In reviewing the government's performance in conservation and the environment over the past year, I will resist the temptation to make a list of successes and failures. The seriousness of some of the problems we are facing requires us to move beyond that. In the face of many pressing conservation and environmental issues, the government has responded with platitudes, complacency, ignorance or incomprehension, acceptance of second-rate solutions and inadequate or bad policy.
That sounds harsh, but a couple of examples will make the case. Air pollution is the principal environmental issue in the minds of the public, but Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen plainly does not see it as a major problem. He denies a link between bad visibility and poor air quality. In the negotiations over the new scheme of control for Hong Kong's power companies, the administration - in a novel use of market incentive - is proposing a lower rate of return for investment in equipment that limits emissions.
Emissions from vehicles account for 25 per cent of our overall air pollution, but it makes a much higher contribution to the bad air that we actually breathe at roadside. The government seems to feel that it has cracked this one by converting taxis to LPG and offering low-sulfur diesel, while merrily building ever more roads and increasing overall traffic.
Hong Kong's most pressing conservation issue is our marine environment: our fisheries have collapsed and our marine ecosystems have been decimated by overfishing and the destructive effects of bottom trawling, as pointed out by a major government-commissioned report in 1998. Hardly anything has been done since then to address the problem, apart from interminable consultations and committees and some expensive artificial reef and re-stocking exercises, which have had questionable results. The latest government response is to establish yet another committee - on sustainable fisheries - from which major stakeholders and acknowledged experts have been excluded. Its recommendations are due in 18 months.
By the time the recommendations have been argued, policies drafted and the Legislative Council's approval obtained, it will be 2009 - over 10 years after a report which warned about the 'critical state' of our fisheries. I tremble to think what there will be left to save.
I could relate similar tales of woe in many other areas: sewage treatment, the despoliation of rural areas, the inadequacy of the government's so-called conservation policy and so on.
What is going on? Many of our senior government ministers are drawn from a cadre of civil servants who have spent their careers pursuing a development model that was driven by the need for rapid urbanisation and large infrastructure projects. This model was made necessary by the rapid growth of the population and economy, and its success cannot be denied. The pressures of urbanisation were so overwhelming that we could not afford to be overly sentimental about conservation or the environment. Conservation was perceived as a luxury, and spending on conservation a 'sunk cost' - in no way comparable to spending on a new road or flyover. The environmental impacts of economic activity were to be mitigated on an ad hoc basis, with a strict eye on the costs and benefits. All this was in many ways understandable, in the context of those times.