[Plenary Discussion] Regen Asia Summit - National University of Singapore

On July 4-5, 2026, I participated in the Regen Asia Summit at the National Univeristy of Singapore (NUS) and joined a plenary discussion titled "Ouroboros: Decay, Collapse, and Renewal in Regenerative Systems" on the second day. The panel included Thiri Dawei Aung, Executive Director, Biodiversity And Nature Conservation Association (BANCA) in Myanmar, Farah H. Sanwari, Co-founder, FiTree and The Futures Collective in Singapore, and moderated by F. Merlin Franco, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, Institute of Asian Studies, University of Brunei Darussalam. 

Below are some of the notes that I shared during the one-hour discussion attended by several hundred students across Southeast Asia: 

On regeneration 

Breakdowns, crisis, sometimes forces upon us the recognition that things can be otherwise. The pandemic, for example, illustrating how remote work, online classes, and so on is actual possible, thereby serving as a transformative moment for how we work. In my own field of public health, the withdrawal from development and global health s forcing us deep rethinking.

But at a more fundamental, if we are to regenerate, we have to rethink the hidden assumptions in our societies, the things we take for granted, and we can begin doing this by rethinking basic concepts like “nature”, “development”, “native”, “indigenous”, “normal”, “ideal”, “traditional”. 

One important concept to question is notion of what is “natural”, as opposed to what is “cultural”. Humans have always been tinkering with the environment. The cherry blossoms you see in Japan are products of hundreds of years of cultivation and almost all of the sakura trees around the world came from just four trees in Ueno Park, in Tokyo. What country in ASEAN has the spiciest foods? Many Asian countries are proud of their spicy food, but chili peppers came to this region only in the 16th century, as part of Colombian exchange. Many of us eat rice, but even rice-eating is not “natural”; especially eating rice three meals a day. Our communities, especially our communities, have a had of food diversity and root crops used to form much. The moment we started to eat rice, we surrendered our food sovereignty at the family level, and pushed us to a cash-based economy, relying on social and political organizations. 

Once we realize that nothing is truly “natural”, and the nature of humanity is change, then it opens up possibilities for imaging a different future. 

On coping with grief 

As a medical doctor, I have seen so many people die, and it's one of the most challenging. As much as we want to think of life is circular, death imposes a kind of linearity to life - and a seeming end to it.

One of the things I’m most proud is one when I was mustered enough courage to tell the family that. 


This is where the arts and the humanities come in, to allow us to make sense, for us to share in the collective of humanity. There is power in solidarity, which is rooted in empathy.  

I was in Boston in the October 7 attacks in Israel 2023 and the ensuing War on Gaza, and I happened to be watching a concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra a few days later. I would like to read out what I wrote that day: 

Before playing “Cello Concerto No. 2” he spoke about the year of its composition—1966—as being at the height of the Cold War; he recounted how Shostakovich used his music to challenge Joseph Stalin and his idea that “a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.” He then invited the audience to listen to the music in the same terms with which he committed to perform it: as a way of speaking truth to power.

He then launched into an emotional performance of the concerto. During the performance, some of the musicians were visibly in tears, as the cello’s music—at times screeching, at times mournful, never dying—became the personification of the human spirit amid the fearsome percussions that became, at least to me, as though the reverberations of gun and rocket fire. When the final strum of the cello lapsed into silence, the audience burst not so much with rapturous applause, but with a somber appreciation for such a profound performance.

So music, and various forms of art, and offer us a sense of solidarity and empathy; a realization of our shared humanity. 

Societies that have embraced cyclical time hold intimacy with nature, and this is another way for us to cope with the changes in life. Today, we are seeing what  some scientists have called “extinction of experience”. How many species do we interact with everyday? Being immersed in the rhythms and cycles of life gives us a different perspectives by which to see ourselves and the changes, crises we face.