Growing responsibility through public participation in tree planting in Singapore

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In the context of rapid urbanisation and climate change, initiatives like Singapore’s One Million Trees movement offer promising solutions to the challenges facing urban life. Co-production is a key focus in governance reform agendas, emphasising increased citizen participation in shaping their environments. This study explores how co-production manifests and is experienced in Singapore’s context. This article examines the experiential dynamics of public participation in Singapore’s One Million Trees movement, drawing on original empirical results from a survey, semi-structured interviews and journaling with participants in that program. Our analysis highlight’s themes of belonging, responsibility and empowerment while also showing how participants’ desires for ownership and belonging in urban greening processes can sit together uneasily, marking the difference between feeling ‘responsible’ and being ‘responsibilised’. We argue that understanding these tensions are critical for overcoming barriers to participation, internal or personal confliction, and the differences between government and personal values in urban greening.