Sustainability, community, and… food

By Vince Chong

SMU Office of Research Governance & Administration – Well-planned urban spaces. Edible flora that already flourish in Singapore’s tropical clime and cultures. A community to bring them together.

That in a nutshell is the key objective of SMU’s Nature-Food Futures Learning Precinct project, which involves setting up the eponymous precinct within the university for “hands-on learning and research about native edible plants”. Through this, SMU aims to link together not just its own community of staff and students, but that of neighbouring areas as well. The project thus mobilises the new impact agenda of SMU’s 2030 Strategic Plan especially by “shaping public policy, strengthening social resilience and improving the quality of life in communities”. 

The two-year initiative will also analyse how laws and policies can be shaped to promote such integration, and scale up the growth and use of edible plants. This includes, in the private law space, reviewing green supplier contracts – agreements with gardeners, nurseries, fertiliser vendors, etc. – to see if they might in the future cover the growing and harvesting of native edibles. It will also evaluate laws that govern the use of urban space – for example, rooftops and kerbsides – for growing food.

Nurtured with Singapore’s multi-agency Green Plan 2030 in mind, Nature-Food Futures will be driven by SMU’s Yong Pung How School of Law alongside its Office of Campus Infrastructure and Services (OCIS), and Office of Dean of Students (ODOS). It is also supported by the SG Eco Fund, which is administered by the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment, as the country pursues a sustainable future in the face of climate change.

SMU Associate Professor Michelle Lim, whose work focuses on sustainability law, has been tasked with the project’s legal research but the “really cool thing” about Natures-Futures Learning, she said, is the high level of community engagement over food security that it aims to inspire. Joining her in the project are environment and sustainability experts Ms Pam Wan and Dr Patrick Shi, respectively from ODOS and OCIS.

“The law is one part of it, but what I really like is its city-in-nature approach in wanting to engage communities inside and outside of SMU,” Professor Lim told the Office of Research Governance & Administration (ORGA). SMU’s location in the middle of a concrete jungle like Singapore, she noted, makes it well placed to discover how urban space best facilitates sustainable food growth.

“This is a research project but not one in the traditional sense… the key emphasis is how we bring the community on board, how do we bring faculty and students on board, while addressing this very crucial area of food security alongside Singapore’s Green Plan.”

Planting, learning, discussing

Nature-Food Futures will kick off with small-scale planting on rooftops to “assess the aesthetic and functional impact” of native edibles, its proposal sets out. It will then expand to locations such as road verges and planter boxes in common area and corridors. These will ideally support the planting of roughly 15 types of native edibles such as daun kaduk, gotu kola, sayur manis, lemongrass, pandan, and bamboo orchid, some of which could also replace existing landscaping plants on campus where locations are suitable for growth.

The project aims to attract at least 100 participants including SMU students, staff, and faculty, as well as members of the public who live or work in the vicinity. It hopes to target “30 consistent participants” out of these over two years, and convince at least five F&B tenants on university grounds to adopt the on-campus edibles into their menus.

The tendency for many city planners and researchers is to engineer and force an outcome, Professor Lim said. Nature-Futures Learning takes the simpler approach of letting nature take its own course.

“A lot of plans regarding food security in urban centres involve indoor, multi-storey, energy-intensive environments with ultraviolet lights and humidity controls,” Professor Lim said. 

“For us, we recognise first that it is easy to grow plants here (in tropical Singapore). So, if we grow edible plants that are native and already flourishing here, and we grow them well in the city centre with the community’s help, we have the chance to set a great example that can be replicated across all urbanised parts of the country.”

In fact, she added, plants like daun kaduk are already used widely in Singapore for ornamental purposes. She learnt later from a student that it is also used in Indian cuisine, an exchange that she said underlines the project’s aim “to strengthen and preserve the cultural heritage that is all around us.”

Impact: Integration across levels necessary

Going forward, Nature-Food Futures plans to engage the global research community by publishing at least two journal articles in leading academic publications, and organising no less than five discussions with legal academics and practitioners.

Combining infrastructure development and community engagement with legal research, the proposal states, will help with the development of “grounded and futures-focused sustainability law and policy.”

It also aims to produce course material that can be used in seminars and talks, and facilitate discussions with the industries such as the property sector. For example, Professor Lim said, a mall owner might well be interested in setting up a food garden in the shopping centre.

“This person would want to know what is allowed, what works, how should I draft my contracts with vendors and suppliers,” she explained.

Nature-Food Futures is expected to culminate in a food festival to be held at the relatively new SMU Connexion, a green complex built to bring communities together. It is expected, naturally, to feature food made from the planted edible plants. For such projects to succeed, Professor Lim continued, it is similarly necessary for different parts of the government, as well as industries, to come together. For example, there might be regulations concerning fertilisers and pesticides that clash with the planting of edible plants.  

“We see this across many jurisdictions, not just Singapore, where different sectors and departments are just trying to solve different parts of the same problem,” she said, adding that there “needs to be more of a systems approach where there is not just an understanding of what others are doing but importantly an embrace of the interconnectedness across society and nature.” 

“Our project will hopefully shed more light on how this can work while cementing SMU’s role as a University dedicated to making a positive impact on sustainability and society.” 

Back to Research@SMU February 2026 Issue