Executive Summary
Southeast Asia is one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, yet it is experiencing some of the highest rates of biodiversity loss globally. This decline poses not only ecological risks but also significant economic and social challenges, particularly for countries such as Singapore whose growth depends heavily on manufacturing and global value chains. As Singapore accelerates its transition towards advanced manufacturing, understanding and managing the biodiversity impacts associated with the sector has become increasingly critical. This white paper presents a biodiversity impact assessment of Singapore’s manufacturing sector using the Global Impact Database – Biodiversity (GID Biodiversity). The analysis quantifies and monetises biodiversity impacts across the sector’s full value chain, including upstream suppliers, direct operations, and downstream use of manufactured products.
The results show that Singapore’s manufacturing sector generated an estimated 22 million PDF.ha.yr (Potentially Disappeared Faction of species per hectare per year) of biodiversity loss in 2024, equivalent to approximately US$80.7 billion in monetised impacts across the value chain. This implies that for every US$1 of manufacturing output produced across the value chain, approximately US$0.26 of biodiversity loss is generated. More than 95% of this impact arises from indirect value-chain activities, with downstream operations alone accounting for around 62% of total biodiversity loss. In comparison with the US$1.14 billion in monetised ecosystem service losses generated by the upstream value chain and direct operations of Singapore’s electricity sector (for more details, please refer to the Whitepaper: The Singapore Electricity sector and biodiversity), the manufacturing sector generated approximately US$30.51 billion in monetised ecosystem services within the same value chains, highlighting the larger biodiversity footprint the manufacturing sector.
These findings have clear implications for policymakers and investors. By valuing and monetising the manufacturing sector’s externalities on nature, this whitepaper aims to provide policymakers a tool to have a more integrated profit and loss perspective and focus on the social returns on investments. Existing policy instruments – such as the Energy Efficiency Grant – can be expanded or extended to drive wider adoption of low-carbon and resource-efficient practices across the manufacturing subsectors.
Taken together, this assessment demonstrates that biodiversity loss represents a material, quantifiable externality of Singapore’s manufacturing sector. Integrating biodiversity considerations into industrial, energy, and financing policies will be essential to ensuring that Singapore’s manufacturing growth remains economically resilient while aligning with national and regional sustainability objectives.