Abstract

This talk assesses how environmental organisations shape expertise on biodiverse landscapes in Singapore. In 2020, Singapore’s National Parks Board launched the OneMillionTrees campaign, which sought to intensify urban greening efforts in the city. Exploring the entanglements between future orientations, climate advocacy and environmental care, the in-depth investigation explores how various lanscape experts, including park rangers, community gardeners, tour guides, plant farmers and conservationists, envision sustainable urban development. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Singapore’s parks and gradens, the main aim of the research is to gain a better understanding of the shaping of expertise in transitioning into post-fossil societies. Despite their commitment to educating the general public and the younger generation about practical ways of conserving biodiversity, Singapore’s landscape experts have to cope with increased uncertainty about the future of urban forests. Locating the design of multispecies landscapes within regimes of truth-making and practical ethics (e.g. Ong, 2005; Tsing, 2015), the ethnographic study reveals tactics for environmental repair and bottom-up climate activism. Drawing on anthropological perspectives on the Anthropocene (e.g. Hann, 2017; Hornborg, 2017), the talk will primarily portray the environmental advocacy of the Nature Society (Singapore), which was founded in 1954. The organisation has played a central role in documenting the distribution of local animal and plant species through recurring citizen science projects. By and large, its membership has been involved in the conservation of plants and wildlife in urban forests during a subway expansion project and contributed to  the rewildering of various urban landscapes. 

Bio

Christian S. Ritter is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography, Media and Communication at Karlstad University, Sweden. Having conducted long-term fieldwork in Estonia, Ireland, Norway, Singapore, Turkey and the UK, his prime research interests include locative media, contemporary mobilities, cultures of expertise, and tourism. Christian held fellowships at the Centre of Excellence in Media Innovation and Digital Culture, Tallinn University, and in the Department of Social Anthropology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He has been a co-chair of the working group on Migration and Mobility, International Society of Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) since 2023.