Strategic Environmental Assessment: Where does Hong Kong stand?

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Strategic Environmental Assessment Where does
Hong Kong stand?

• LAM Kin Che
• Chairman, Advisory Council on the Environment
• Head, Department of Geography and Resource
  Management, CUHK

Workshop on Strategic Environmental Assessment
18 June 2005
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The Whole World is on SEA

• EU directive (2001)
• China EIA Law (2002)
• World Bank
• UNEP
• IAIA Prague SEA Workshop

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The Whole World is on SEA

• SEA is good and necessary
• Solution to limitations of project based EIAs
• Effective, relevant and accountable
• Towards sustainability

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Hong Kong Cant Do Without SEA

• Hong Kong 2030 Planning Study
• Lantau Concept Plan
• Air quality in PRD
• HK has a long way to go!

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Challenges Opportunities

• Aspiration for quality of life
• Builds on experiences
• Territorial Development Strategy Review
• 3rd Comprehensive Transport Study
• 2nd Railway Development Study
• World Bank Training Workshop in China
• Mainland China SEA is embedded in EIA Law 2002

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Need for SEA in Hong Kong

• To address unresolved environmental issues
• Regional problems
• Cross sectoral issues

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(Ming Pao, 26 Jan 2004)
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Need of SEA for Hong Kong

• To address unresolved environmental issues
• Regional problems
• Cross sectoral issues
• Changing role of HK in PRD
• Manufacturing base or service centre
• Tourism and eco-tourism
• World City global citizen

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Expectations of the EA Process
Project Appraisal
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Need for SEA in Hong Kong

• Addressing limitations of project EIA
• Cumulative impacts
• Comprehensive view of developments
• Development options and alternatives
• Towards sustainability, better governance and
  more coherent policies

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Hurdles and Constraints

• Institution Building
• Transboundary collaboration
• Cross-sectoral Bureaux and Secretaries
• Greater public participation and transparency
• Ownership
• Stakeholders to buy in
• Capacity Building
• Practitioners
• Public
• Methodology
• SEA Follow-up
• QA/QC

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Hurdles and Constraints

• Public Participation / Empowerment
• Public engagement strategy
• Early
• Reach out to all sectors
• Enable the public
• Make the public your free consultants

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Hurdles and Constraints

• Transparency
• Sustainability paragraph in EXCO papers
• CASET
• Assumptions
• Clarification of values (hidden) and trade-offs
• How much the public is informed of the advice
  from the environmental and sustainability
  perspectives?

The sustainability assessment should be conducted
at the early planning stage of a proposal. It
should help scope out cross-sectoral issues and
sensitive areas that require special attention or
joint departmental examination at an early stage.
It should also facilitate the relevant Bureaux or
Departments to resolve the issues through a
concerted effort. With effect from April 2002,
include in their submissions to the Executive
Council (ExCo) and/or the Chief Secretary's
Committee (now the Policy Committee) the
sustainability assessment findings or results of
their proposals. Extracted fron SDU webpage
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The Weakest Link Buying-in

• Resistance
• Political complexity
• Fear of power sharing
• Difference mode of governance
• Bad experience of public consultation

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Ideology of Governance
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The Weakest Link Buying-in

• How to win their support?
• Address some bad public participation
  experience
• Let them see the positive side
• Early buy-in gt less resistance and greater
  certainty in project planning
• Good for the society, good for the government

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Conclusion

• The whole world is on SEA
• There is a strong case for SEA in HK
• Hong Kong has considerable experience
• We still have a long way to go
• Institution building, capacity building, public
  engagement, increasing transparency
• Key stakeholders must buy in
• We cannot afford not to do SEA

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THANK YOU!