'Regenerative and restorative': Prof Lily Kong on the power of human-environment ties

The president of SMU shares how she has upheld sustainability principles throughout her career.

- By Janice Lim

SMU has the largest on-site solar farm in Singapore's city centre.

(PHOTO: SINGAPORE MANAGEMENT UNIVERSITY)

As the youngest of four children, Lily Kong used to receive hand-me-downs.

While that was largely born out of necessity as her family was poor at the time, it instilled in her lifelong habits of sustainability that she now a professor and president of the Singapore Management University (SMU) continues to practise today.

"My mother was the epitome of recycling," said Prof Kong, who was named Impact Leader of the Year at this year's Sustainability Impact Awards, jointly organised by The Business Times and UOB.

"She would always say: 'Well, you don't need the whole piece of tissue paper, why are you using all of it? Just tear it in half and use what you need.

"And to this day, we still do that. We always recycle things. So our Milo tin would be recycled into a container for our Chinese New Year goodies. These were just everyday practices that I never thought about, never intellectualised in the past, but they've become habits."

In addition to her upbringing, Prof Kong's university years as a geography student further shaped her intellectual understanding of sustainability as being fundamentally about human-environment relationships.

She had read American marine biologist and conservationist Rachel Carson's work, Silent Spring, widely considered a seminal work of the environmental movement that exposed the dangers of indiscriminate pesticide use to wildlife and human health.

Then there was A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, an American ecologist who argued that humans are part of a larger ecological community and have an ethical responsibility to care for the land.

Besides the environmental aspect, sustainability should also encompass the physical, emotional, mental and financial well-being of human beings, Prof Kong said.