Environmental impact assessment in Hong Kong: a comparison study and lessons learnt

Abstract

a department of civil and environmental engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-champaign, Urbana, Il, Usa; b department of Building and real estate, the Hong Kong polytechnic University, Hong Kong, china; c school of construction management and real estate, the chongqing University, chongqing, china ABSTRACT Although many studies in developed countries on the practice of EIA have been conducted, there is a lack of similar attention in Hong Kong. This gap in knowledge is addressed in this study which summarises and records the current practice and lessons learned from priority projects. In the case of Hong Kong, this lack of understanding is important, since a significant number of infrastructure projects with applications pending for environmental approvals were delayed, awaiting the court ruling of the judicial review. In this research, the EIA system and practices in Hong Kong were comprehensively reviewed by a comparison study between Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. Then field work of interviews with professionals and focus group meetings with Green Groups were conducted to seek opinions of interviewees and members about the mechanism of EIA. Recommendations on aspects of EIA systems are provided at the end of the paper.

Do the Environmental Approval Conditions Enable the Best Practice EIA Follow-up and Hence Strengthen the EIA System? An Indian Case Study Analysis

“…The focus of the EC conditions appears to be more on compliance with the regulatory requirements than on meeting the objectives of the EIA [13,27] . On the lines of the environmental permits granted in Hong Kong [20] , the EC conditions should effectively bind project proponents to implement the well prepared and documented mitigation measures to prevent environmental issues. In addition to highlights of the project and location-related details for land, water, solid waste, and wastewater, the EC letters for the projects could be consistently enriched with the highlights of pre-project land use/land cover, designated ESA, flora and fauna-related concern, project affected population, realistic employment potential, the concern raised in the public consultation process, etc.…”

“…There is a general understanding in Hong Kong that the permit conditions effectively bind project proponents to implement the agreed mitigation measures to prevent environmental issues [20] . The conditions prescribed to project proponents in 801 documents to perform ex-ante and ex-post monitoring of potential impacts described in the EIA reports were characterized [21] and it was concluded that post-project monitoring remained a challenge.…”