24 Hong Kong Environmental NGOs’ Joint Statement

DATE: 26 May 2011 FILED UNDER: Environment, Issues, Press Releases, Publications, Uncategorized

PRESS RELEASE

Hong Kong 26 May 2011 . . . Commemorating the “International Day for Biological Diversity”, 24 environmental NGOs¹ and Civic Exchange launched a Joint Statement today to support the Government’s decision to extend the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to Hong Kong.

The Joint Statement to the Hong Kong SAR Government on the establishment of a Nature Conservation Framework for Hong Kong based on the Convention on Biological Diversity asserts the following 3 points:

We strongly support and applaud the Hong Kong SAR Government’s commitment to include Hong Kong in the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartagena Protocol, and trust that this process will be completed by the end of 2011.
We call on you to develop and implement a comprehensive and robust Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (the Plan) for Hong Kong, based on the framework² and timeline drafted by Civic Exchange and the undersigned organizations.
We call on you to involve the community in the active formulation of this Plan, as encouraged by the Convention, in order to make best use of local expertise and to ensure public support for the Plan’s implementation.

With the growing public concerns over the threats to biodiversity at sites such as Nam Sang Wai and Tai Long Sai Wan, the government is in a much stronger position to take active measures to protect our eco-hotspots. Nevertheless, “the current nature conservation policy is extremely narrow in scope, and within its very narrow remit it has achieved little. As a result we clearly need to start afresh and include key elements such as our fuller protection of the marine environment and reducing our global ecological footprint. If we are to have a world-class policy, the CBD is the only sensible framework to adopt,” said Dr. Andy Cornish, Conservation Director, WWF-Hong Kong.

“The current nature conservation policy falls far short of global standards, and is being actively misused to harm our environment. While both the public and the Government are taking other active conservation measures, these is a clear need for a policy framework aligning Hong Kong with the CBD, and to ensure the full benefits of these new initiatives are realized,” said Mike Kilburn, Environmental Programme Manager, Civic Exchange.

“Regular reporting on the state of biodiversity, and the conservation work to protect and enhance it”, is a key requirement of the CBD process, but no such mechanism exists in Hong Kong right now. A key element of the exercise is an annual review of biodiversity conservation that will be conducted by envNGOs including the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society. The information to be gathered from a wide range of public and expert sources would culminate as an important databank and hopefully to be used as reliable resources for all future EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) processes for development projects.

(1) The 24 envNGOs agreed on the Joint Statement included:

1 BLOOM Association
2 Civic Exchange
3 Conservancy Association
4 Designing Hong Kong
5 Earthwatch Institute
6 Friends of Hoi Ha
7 Friends of Sai Kung
8 Friends of Tai Long Sai Wan
9 Friends of Tai Long Wan
10 Green Lantau Association
11 Green Peace
12 Green Peng Chau Association
13 Green Power
14 Green Sense
15 Greeners Action
16 Hong Kong Entomological Society
17 Hong Kong Shark Foundation
18 Hong Kong Bird Watching Society
19 HKWildlife.net Forum
20 Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society
21 Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden
22 Living Seas
23 Lung Fu Shan Environmental Concern Group
24 Ocean Park Conservation Foundation
25 WWF – Hong Kong

(2) The foundation for the current campaign is a research paper namely Nature Conservation: a new policy framework for Hong Kong. This paper sets out a new strategic framework for nature conservation based on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), to which Hong Kong is expected to become a party in the first quarter of 2011.

The proposed Nature Conservation Framework could be downloaded from the following links:

http://www.civic-exchange.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/NCframework_en.pdf (English)

http://www.civic-exchange.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/NCframework_cn.pdf (Chinese)

Bilingual Joint Statement:

http://www.civic-exchange.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/envNGO_JointStatement.pdf

(1) The 24 envNGOs agreed on the Joint Statement included:

1 BLOOM Association

2 Civic Exchange

3 Conservancy Association

4 Designing Hong Kong

5 Earthwatch Institute

6 Friends of Hoi Ha