This announcement followed President Tony Tan Keng Yam's visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew on Friday morning. At the gardens, Dr Tan viewed landscape and plant paintings of Singapore by the prolific English botanical artist Marianne North during her travels around the world.
Kew and the Singapore Botanic Garden began collaborating from as early as 1875. In 1877, a batch of Para Rubber seedlings was sent from Kew to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The seedlings were grown and eventually dispersed throughout the region, sparking a "rubber revolution" in Southeast Asia.
Today, both gardens collaborate regularly on multinational projects - with common interests in plant diversity and the conservation of Southeast Asian tropics. Kew also assisted with Singapore's bid to get Singapore Botanic Gardens recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site by providing valuable material from their archives.
MFA said both countries remain committed to achieve a new agreement in Paris in 2015, with the goal of keeping the global average temperature rise within 2°C of pre-industrial levels. It said the agreement should be an inclusive one which allows all nations to make a responsible contribution to tackling the climate change challenge.
President Tan also paid a visit to Lloyd's of London and had lunch with representatives of the insurance giant. Singapore is Lloyd's second global trading hub and houses Lloyd's Asia - the largest direct insurer in Singapore.
