Civil Society

Hong Kong customs have had some success of late in tackling the underground trade of illegal wildlife products, with large shipments of smuggled wildlife goods been intercepted through its ports. Between October 2012 and January 2013, three shipments of ivory tusks were seized by Hong Kong customs. The biggest consignment included 1,209 ivory tusks seized in two containers, arriving from Tanzania and Kenya, worth an estimated USD3.5 million. The line between legal and illegal wildlife products can be blurred and rather confusing in Hong Kong. Firstly, the sale of animal parts is ubiquitous. Crocodile skin, earthworms, seahorses and countless others, are synonymous with their use in traditional medicine.

China’s water resources are increasingly being pitted against economic development, and losing. Water is vital to all aspects of the economy, especially for agricultural and power production, making it a strategic resource. However, China’s position as the world’s factory, and its ‘develop-first clean-up later’ mindset, has resulted in much of its water resources being compromised. This is problematic as the country suffers from a lack of potable water. It has to support 20 percent of the world’s population on only 5 percent of the worlds renewable freshwater and the UN has classified China as one of 13 countries suffering from extreme water shortages.

In his maiden 2013 Policy Address Hong Kong Chief Executive CY Leung announced his intention to create an interdepartmental steering committee to promote green buildings. With buildings accounting for 90 per cent of Hong Kong’s electricity use and 60 per cent of its carbon emissions, this is an important step forward. But without an overarching climate policy or target for Hong Kong, any effort taken by this committee will likely be piecemeal.

Our oceans are the most important ecosystem on the planet. They provide a third of our world with food, produce more oxygen than all the rainforests combined, remove half of the atmosphere’s manmade carbon dioxide and control our planet’s temperature and weather. Individuals and businesses both have a responsibility to protect our precious and delicate ecosystems – as consumers, we can demand more sustainably sourced products; and as businesses, by creating better systems of production and innovating to reduce their impact on the Earth.

At the Climate Change Conference, held in Doha earlier this month, United Nation’s Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on Governments to “accelerate action” to ensure global temperatures do not rise above two degrees Celsius. Beyond this point there is strong consensus in the scientific community that climate change would result in severe human costs through, inter alia, rising sea levels and widespread droughts. As a powerhouse behind the global economy, and as the world’s largest polluter, China, and more specifically its megacities must be at the center of these efforts.