoyed having discussions on urban trends and theories with professors and peers.

I found theories such as the Right to the City and thinking of alternative urban futures thought-provoking because urban issues are always evolving. Hence, I wanted to embark on a career that allowed me to interact with city leaders, understand the real-life urban challenges that they face, and explore ways to build liveable cities. This led me to apply for an internship at CLC in 2018. As part of the ASEAN Smart Cities Network founding team, I had the opportunity to interact

with city leaders from 25 cities and urban solution providers and explore public-private partnership (PPP) opportunities to address the urban challenges. During this internship, I was exposed to the complexity behind the PPP financing model and the considerations that had to go into place before such partnerships can be materialised. I found the work at CLC meaningful and fulfilling as it’s a knowledge centre that distills key learning points from Singapore’s urban development journey, creates urban knowledge to address emerging urban challenges, and shares best practices with city leaders worldwide.

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How has Geography continued to be relevant in your profession?

Geography is everything! It provides you with a background of factual knowledge, which is extremely helpful because my role requires me to connect with city leaders. Geography has also taught me not to see places and trends in silos, and the importance of analysing the connections and relations between cities.

Analysing phenomena across time and space is something that I have been applying in the course of my work. For instance, when researching on the urban developments of smart city initiatives, it helps to analyse the trends through the years and if there had been

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any recent partnerships or signed agreements that helped to expedite its progress.

Geography has also served as a reminder to me in my work to not categorise cities based on a North-South or a first/third world divide. Geography taught me to reject such simplistic binaries and to look at a certain city through diverse lenses and not just its economic importance. There are many other aspects that make a place special, and there are many best practices that are worthy of sharing with the world.

What advice would you give to current Geography majors?

Diversify your Geography specialisation and be bold in choosing your modules, because you’ll never know what you’re passionate about until you’ve tried it. While technical skill sets such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS) would broaden your career options, don’t feel pressured to take something that does not give you joy. If you are keen to embark on a career in the urban domain, my suggestion would be to first apply for an internship as this would give you a flavour of the work that is done within the organisation and allow you to assess if you are a good fit.

As for graduating students, there are many career options available out there for you so do cast your net wide and don’t lose hope!

You may find a great fit within the public sector, private sector, or within a non-profit organisation. Most importantly, connect and make meaningful friendships with other geographers. I feel that it’s very easy to lose that connection, especially during this pandemic with everything going virtual. It’s the thought that counts, so do check in with your peers regularly, share funny random memes that you have come across, and I promise that you will remember these memories better than the essays you’ve written.

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ALUMNI FEATURE: Desmond Soh In our following feature, Desmond (class of 2020) shares with us his working experience in DHI for the past five months, with his job scope encompassing environmental modelling and environmental impact assessments.

DHI Water and Environment (SG) specialises in projects relating to marine water quality and environment impact assessments.

In addition, they develop solutions to address challenges with regard to the water environment. DHI has collaborated with the Singapore govenment for various development projects in Singapore.

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DHI Water and Environment (SG)

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Could you briefly describe the area of focus for DHI Singapore and your job scope?

DHI deals with land reclamation works and water quality projects. We work closely with a lot of statutory boards in Singapore such as Jurong Town Corporation (JTC), National Parks (NParks), Public Utilities Board (PUB), and Marine Port Authority (MPA).

For example, we monitor the water quality at Jurong Island, specifically the discharge from various factories and manufacturing plants. Aside from that, we also conduct environmental impact assessment of the water environment.

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One of the most interesting projects that I’m a part of uses drones to capture the imagery of the progress of land reclamation.

We use drones because they can take images much more frequently than a satellite. My role is to process these images so that they can subsequently be used for mapping purposes. To help with these assignments, I’m currently receiving training and learning new environmental modelling software.

Could you elaborate on the skills that are needed in your job?

I think that an interest in working with maps and data visualisations is important as that is part of the job scope here. Although coding skills can help to automate certain processes if you have the experience or know-how, they are not necessary as the work is run on built-in software functions. In terms of general skills, my work tends to focus on macro-level things

such as looking at maps. However, there are times when we are required to zoom in to the micro-level details when the processes do not run properly. When this happens, we must dive deeper into the software processes and troubleshoot it, which requires attention to detail and a lot of patience.

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g e o s phe re Was there ever a concern whether this was what you wanted to do?

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I have always wanted to pursue a field directly related to what I studied in Geography and having the opportunity to work beyond the office environment is a bonus. At least 90% of what I learnt is quite specialised, so when it came to the actual job search, I had to compromise a little between going for what I am truly passionate about and what I am capable of. I eventually applied for jobs in other fields where I would be able to apply the

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soft skills that I learned in Geography such as writing and presentation skills, as well as a holistic way of thinking and understanding things. After applying for so many jobs, I have realised that there is really a wide range of available jobs that we as Geography students can do; it’s just a matter of choice.

I’ve seen friends who are in marketing, customer service, financial consulting, and even someone who became a yoga teacher!

What are some tips you may have for prospective and current Geography majors?

Some of us may feel as though we are in a precarious position without a specialised skill set. However, I would like to encourage current students who are studying Geography to pursue your interests, and this might not necessarily be restricted to what you are studying right now. Take the opportunity to venture into something new and gain relevant experiences through personal interests or even internships. For example, during the summer of 2019, I took part in a GIS-related internship in Cambodia and worked with a marine conservation nongovernmental organisation (NGO). The learning experience and exposure gained was very fruitful and fulfilling because I learnt to work in an unfamiliar environment overseas with limited resources. I was able to perform my role as a GIS analyst and helped with other conservation work such as diving and constructing artificial reefs for marine life.

industries. Having said that, it would be good to test the waters before you decide if the job is for you. Overall, even though there’s a lot of noise and distractions around, take heart that your skills and experiences are valued by an employer out there.

In hindsight, I think that these kinds of novel experiences are what employers are interested in. The upside of having a general degree is that it allows us to be more tenacious and adaptable to different Diving opportunities during Desmond’s internship

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NUS Geographical society

NUS Geographical Society executes various projects throughout the course of the year that engages with NUS Geography majors, JC students, and Secondary students. This year, the 55th Management Committee has had to re-think and re-imagine alternative ways of reaching out to our community. In the following pages, we hear from some of the project leaders on how they have adapted and their reflections on carrying out the events digitally.

Photograph by Thanos Pal on Unsplash

Navigating the Pandemic Majors Tea In 2021, we held a hybrid Majors Tea with the theme of “Beyond Space and Time”! The event was hosted via Zoom and in the Earth Lab respectively while also sticking to the safe distancing measures.

Changes were made to the event to adapt to the fluid situation such as giving pre-packed tea/coffee and snacks for our participants instead of providing a buffet. In a similar vein, we were able to transcend the boundaries of space and time and connected with our Alumnus, Mr Kelman Chiang, who is currently based in San Francisco. We greatly benefitted from the experiences and perspectives he shared from having worked in both the public and private sector!

Freshman Immersion Camp & Games Day For the Freshers Immersion Camp (FIC) team, we converted the annual Majors’ Sports Day event to an online Games Day instead after carefully planning and selecting games that would bring about similar amounts of engagement, fun, and teamwork amongst participants. Despite the reduced interaction online, everyone still had their fair share of smiles and laughter which made the effort spent planning worth it!

As for FIC itself, our various sub-committees adapted well to the hybrid meetings - a mix of physical and virtual meetings. We have successfully come up with 3 plans (physical camp, online camp, hybrid camp) for the different scenarios that we may face during the summer. Do look out for more information on our instagram @nusgeogfic!

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55th geographical society UOP x URA & Virtual Field Trip For the first time, NUS Geographical Society x URA Workshops were moved online. The workshops encourage students from secondary schools, junior colleges, and polytechnics to engage with urban planning concepts, with an aim to inculcate critical thinking regarding uniquely Singaporean challenges that we face as a nation. To overcome the difficulties brought about by the pandemic, we kept the activities fun and engaging through games, role playing activities, as well as a virtual tour around Marina Bay!

Geography Challenge The NUS Geography Challenge 2021 (GC 2021) is an annual non-profit Geographycentered competition designed to ignite students’ passion for Geography through a series of creative and exciting activities. Our theme for this year is “Passport to the World: Sustainable Footprints”, which discusses its distinct yet interconnected aspects such as economic sustainability, food sustainability, and climate sustainability. This focus is especially timely in the current context as Singapore seeks to not only tide out the current pandemic in the immediate term, but also thrive in the longer term.

We also rolled out our Major’s Active Learning Programme (MAP). In December, we brought our Geography Majors out on a virtual field trip to Tanjong Pagar using the Instagram livestream function. It was an interesting experience as we hosted the live field trip on the ground, while Dr Kamalini Ramdas offered her input remotely from her office.

Our Majors gained a greater appreciation of Singapore’s multicultural diversity and urban planning which simultaneously maximises land productivity while conserving our built heritage.

This will also be our first ever hybrid GC conducted with the Preliminary Rounds and Geo Trail being held fully online and the Grand Finals featuring the finalists will be livestreamed straight from the Ministry of Education Headquarters (Grange Road).

What’s for sure is that no matter the circumstances, the GC team is committed to bring you the same level of enjoyment and appreciation of Geography through our aforementioned events!

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g e o s phe re Geosphere The Space Between would not have been possible without the help of the following people: STAFF & STUDENT ADVISORS Dr Carl Grundy-Warr and Dr Menusha De Silva Senior Lecturer, National University of Singapore Lecturer, National University of Singapore Muhammad Khairul Fikri Bin Shaharuddin Undergraduate, National University of Singapore CONTRIBUTORS Dr Menusha De Silva My Geographical Journey: Dr Menusha De Silva

Liu Weiting Graduate student, National University of Singapore A Graduate Student’s Experience

Dr Carl Grundy-Warr A Pandemic: Hard Lessons in Geographies of Life and Death

Michelle Low Alumna, National University of Singapore Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC)

Dr Yan Yingwei Lecturer, National University of Singapore Volunteered Geographic Information and its Role in Disaster and Crisis Management

Desmond Soh Alumnus, National University of Singapore DHI Water and Environment (SG)

Glenn Yeo Student, Temasek Junior College JC Essay Writing Competition Winning Entry

Gigi Ling Cover Photo of The Space Between (Unsplash)

Willis Lau Undergraduate student, National University of Singapore The First Step: Crummy Shoes and Carbon Footprints Dr Gretchen Christina Coffman Senior Lecturer, National University of Singapore From Roots to Reefs: Supporting Community-based Ecosystem Restoration Around Southeast Asia During COVID-19 Dr Andie Ang President of the Jane Goodall Institute (Singapore) Living in Harmony with Our Wild Neighbours Gordon Oh Undergraduate, National University of Singapore Honours Thesis Ling Jia Hui Undergraduate, National University of Singapore Independent Study Module

PICTURES/ FIGURES/ ILLUSTRATIONS

Goh Rui Ting Director’s Note, Meet the Team Feng Yikang A Pandemic: Hard Lessons in Geographies of Life and Death Dini Aprilia Norvyani; Scuba Zoom; SORCE From Roots to Reefs: Supporting Community-based Ecosystem Restoration Around Southeast Asia During COVID-19 Gordon Oh Section 1: Borders & Section 3: Stages Alvern Mak Section 2: Spheres Shawn Lee Section 4: Pathways

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