This is a First Sustainable Development Strategy for Hong Kong. It identifies issues that will have an impact on the sustainability of Hong kong in three pilot areas: solid waste management, renewable energy and urban living space and sets out 9 strategic objectives for Hong Kong's sustainable development in the three pilot areas. In the sphere of solid waste management, the Document has identified 3 strategic objectives : 1. As a community, to make every effort to avoid generating waste and to reduce the amount of solid waste that needs final disposal; 2. To apply the “user pays” principle as a means of reducing volumes of waste for disposal; 3. To adopt advanced technologies and practices to treat waste requiring final disposal and to create new economic opportunities. Actions towards sustainable solid waste management include: 1. To introduce community programmes to encourage territory-wide separation of waste at source and introduce measures to facilitate household participation; 2. To step up implementation of the polluter-pays principle through the introduction of fiscal measures such as product responsibility schemes and green tax; 3. To examine the introduction of charges for municipal solid waste; etc. The Document further considers that globally, overreliance on burning fuels to produce electricity is a factor in climate change and supplies of oil, gas and coal are being rapidly depleted, it proposes the following strategic objectives in the field of renewable energy: 1. To explain clearly the issue of renewable energy to the wider community, putting this in the context of local and global sustainable development; 2. To have an energy policy that is sustainable in the longer term, and that will set clear goals for the increased use of renewable energy in Hong Kong and promote energy efficiency and conservation. 3. To increase and sustain conservation of energy in order to reduce the growing trend of energy use. In addition, the Document proposes to strengthen the sustainability through urban living space. One of the strategic objectives in the sphere of urban living space is to plan and further develop the New Territories, taking account of stakeholder concerns on sustainability issues such as the need to protect the natural environment and cultural characteristics of rural areas, while having regard to Hong Kong’s long-term socio-economic needs.
中国香港特区 · 2005-01-01