The Hong Kong consumerism culture is at the heart of the city’s ongoing plastic pollution problem. Hong Kong’s beaches and waterways are drowning in plastic and nearly 6,000 marine species are now considered endangered. Hongkongers’ Christmas spending sprees significantly add up to the city’s monumental waste crisis, a year-round problem. In this article, two important questions will be addressed. How can Hongkongers avoid generating excess amounts of plastic waste from buying gifts during Christmas? And, more importantly, how can businesses, consumers, and the government work together to create a circular economy where plastics can be processed in ways that do not harm the environment?

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It’s The Most Wasteful Time of the Year

With Christmas just around the corner, we’re all already thinking about how we are going to prepare for the most joyful festival of the year. This is also a time of giving; as the hectic year comes to an end, it is the ideal time to reward ourselves and our loved ones with presents.

Unfortunately, Christmas is also one of the most wasteful times of the year. According to a study, global waste levels increase by around 30% during this period. While figures may vary from country to country depending on how important they view the holiday, Hong Kong definitely has one of the world’s most festive and grand Christmas celebrations.

One need not think too hard to know how wasteful Christmas can be in Hong Kong. People have long criticised yearly Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations for the abysmal amounts of waste that they create as a result of excess packaging of mooncakes and the enormous interest in single-use glow sticks. While Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations may last for days, the Christmas season lasts for weeks, even months. As a result, it is not surprising to see how much waste we generate during Christmas, as festive lights and decorations are sent directly to landfills while artificial Christmas trees are dumped on the side of streets.

According to a 2015 survey by HK-based charity GreenPower, about 5 tonnes of waste were once collected on Christmas Eve in Tsim Sha Tsui alone, which occupies less than 0.1% of Hong Kong’s landmass. They also suggest that “if every person in Hong Kong was to give one thoroughly-wrapped present, 138 tonnes of wrapping paper would be used, requiring 2,400 tress and 240,000 litres of petroleum as raw materials.”

Nobody wants to be a killjoy during Christmas; to bring up an existential discussion about Hong Kong’s plastic waste problem out of nowhere is no fun. But since there is still some time until official celebrations begin, it’s better to be a party pooper now than later.

The Plastic Waste Problem Is a Cultural Problem

While these “extravagant” Christmas numbers are expected, Hongkongers are known to be lavish spenders all year round. According to a 2017 study, Hong Kong consumerism and spending habits are among the unhealthiest in the world. Even though the pandemic has led to a slight drop in consumption, the city has already “resiliently” bounced back, as people have also turned to online retail. As David Dodwell, executive director of the Hong Kong-APEC Trade Policy Study Group, rightly points out, Hongkongers are without exaggeration deserving of the label “shopaholics”.

And with excessive consumption comes excessive waste. It is therefore no surprise that Hong Kong’s landfills grow so rapidly. According to the Environmental Protection Department, more than 10 thousand tonnes of waste are dumped every day. That’s the equivalent of about 1.5 kg per person; and 21% of this waste is plastic, a huge proportion of which is not recyclable. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Hongkongers threw away about 3.9 billion disposable food and drink containers every year. In 2020, these figures have continued to grow at exponential rates, as people have increasingly relied on food takeaway options, which often involve using plastic boxes and cutlery. Hong Kong’s move toward online retail also worsens the problem, as products purchased online are often over-packaged in plastic.

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The Dangers of Hong Kong Consumerism 

The wasteful impacts of Hong Kong consumerism go a long way.

When in landfills, plastics release toxic chemicals and gases into the air. This can dramatically affect local biodiversity, especially when landfill sites in Hong Kong are primarily situated in the countryside. Moreover, huge quantities of plastic waste make their way into the ocean, destroying habitats and representing a huge danger to marine animals. The city‘s beaches and waterways are drowning in plastic, and microplastic levels in the sea are 40% higher than the global average.

According to a research conducted by the Education University of Hong Kong between 2017 and 2018, more than 3,000 pieces of microplastic can be found in every square metre of sea, one of the highest rates in the world. This and other environmental issues, coupled with poor conservation efforts and low environmental awareness among the public, are the reason why Hong Kong missed the United Nations’ Aichi Targets that are intended to curb biodiversity loss and the destruction of nature, as a report found last year.

Humans can also be affected, even if they are nowhere near locations with concentrated amounts of plastic waste. Exposure to the gases released from plastics can cause respiratory problems such as asthma, as a study on Hong Kong found. Moreover, when plastic containers are exposed to high temperatures (such as during Hong Kong’s hot summers), particles can leach into our foods and drinks; if they enter our body, they can be very damaging. Consequences range from hormonal disruption to developmental delays and even cancer.

But if the environmental and physical health arguments against irresponsible and wasteful consumption aren’t enough, consider the mental health arguments. As many studies have found, materialistic tendencies are significantly linked to decreased life satisfaction, happiness and quality of relationships. While gifts can certainly make us and our loved ones happier, an unhealthy focus on possessions can distract us from the meaningfulness of personal relationships. In wanting more, we can never be satisfied with what we already have. This has been found to lead to depression, anxiety and other mental health problems.

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Rethinking Gifts in An Age of Consumerism

There are plenty of resources out there that offer useful eco-friendly strategies for celebrating Christmas and choosing greener gifts in Hong Kong. They show that spending on gifts on our loved ones and protecting the environment need not be a zero-sum game. 

But these strategies may not do much to combat plastic waste pollution if Hong Kong consumerism and our exorbitant lifestyles remain the same. Instead, this would only results in what some have referred to as “green materialism”. What we need is a fundamental re-examination of our consumption habits.

It is therefore important that we rethink the meaning of gifts. Key to this is a recognition that human desires are never-ending and can never be fully satisfied. If giving was done purely out of gratification, we would find ourselves giving all the time; not only would we run out of money, gifts would also lose their meaning and value. To reclaim the meaning of gifts, we should instead focus on making every gift memorable and precious. We give gifts not just because they are demanded, but because we want our receivers to feel our special love and care.

This is why giving should not be a routine but a wonder. We may hence find ourselves giving less; not because we are selfish, but because we take whom we give seriously: they are not “errands” to be run, but relationships that we treasure.

Giving less is also a simple way to show our love and care to the environment. As evidence shows, buying less has significantly more positive environmental implications than “green buying”, with the major reason being that it reduces one’s footprint and waste more effectively. The broader implication is that not only should we give less, but we should buy less in general. This does not mean we should not stop giving; it means that we should be more mindful of the consequences of our own purchases.

At the same time, consuming less encourages us to consume higher-quality items that last longer. And when we get better quality experiences out of our purchases, we will also feel happier. Given Hong Kong’s well-known lavish spending habits, a slight reduction in Hongkongers’ existing levels of consumption will far from become a “repression” of individual desires.

As there is still some time until Christmas, let’s start rethinking about the purpose of giving. What gifts should we get? Where best can we get them? How much should we get?

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Consumers Are Not the Only Ones to Blame

It is encouraging to see that consumers’ preferences are increasingly shaped by environmental concerns. Many now prefer sustainable brands and often show distaste in the fact that their purchases are too often heavily coated in single-use plastic packaging. This is a trend that is even more apparent in Asian countries.

But this demand shift in mentality has not forced producers to look for better alternatives. As June Wong, lead research on marine plastics at the World Wide Fund for Nature in Hong Kong, explains, inertia on the supply side is so prevalent for the very fact that plastic is a significantly cheaper and more convenient option.

This is reinforced by the fact that Hong Kong’s producer responsibility schemes (PRS) are still significantly underdeveloped with regard to plastic waste management: beverage suppliers are the only group required by law to pay for collection and recycling of their plastic bottles, meaning that Hong Kong’s other culprits such as online retail stores continue to run unencumbered. There is little to no incentive for the majority of companies in Hong Kong to be more eco-friendly in their production.

What Do We As a Society Need to Do to Help Reduce Our Plastic Pollution?

To tackle Hong Kong consumerism and the plastic waste problem seriously, we should consider how producers, consumers and collectors can collaborate to create a more robust recycling infrastructure for plastics and other kinds of municipal waste. Collectively, they can help create a circular economy where plastic components and products are designed, packaged, consumed and treated in ways that minimise leakage of plastics into the natural environment.

On the production side of things, Hong Kong needs a more comprehensive strategy to regulate and strengthen suppliers’ commitment  to “plastic footprint” reduction. In this regard, the government will need to be way more ambitious with its producer responsibility schemes: by implementing pre-market producer responsibility schemes (PPRS), as they require producers to revamp their business models to consider adequately not only the end-of-life of plastics but also their entire life cycle.

With regard to consumers, the government can consider methods to encourage responsible disposal of plastics after consumption. Some have suggested that Hong Kong look to Norway’s deposit return system (DRS) as an example: a customer deposit is required when they buy an item packaged in a single-use plastic container; they can only receive the deposit when the container is returned. This way customers may be incentivised to recycle or think twice before buying an item.

Consumers also have active roles to play: strong awareness can pressurise producers to use less plastics in their manufacturing processes. In many places, public pressure has indeed forced companies to ditch plastics; it’s about time Hongkongers do the same.

These initiatives, however, depend crucially on collection: if recyclable plastics are not collected properly – which has been the case in Hong Kong – then all the aforementioned efforts will go to waste. In Hong Kong, this needs to be taken seriously. Firstly, Hongkongers’ “plastic literacy” requires drastic improvements: What kinds of plastics can be recycled in Hong Kong? How should we clean or sort different types of plastics so that they won’t just end up in the landfill? In turn, Hongkongers may also become more conscious consumers to consider other important questions; for example, what products or brands might enhance the recovery rate of plastics? 

Consequently, accessibility to recycling points also needs to improve. This involves increasing the number of collection points in Hong Kong, as well as improving access to information about their locations and purposes. How many people in Hong Kong actually know about the government’s “Reverse Vending Machines” today?

Altogether, the solution to Hong Kong consumerism and monumental waste problem is not to turn away from plastic – as plastic does have its environmental benefits. Instead, the solution is to be more attentive to the consequences when plastics are being involved. Together, we can make Hong Kong a plastic smart city. Of course everybody wants Christmas to be enjoyable – but we don’t want it to be the only season to be jolly. Since we still have a bit of time, let us think about how we can prepare for a more eco-friendly festivity.

Featured image by johnlsl/Flickr

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The post Hong Kong Consumerism and Plastic Waste: Give More by Giving Less This Christmas appeared first on Earth.Org.

Would Hongkongers entertain the idea of a bike-friendly Hong Kong? A couple of years ago, one writer opined that it would be “unlikely.” This is not an unjustified conclusion given that Hong Kong’s narrow roads and congested car lanes leave little space for bike lanes. Added to that, cyclists would have to navigate through hazardous traffic while inhaling exhaust fumes. Furthermore, the convenience and efficiency of Hong Kong’s public transport system make the prospect of biking less appealing. In part two of our two-part series on Hong Kong’s bike-friendliness, Curtis Lam takes a look at the legitimacy of concerns over promoting the use of bicycles and explores how well Hong Kong is positioned to alleviate them.

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Bike-friendliness refers to practices, policies, infrastructures and cultures that promote safe and effective cycling as a mode of daily transportation. It focuses on the overall traffic conditions, facilities, networks and systems that allow cyclists to commute safely alongside other forms of transportation like cars, buses, trams, and trucks.

Since Covid-19, governments have been rethinking their approaches to urban design. Consequently, about 400 cities, states and countries have reallocated spaces for people to cycle and walk more easily, efficiently and safely. Today, this shift is still happening. This is largely due to the realisation of well-evidenced benefits of bike-friendliness for cities, the nature of which can be broadly divided into four different categories: Health benefits, ecological benefits, spatial and mobility benefits, and finally, economic benefits.

Despite the overwhelming evidence supporting the case for bike-friendliness, there still appears to be reluctance to fully embrace its implications on Hong Kong’s roads. Ranking 84th out of 90 cities on “bike-friendliness”, it is clear that it is not really on the government’s agenda for Hong Kong to embrace cycling even as a legitimate mode of transportation. Of course, there are factors that are beyond its control (like weather) but that is arguably only a small part of the equation.

Hongkongers are probably just as uninterested in the idea of cycling becoming a mode of transport but this might not necessarily be due to doubts about the credibility or validity of the evidence on bike-friendliness (given continued interest in cycling as a recreational activity in Hong Kong) but rather reservations about the generalisability of such findings to Hong Kong. They may apply to Europe, the US and other parts of Asia, but will they apply here?

Fair or Not? Hong Kong’s Aversion Toward Bikes

A number of questions have been raised about the utility of bike-friendly infrastructures in Hong Kong. While they are not entirely wrong, it is important to examine carefully what the underlying concerns are and whether those concerns are immovable obstacles or inconveniences that can be remedied. Here, we will try to break down some myths surrounding the (in)feasibility of bike-friendliness in Hong Kong.

1. Hong Kong is too hilly for daily cycling

Most experts suggest that an uphill gradient acceptable for bicycle use should be below 3%. Yet, Hong Kong is known for its extremely mountainous topography. While that may be true, it is arguably only true to a certain extent.

The first (and more obvious) solution to that would be to incentivise the use of e-bikes. Taking up a significant share of the heavy work involved in cycling, e-bikes have been “game-changers” in various parts of Europe, particularly for “less sporty people” and “senior citizens”. Today, e-bikes are banned from most roads in Hong Kong, but with the Transport Department’s recent green light for e-bikes and e-scooters in two areas – Tseung Kwan O and Pak Shek Kok – it seems that the support for their use is growing, both in public and policy circles.

Mechanical elevation systems are another way forward and are used all over Europe and also in parts of South Korea and Japan, despite being notoriously expensive to construct and maintain. Given how much space they take up, there is also literally no room for them in Hong Kong. Despite this downside, they should not necessarily be ruled out if cycling indeed becomes popular in Hong Kong.

There is still at least one more option. In many hilly cities like Lisbon, Brussels, Madrid, and Berlin, apps have been developed to plan and calculate for cyclists the flattest routes possible and thus facilitate cyclists’ navigation experience. Such apps would be very relevant in Hong Kong, and there would be little difficulty introducing them to the city’s roads.

In fact, while Hong Kong’s hilly terrain is no joke, most of the city’s developed areas – 25% of which is the result of reclamation projects – are flat land. In other words, most of the urban areas that Hongkongers use on a day-to-day basis are suitable for cycling. The challenge is whether they can be made bike-friendly.

2. Hong Kong’s roads are too narrow

Given the limited road space Hong Kong is already suffering from, how are we meant to create additional cycling lanes in Hong Kong?

Cycling lanes need not always be “carved out” of roads and pavements do not necessarily need to be “eaten away” to make space for them. For example, bus lanes can be converted into bus-and-bike lanes while simultaneously acting as buffer zones to help maintain traffic flow. This is a very common urban planning strategy in parts of the UK, especially when there are only two lanes.

The concern about narrow roads is not always about the narrowness of the roads themselves. In some parts of the New Territories, cyclists can simply cycle with cars on the same lane. Rather, it is often the speed of the traffic that matters, as it affects the degree to which cyclists are comfortable turning into a busy road or cutting lanes. This is why adjustments to speed limits are often implemented, and they have indeed done great wonders for cyclists, even when there are no dedicated bike lanes. 

Speed adjustments are not new to Hong Kong. Streets near school zones, residential areas, or hospitals have always been subject to such arrangements for the benefit of road users.

James Ockenden, founder and editor of Transit Jam, a local newspaper dedicated to promoting clean, liveable streets and safe traffic in Hong Kong, argues that the problem is not that roads are too narrow but rather that a lot of our road spaces have been taken away by illegal parking. It is obstruction, rather than narrowness, therefore, that makes cycling such an unattractive option in Hong Kong, Ockenden argues. If such inconsiderate behaviour can be properly discouraged and reduced, Hong Kong’s lanes can indeed accommodate bikes.

Engineer Ranty Highwayman wrote on Twitter: “The street is not too narrow, [our] imagination is.”

3. Hong Kong’s poor air quality and weather deters anyone from wanting to cycle in urban areas

It is commonly argued that cycling to work can free individuals “from the confines of germ-infused buses and trains.” However, Hong Kong’s roads are just as detrimental to our lungs. Being a pedestrian is tough enough; imagine being stuck in traffic without anything to protect you the fumes. This is compounded by the fact that Hong Kong’s hot summers and unpredictable rainfall patterns make cycling a precarious mode of transport.

Researchers have admitted this caveat in the past. One study showed that cycling can increase travellers’ exposure to air pollutants (e.g. road dust, exhaust fumes), while another analysis demonstrated that, as cycling is an active form of transport, higher breathing rates (compared to walking or motorcycling) further increase the inhaled concentration of such harmful particles. Surely the cycling experience in Hong Kong would be just as bleak. However, all is not lost. 

Both studies caution urban planners against simplistic solutions like encouraging cyclists to avoid peak hour travel (which is not enough since pollutants do not just disappear with traffic and are usually suspended in those areas even after peak hours), though they agree that there are simple measures that can help mitigate their effects. One example would be to put more effort into cleaning the roads, such as increasing the frequency of wet sweeping.

In the long run, intelligent design is what makes things possible. For example, bike lanes can be separated from main routes by “green belts” composed of specialised plants to limit dust resuspension. This is not only beneficial for air quality but also for cyclist safety.

Unfortunately, there is no perfect way to protect one against unpredictable rainfall and high temperatures in Hong Kong – and nobody would want to go into an office drenched in sweat or rain. This is why advocates of bike-friendliness know that cars and other forms of public transport are indispensable. However, it really only takes a minute to check the weather conditions to see whether cycling is fine for the day – if not, then the bus is always an option.

Very often, riding a bike creates a natural breeze, even during hot summers. When paired with the right clothing (e.g. bike clothing and raincoats) and accessories (e.g. phone mounts and bike umbrellas), cycling can be a lot more bearable than it seems.

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4. Hong Kong’s existing public transport system is already very well-developed

Hong Kong’s public transport infrastructure is commonly regarded as one of the best in the world. This also raises the question of whether it is cost-effective to create additional infrastructure to support harbour crossing for cycles, which would come with significant construction costs.

There are two main responses to these claims. Firstly, the fact that Hong Kong’s transport systems are advanced and efficient does not necessarily mean they cannot be improved. Both the congestion that drivers experience and the serious overcrowding on public transport (like the MTR) on a daily basis remain serious problems. 

Bike-friendly road designs are one of the many possible solutions available. Cycling offers a range of flexibility benefits. For example, cyclists can manoeuvre through traffic like motorcyclists or switch to walking when necessary, unlike tram or bus passengers who must wait indoors. In situations where cycling alone is not possible, commuters can still rely on bicycles to cover the first or last mile to and from transit stations, like bus stops or MTR stations.

Secondly, even if, after careful assessment, policymakers decide that the construction of overhead cycleways, bike bridges, and tunnels to connect both sides of the harbour is too costly both economically and environmentally, it does not render cycling irrelevant.

Dr. Winnie Tang, professor at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), notes that “over half of Hong Kong Island residents (nearly 360,000 people) work on the island, and one-sixth of employees in Hong Kong work in the same district where they reside.” This means that, even without cross-harbour biking infrastructure in place, many Hongkongers may still benefit from cycling.

Urban planners do not have to worry about low bike lane usage rates in Hong Kong. On the topic of cycling infrastructure in Europe, Veronica Penney, climate reporter for the New York Times, wrote: “If you build it, they will bike.” A nice-sounding slogan that is also properly backed up by research. One study conducted by the City University of Hong Kong showed that the presence of cycling paths and facilities is positively associated with both commuting cycling and general cycling. In Hong Kong, the new Tseung Kwan O Cross Bay Link is a perfect illustration of this point.

Adding bike-friendly infrastructure does not imply the need to do away with Hong Kong’s existing public transport systems. Instead, its purpose would be to help alleviate the immense burdens currently placed on public transport by providing an extra mobility option for individuals who want to and can afford to have a bit more flexibility in their travels.

5. Hongkongers have no patience for other road users, let alone cyclists

The numbers palpably testify to this exclusion: Between 1998 and 2017, Hong Kong saw an average annual increase rate in cycling injuries of 5.18%, and by 2017, cyclists were more than two times more likely to be involved in traffic crashes than in 1998. 

Compared to other regions, Hong Kong has one of the highest fatality rates for cycling. Road users are just not well enough educated on how to interact safely with cyclists. Similarly, cyclists who are not so familiar with road usage guidelines might indeed pose a threat to drivers, for example, if they do not know how to signal turns or when they intend to slow down.

Our road systems have been primarily designed to cater to motor vehicles, which has resulted in drivers feeling a sense of entitlement to “own” the road. Unfortunately, this has led to a perception among some that cyclists are intruders rather than legitimate users of public roads, despite the government explicitly acknowledging that “a cycle is regarded as a vehicle.” Consequently, cyclists are frequently expected to yield to drivers, and their safety is often overlooked.

While Hong Kong’s entrenched “bike-averse” culture and bad driving habits may be the hardest to tackle out of all the concerns mentioned thus far, how do we get a whole city to relearn her transport culture? Road safety campaigns have always been here, but how can they be more effective?

It is often said that meaningful and genuine transformation of culture must occur before structures can be changed. However, cultural shifts can also occur as a result of behavioural shifts. This can be achieved by “manipulating” driver biases through micro-adjustments to the way roads are viewed and used, which gradually re-engineer the attitudes and tendencies of road users. For instance, painting eye-catching markings such as zigzag lines at junctions that progressively get narrower to create the illusion of speeding up can prompt drivers to slow down and resist the temptation to run red or amber lights. Such effects have been shown to persist over time, even after the markings are removed.

In fact, many of the desired outcomes can be achieved through simple measures such as adding road signs, changing road markings, implementing speed limits, adjusting traffic light timings, establishing part-time cycling zones (similar to pedestrian schemes), and, in some cases, converting two-way roads into one-way roads. These changes can be made without the need for large sums of money or the mobilisation of hordes of bulldozers or dump trucks to dig up and rebuild all of our roads from scratch.

Adding bike-friendly infrastructure would help alleviate the immense burdens currently placed on public transport by providing an extra mobility option for individuals who want to and can afford to have a bit more flexibility in their travels. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Promoting Bicycle Urbanism: Just Like Making Friends

As writer Charlie Sorrel puts it: “Bike lanes don’t get really effective unless you build enough of them… Only when there are enough lanes that people can ditch their cars and start commuting by bike do things really change for the better.”

Just like making friends, bike-friendliness needs more than just surface-level popularity to truly take off. What is needed is not simply the popularisation of the idea of bike-friendliness but also a series of strategies and plans to back it up in order for the idea to truly gain proper momentum and crystallise. We can have thousands of followers on social media but we might only consider a select few of them as true friends, because they are the ones who know how to and can actually be there for us when we need them.

Addressing our misconceptions about bike-friendliness does not automatically provide a strong case for incorporating bike-friendly designs into our city, as there are many other concerns and counterarguments that can be made (in particular, ones pertaining to logistics) which are beyond the scope of discussion here. However, it is still possible to notice that some of our worries about cycling as a form of transportation in Hong Kong may have been overstated. Hopefully, this can be a way to revive the conversation about creating a more bike-friendly Hong Kong – it is always better to start somewhere than not at all.

This article is Part 2 of a two-part series on Hong Kong’s bike-friendliness. Check out Part 1: Hong Kong Is Missing Out on ‘Bike-Friendliness’

The post Can Hong Kong Rediscover Its Love for Bicycles? appeared first on Earth.Org.

According to a global survey, Hong Kong is ranked 84th out of 90 cities in terms of “bike-friendliness”. While Hongkongers have not exactly suffered from the failure to encourage cycling as a legitimate form of transport, Hong Kong will likely miss out on many long-term benefits if it continues to be so unfriendly towards bicycles. The time has come for Hong Kong to reconsider its position and give them another chance.

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If one were to hit the streets of Hong Kong and ask the locals about their thoughts on Hong Kong becoming a more bike-friendly city, they would probably receive a lot of indifferent or negative responses, such as “It’s not going to work,” or “It’s too complicated for Hong Kong,” or “It’s not something I care enough about.”

It would be unfair to conclude from this speculation that Hongkongers are inherently bike-unfriendly people. It is more likely that they just do not believe Hong Kong currently has the capacity to become more bike-friendly.

While many Hongkongers may not be enthusiastic about the idea of bike lanes, they are certainly interested in improving the city’s existing traffic infrastructure. It is obvious that chronic problems like traffic congestion, severe roadside, and noise pollution are a major concern for many residents. Even if Hongkongers do not think bike-friendly transport infrastructure is the way forward, demand for improvement is still out there.

Urban planners in Hong Kong have tried to improve the city’s traffic infrastructure without having to dig up kilometres of roads and roadside structures. The popularisation of electric vehicles, both private and public, is one example of these efforts. Another aspect is improving walkability, with walkway and pedestrianisation projects being implemented in different parts of the city, albeit with varying degrees of success.

In addition, the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) network continues to have expansion projects lined up, making it possible for more and more residents to be included in a highly connected, city-wide system. The impressive efficiency and quality of the underground system have no doubt alleviated burdens on the overground transportation network.

But while there is momentum in policy and urban planning circles to make Hong Kong a less car-dependent city, the interest in bike lanes so far remains marginalised. Although share bikes have been introduced in certain areas of Hong Kong, they are mostly intended for leisure purposes and are not considered a serious transportation option.

If Hong Kong is committed to becoming a greener city, then the transformation must involve not simply the redesign of motor vehicles, but also that of local infrastructures along with the cultivation of cultures that encourage alternative and diversified transportation means. If Hongkongers agree with this, then why not give bike-friendly design another thought, before we decide to really nip it in the bud?

What Is Bike-Friendliness?

When urban planners, politicians, scientists, or other experts advocate for bike-friendliness, they are not – or at least should not be – simply advocating for “bikeability”. Just because a city is bikeable (cycling is permissible or possible on a road), it does not automatically mean that it is also bike-friendly (people are encouraged to cycle). They are therefore also calling for the “thriving” of cycling in cities.

Cities should be configured to proactively encourage citizens to “make friends with bikes”. This means embracing the option of cycling as a desirable or even essential part of daily life. Bike-friendly cities should also be bikeable cities, but bikeable cities do not necessarily make cycling a preferred mode of transport. But why? Let us briefly examine the benefits of bike-friendliness.

1. Health Benefits

It is argued that bike-friendly urban designs are extremely good for public health because they “simultaneously address multiple public health problems.” Just like any other sport, cycling is an activity that people would happily engage in recreationally, as it helps one build muscle, improve lung health, enhance balance and coordination, and develop navigational skills. 

But there is an even more compelling case for embedding cycling more strongly into our everyday lives. Cycling is a form of active transportation, defined as “a means of getting around that is powered by human energy.” Active transportation presents a convenient way for individuals to meet their physical activity requirements within the context of their daily commute. A systematic review conducted by health professionals in Toronto found that daily cycling, even at moderate intensities (e.g. cycling to and from work once a day), can increase physical fitness levels, reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases such as diabetes and coronary heart disease, and lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Cycling also has important mental health benefits. In 2019, two environmental health researchers at the University of Auckland sought to investigate the reasons why cyclists were the “happiest commuters”. To this end, they identified four reasons: A high degree of commuting control (for example, a relief from the stresses of car commuting due to worries about lateness); a good balance between having sensory stimulation and overload when one interacts with the immediate environment during the commute; the “feel better” effects of exercise in general; and opportunities for social interaction with friends, fellow commuters or the neighbourhood. Other studies reinforce these assertions, as bike commuting has been found to be associated with stress reduction.

2. Ecological Benefits

Bike-friendly designs encourage more bike commutes, which in turn reduce greenhouse gas and air pollution, as most bikes (33g of CO2 emitted per mile on average) do not run on gas unlike other vehicles (280g of CO2 emitted per mile). In short, it is a very environmentally sustainable form of transport.

The carbon footprint of cycling is not zero because of the “fuel” humans have to consume when they have to cycle. But even so, emissions for cycling are still half those of walking, as very often one can just “glide” on a bike without having to constantly pedal. In one study, it was found that the CO2 emissions of cyclists were 84% lower than that of non-cyclists. It is further estimated that cycling is “ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities.”

Hong Kong is plagued by serious traffic noise pollution, with many areas experiencing the incessant sounds of honking horns, screeching tires, and revving engines throughout the day and even late at night. Not only does the continued exposure to vehicular noise pollution heighten risks of anxiety, stress, or depression among humans but it also threatens the survival of many species, with serious implications for biodiversity. Encouraging cycling is a fantastic way to reduce noise pollution since they are much quieter than driving a car, which can help lower average traffic noise levels in a specific area.

3. Spatial and Mobility Benefits

Bikes clearly take up less space than cars. A study has shown that the space required for a moving car – including the space occupied by the car and the space needed to maintain a safe distance from other vehicles – is around 28 times that of a moving pedestrian and 14 times that of a moving bike. The fundamental spatial inefficiency of cars is one of the reasons why congestion is challenging to address.

Having more cyclists on the road can reduce the number of cars competing for space, which can improve traffic flow and reduce congestion. In a 2016 video released by PTV Mobility on YouTube, an interesting series of simulations were conducted to determine and compare the times required for 200 people to pass through a single lane using different modes of transportation, including buses, trams, pedestrians, bikes, and cars. The simulations demonstrated that buses could transport all 200 people past the point in half a minute, while bikes took two minutes. Conversely, it took over 4 minutes for a queue of cars (133 cars for 200 people) to pass through the same point, and the queue stretched over 1 kilometre in length.

Of course, the results would vary if other factors were taken into account – and PTV Mobility did run other simulations in consideration of this (including a scenario where bikes would not perform so well). Nevertheless, the simulations support the notion that cars are nowhere as effective as buses, trams and bikes when it comes to traffic flow.

While there is momentum in policy and urban planning circles to make Hong Kong a less car-dependent city, the interest in bike lanes so far remains marginalised. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

A common argument against bike-friendly road designs is that providing less road space for automobiles – such as by converting a car lane into a bike lane – can lead to decreased traffic flows. When drivers are unable to overtake cyclists, traffic slows down.

However, contrary to popular belief, the addition of well-designed bike lanes can actually improve travel times. Bike lanes are usually paired with buffer lanes that separate cyclists from the main travel lanes. Buffer lanes enable the addition of left- or right-turn pockets, allowing non-turning cars to continue straight without waiting behind vehicles turning into a road, thus maintaining traffic flow.

When considering parking, it becomes even more apparent how much more spatially efficient bikes are in comparison to cars. It is estimated that 10-20 bikes can fit into one parking space.

Hongkongers would certainly have little difficulty imagining how much easier it would be to find parking at shopping malls if there were more bike parking spaces available.

4. Economic Benefits

At a personal level, extensive cycling infrastructure can enable inexpensive travel around cities. It is estimated that the annual costs of cycling can be less than a tenth of that involved in driving a car. However, depending on the city, cycling is not always cheaper compared to public transport. Nevertheless, it is not just travelling costs that are lower for cyclists; given the health benefits mentioned earlier, cycling has been found to reduce individuals’ health costs, too.

It is commonly suggested that retail businesses may be negatively affected if more parking spaces are allocated to bikes at the expense of cars. It may be logical to assume that “public space should be dominated by car parking to attract more ‘high spenders’ to make the retail precinct successful and vibrant.”

In 2010, two researchers from the University of Melbourne, Alison Lee and Alan March, conducted a study to investigate whether such claims were true, analysing the economic impact of bikes compared to cars in a local shopping strip. It turned out that the opposite was true. Although car users did spend more on average per trip to the strip, cyclists made more bike trips. Furthermore, since more bikes could be parked in a given space than cars, the shopping strip was able to attract significantly more customers on bikes. The study found that every square metre of space allocated to bikes generated five times as much revenue as that of cars.

Lee and March concluded that “the traditional role of public space being allocated to car parking in retail environments does not necessarily support the optimal level of economic activity.” 

Bicycle-friendly areas do not stifle retail. Very often, they can boost it.

Why Is Hong Kong Still So Hostile Towards Bikes?

Advocates of bike-friendliness are not urging for the complete elimination of cars. There are certain functions of cars that cannot be replaced by a bike, such as the carrying out of industrial activities or the transportation of elderly, children, and persons with disabilities. It is also impossible to make cycling more common in the case of more long-distance commutes. Rather, advocates are saying that relying solely on automobiles is not the only option for city travel, particularly for short distances. If individuals can cycle or use other alternative modes of transportation, why not do so?

The benefits of bike-friendliness for cities are evident. But it is also evident that Hong Kong is struggling as a city to incorporate such ideas and lessons into the city’s existing transport infrastructure. According to a 2022 global survey, Hong Kong’s “bicycle friendliness” was ranked 84th on a list of 90 cities, as the number of bicycle accidents has only increased over the years.

Exactly Like Friendship: Cycling Is an Experience

Let us return to the hypothetical situation at the start. 

If the surveyed Hongkongers were given the opportunity to elaborate on their pessimism, we would probably find that they were pessimistic not because they found the underlying evidence in favour of bike-friendliness to be untrue or deceptive but rather because they would have serious reservations about whether those findings could be translated to the tricky context of Hong Kong.

So why is Hong Kong still so hostile toward bikes? It might be that most Hongkongers have never experienced the aforementioned benefits of bike-friendliness firsthand in the city. Just like friendship, it is impossible to just tell someone that “making friends is good” and expecting them to believe it without the actual experience of making one. That is why it is hard to imagine how bike-friendliness can make a powerful additional impact on the city simply by preaching.

Furthermore, given how already well-developed Hong Kong’s transport infrastructure is –and how hurried Hongkongers are in general, who has got the time to take things slow with bikes? Who would want to miss out on an extra 20 minutes of sleep in the morning?

Hong Kong may not be missing out on too much now if it continues to be unwilling to make friends with bikes in the short term. But in the long run, Hong Kong might find itself pedalling backward, if it continues to push bikes away.

On the topic of cycling cities, Anna-Karina Reibold wrote for the European Cyclists’ Federation: “First create a vision, then support it.” 

We don’t make friends with the expectation that the friendship will blossom. We make friends because we like them. As we get to know each other better, we will figure out ways to make that friendship work. The same goes for bikes.

This article is Part 1 of a two-part series on Hong Kong’s bike-friendliness. Check out Part 2: Can Hongkongers Rediscover Their Love for Bicycles?

The post Hong Kong Is Missing Out on ‘Bike-Friendliness’ appeared first on Earth.Org.

Climate justice is a concept that acknowledges the impacts of capitalist expansion and consumerism on the planet, and more importantly, how they affect the rich and the poor very differently. But what exactly is climate justice and why is it such an important concept in contemporary societies? 

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How has the concept of climate justice evolved over the decade? As we trace the transformation of the concept of “climate justice”, two key questions permeate the analysis: how have we understood climate change and injustice, and how should we act in light of them? By understanding the intellectual metamorphosis of the term over time, the need to spell out an exact definition of climate justice becomes less important. Eventually, we realise that what climate justice is, in fact, an ever-expanding and ever-changing concept.

What Is Climate Justice?

There are countless ways to understand climate change and climate justice. No single account or definition of climate justice will ever be able to profess depictive supremacy over others in terms of being able to describe our current climate moment. It is also impossible and foolish to believe that we can ever offer a stagnant picture of climate justice, as the concept will always be situated in a particular space and time.

But this does not mean there is nothing to be understood about “climate justice”. While we might not be able to identify a timeless conception of climate justice, we can still try to theorise the changes themselves over time. By understanding how people’s articulations of climate change and injustice have evolved over time, we discover new avenues for imagining justice and action as we move forward.

By understanding the intellectual metamorphosis of the term over time, the need to spell out an exact definition of climate justice becomes less important, as we realise that in fact, our concept of climate justice needs to be reflexive and responsive to suit the realities of our time.

Earliest Explanations for Climate Change

More than a century ago, in attempting to offer an explanation for the warming of the Earth, scientists declared that the Earth was in the Holocene: a geological epoch starting around twelve thousand years ago since the world experienced its last ever glacial period (a period characterised by colder global temperatures). Framed this way, scientists attributed climate change to a natural warming stage in the Earth’s history. Technically speaking, we are still in the Holocene epoch today.

However, it was apparent that such an understanding had problems. Around half a decade ago, there was growing dissatisfaction with the term “Holocene”, not because it was an incorrect description of the geological state of the planet, but because it was reductionist. The weakness of viewing the Earth’s climate moment through the lens of the Holocene was that effects of anthropic activity (human interactions with the environment) were assumed to be negligible and therefore could be taken away from the bigger picture.

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The Human ‘Turn’ in Climate History: The Anthropocene

To develop this articulation of the world’s current climate moment, scientists have attempted at expanding the concept of the Holocene to account for the human “turn”, the moment when human populations (and subsequently the intensity of human activities) increased exponentially around the globe. This shift was motivated by the fact that global levels of carbon dioxide were rising at unprecedented rates.

In the 1970s, a Dutch meteorologist and atmospheric chemist by the name of Paul Crutzer revolutionised our understanding of climate change. Against the dominant Holocenic discourse, he argued that we are instead in the “Anthropocene”.

Arguing that the warming of the Earth could not be attributed solely to natural geological developments but also human activity, the Anthropocenic description had important consequences. Generally, the extraordinary impacts of unprecedented scales of human activities over the centuries (agricultural and industrial) showed that temperature rises resulting from the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations were evidently human-inflicted.

In his book 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, American journalist Charles Mann argues that the world we are in today is the result of the “Columbus Exchange”. Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas in the late 15th century created the largest exchange system of food, populations and ideas between the New World and the Old World. But it also meant that lands were degraded, resources were exploited and diseases spread, culminating in what Mann later describes as the “Homogenocene”: an epoch characterised by tremendous homogenisation due to human assaults on biodiversity and fertility. Mann’s argument is not to attribute climate change simply to the deeds and misdeeds of Columbus and the teams that preceded him; transcontinental exchanges in other parts of the world (such as between Asia and Europe) were also culpable.

Featured image by: UN Women Asia Pacific/Flickr

Climate Change, Economic Inequality, and the Capitalocene

The Anthropocentric analysis of climate change, however, suffered from one crucial limitation: it “flattened” out politics. In other words, the dynamics of climate change were excluded from the analysis. 

It is here that we discover the earliest linkages between climate change and the notion of “justice”. An intellectual leader of this critique, Dipesh Chakrabarty from the University of Chicago argues that to trace the origins of climate injustice properly, we must examine what made anthropic activity possible on such large scales in the first place. He suggests looking at the specific ways in which humans have organised globally: it is not simply that people like Columbus were engaged in exchange, but the fact that these systems of exchange were legitimised and subsequently inscribed into not only state political structures but also the everyday lives of ordinary citizens. This, he argues, is what accelerated climate change.

Such a view is also echoed by prominent environmental historian and geographer Jason Moore who, in place of the term “Anthropocene”, uses the term “Capitalocene” instead. He argues that it was precisely the unequal exchanges arising from the capitalist system that allowed certain countries to rise and dominate in wealth and power. Lands in poor countries were treated as “factories” for churning out cheap raw materials; pollution was regarded as an inevitable but a sacrifice necessary for capital accumulation.

Moreover, the economic inequality that capitalism perpetuates leads not only to varied effects on global populations but also varied abilities to fortify against risks borne from climate change. In effect, a “climate apartheid” is established, as wealthy communities and corporations are more able to “pay their way out” of climate change.

In these framings of climate change, we see the makings of a concept of climate justice that acknowledges the impacts of capitalist expansion and consumerism on the planet, and more importantly, how they affect the rich and the poor very differently. It is no surprise, then, that notions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards have been on the rise. They encourage companies to adopt less exploitative and more sustainable practises and investors to be more environmentally-minded in their decisions respectively.

In fact, activists have actually called for the de-concentration of corporate power, that is, to put in measures that prevent big transnational corporations (TNCs) from monopolising global resources as well as promote greater corporate accountability, e.g. to stop “greenwashing”. Building on this, Moore argues that we should envision a world where the basics of human life are de-commodified and de-privatised: things like housing, transportation, care and education should be distributed equally, and acknowledge that these not luxuries.

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Climate Justice and Racial Justice

The Capitalocene narrative evidently offers a more sensitive view of climate change by paying greater attention to the economic systems that sanction processes that deplete our resources, contaminate the atmosphere, acidify our oceans and heat up our planet. But it has its own shortcomings, too: climate change is not simply a class issue; in reality, climate inequalities occur along other lines of stratification.

Hence, a more critical concept of climate justice has been the notion of inclusivity. On a structural level, there has been greater recognition among policymakers to recognise racial dynamics of climate change.

The move from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were implemented in 2016, represents a key paradigmatic shift: that the relatively “poor” performances of developing countries in the realm of climate action should not be seen merely as a matter of individual incompetence, but a product of complex historical processes of inequality that have prevented countries from developing in ways that will allow them to reduce reliance on fossil fuel-intensive industries in the near future. As such, climate justice is no longer framed as an individual matter, but a globalised issue in which all countries, “developed” or not, should share collective responsibility.

But there is still a lack of inclusivity in the overall global discourse on climate change, as voices from the Global South continue to be muted. This theme was also brought up at the UN summits including Glasgow’s COP26 and last November’s COP27.

During the talks, delegates and activists of developing countries expressed dissatisfaction about the “lip service” paid by developed countries – in critical response to their pushbacks in funding, which developing countries saw as compensation for the climate damages caused by richer countries (which have historically been in the Global North). As director of Climate Action Network South Asia, Sanjay Vashist lamented, “Instead of building trust, the Global South has been cheated once again. … What we have is yet another greenwash that will ensure genocide by extreme weather events in developing countries.”

From these reflections, it is apparent that climate justice as inclusivity remains a priority on the agenda.

Climate Change and Gender Equality

Climate injustice is, however, not only racial; it is also very much gendered. As the COP26 protesters pointed out, there is a clear gender gap at the talks. But it is not a simple matter of gender equality in attendance and decision-making at the summit that activists are demanding. It’s a matter of making sure the voices of women are considered when decisions are made for a simple reason: when it comes to climate change, women are the most impacted – but are unfortunately also the least represented.

In the thought-provoking book This Changes Everything written by prominent Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein, we are alerted to how cultures around the world, developed and developing countries alike, have historically paid very little attention to the particular vulnerabilities of women. As Klein shows in an example of rural Colorado (USA), mothers living in areas with intensive natural gas development were 30% more likely to have babies born with cardiac defects, as chemical plants release hormone-disrupting chemicals that interfere with women’s reproductive systems.

Beyond reproduction, women are in many countries the first to feel the effects of climate change on their day-to-day activities. As the primary interactor with natural resources and ecosystems in the family, many have experienced increasing difficulty in finding what they need to feed their families as a result of climate change.

Today, people are increasingly cognisant of the need for a more gender-inclusive concept of climate justice. There is a stronger emphasis on listening to women: how can we unlearn and challenge patriarchal “[cultures] and models of production and extraction that have wreaked havoc on people and the planet” for centuries?

Democratising Climate Justice

As we have seen, more recent refinements of the concept of climate justice centre on its interconnectedness with broader issues of social justice. Political problems often stem from competition arising from issues of resource scarcity and security; when not properly addressed, they often lead to environmental destruction in the form of wars and armed conflicts; they are often products of climate change, and they always occur at the expense of the environment.

Given their inseparable connection, people have turned to concepts in social justice for inspiring action. It is argued that to fight climate change, political systems need to be democratic and procedurally just. They should give people the right and opportunity to decide how climate change should be fought, and specifically, to select representatives with the courage, wisdom and responsibility to propose policies that may contribute to climate justice. How can governments adopt a more horizontal approach to environmental problems, so that local communities – the very “insiders” and stakeholders of society – can have greater influence over matters that their livelihoods depend on directly?

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Which Comes First in Climate Justice: Systemic or Individual change?

It is popular wisdom today that without a complete transformation of the existing global capitalist model we can never achieve climate justice meaningfully. If climate responsibility is only framed as an individual matter, climate justice becomes an “option” only, thereby stripping it of its moral and ethical significance.

While there is no doubt that systemic change is central to climate justice, political structures, however progressive and good-willed, will always inevitably leave somebody or something out. Hence, rather than try to wait for these systems to “achieve perfection”, climate scientists and psychologists have argued that we should also understand climate justice as something beginning with our mundane acts of demonstrating care to our planet. Indeed, the effects of individual actions may appear insignificant, but when we go beyond static perceptions of value, we discover their importance in the long run.

In restoring the justification for focusing on individual actions as well as systemic change, climate justice has evolved to exhibit a participatory character: how can communities mobilise local resources effectively (albeit informally) to advance climate justice? While grassroots mobilisations are no recent phenomenon and can be found in virtually every corner of the world, it is only in recent years that governments are finally recognising their contributions and hence, the need to consider them as legitimate partners against climate change.

Moving Forward by Reflecting on the Past

The above discussion offers not an ultimate story of climate justice, as there will always be more stories and angles to approaching the concept (such as indigenous justice, animal justice and the prominence of youth participation). Instead, it gives us useful clues to understanding how the concept has changed throughout history. In particular, it has shown us that climate justice is “dynamic” in two senses.

In the first sense, climate justice is an ever-expanding concept. As discussed, the earliest explanations for climate change left humans out of the picture of global warming; but it was clear that the Anthropocene narrative lacked the specificity to recognise how certain modes of human exchange exacerbated climate change; while a global system of capitalism predicated on inequality gave way to depletive and exploitative environmental practices, we realised how climate injustice can occur along racial and gendered lines; while it is now clear that systemic change is a priority, we are reminded of the role that local and grassroots forms of mobilisation play in promoting climate justice. Moving forward we may ask, in formulating a concept of climate justice, whose voices might we have forgotten? What else do we need?

In the second sense, climate justice is an ever-changing concept. As we follow the historical development of the concept, it is important we do not dismiss an account simply because of its limitations. All of them express a valuable perspective at a particular time to understanding climate change and the injustices that stem from it. It is foolish to even think that we could ever formulate a timeless blueprint of climate justice: without a conceptual predecessor, later articulations of climate justice would not be possible; and in denying the possibility for evolution, climate justice would only find itself constantly failing the people. The COVID-19 pandemic proves this point: new environmental challenges will require new perspectives and new solutions. For the same reason, at times we may even find ourselves drawing on older concepts to imagine new avenues for coming together and creating change.

So what is next for climate justice? We will never know for certain. But as we continue to explore the links between climate change and global political issues, we learn to include more voices and perspectives and discover new concepts of justice. As we learn to reflect on the past, we may be encouraged to carry on the legacies of those who have strived and persevered diligently to keep our hopes of a better world alive.

Featured image by: Joe Brusky/Flickr

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The post Explainer: What Is Climate Justice and Why Is It Important? appeared first on Earth.Org.

The Kau Yi Chau Artificial Islands project – perhaps better known by its previous name, Lantau Tomorrow Vision – is a large-scale reclamation project in Hong Kong to create a metropolis to address the territory’s shortage of land supply and the ongoing housing crisis. Recently, the government found itself in trouble after a poorly handled response to a critical study conducted by Liber Research Community, a local research organisation, detailing the economic and environmental risks of the project. Reflecting on prominent local environmentalist Lam Chiu-ying’s thoughts on the mini-saga, this article identifies three deadly sins for policymaking.

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The Lantau Tomorrow Vision, or as it is now known, the Kau Yi Chau Artificial Islands, is a project to “develop artificial islands near Kau Yi Chau to make available larger pieces of land” in order to create a metropolis to address Hong Kong’s shortage of land supply and the ongoing housing crisis. Ideas for this project were conceived as early as 2014 and announced in 2018. 

Over the years, the project has become a frequently revisited site of controversy as politicians and interest groups across the city have expressed doubts about its environmental and economic impacts, as well as its astronomical costs – which have also seemed to have continued to increase without much explanation.

Controversies resurfaced in late December, as the media found out that the government had already begun public consultation without informing the public. Green groups also expressed dissatisfaction, as they claimed that the meeting which the government had planned to arrange with them was framed only as a briefing – implying that the point of their attendance was only to notify them of updates on the project and not collect their views.

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Name-Calling and Smearing: How (Not) to Respond to Criticism as a Policymaker

On February 16, 2023, Liber Research Community (LRC), an independent research organisation in Hong Kong, published the 100-page long research report Uncertain Fates – A Study of Problems Faced by Reclamation Megaprojects Worldwide. The research draws on a selective number of case studies around the world to inform its assessment of the feasibility of the Lantau Tomorrow Vision. Overall, the message is critical: the environmental risks of going ahead with the project are too high.

Swiftly after the study was published, a response was made by the Hong Kong Government’s Development Bureau on social media. They described the LRC’s research findings as “politically-motivated”, intending to “manipulate public opinion” by “misleading” and “scaremongering” citizens into aversion towards the Vision which would thereby obstruct Hong Kong’s development. The post also expressed “confusion” about Liber Research’s allegations which suggested that environmental concerns had been sidelined throughout the planning and implementation of the project.

Since the statement was released, the Development Bureau has received numerous criticisms, including from Lam Chiu-ying, former director of the Hong Kong Observatory and well-known meteorologist and environmentalist. Writing in defence of LRC’s findings (available in Chinese only), Lam condemned the Development Bureau’s for resorting to petty tactics of name-calling and smearing, in order to discredit the concerns raised by LRC. In the end, Lam echoed LRC in urging the Development Bureau to reconsider plans for the Vision.

This squabble has once again prompted public discussion on the Lantau Tomorrow Vision. Although Lam’s statement is highly critical of the Lantau Tomorrow Vision, especially from an environmental perspective, his criticisms extend far beyond the project itself, but also toward the ways in which the government has handled unfavourable appraisals from the public, such as LRC’s research findings.

The proposed reclamation configuration. Photo: Development Department.

The Three Deadly Sins of Policymaking

Discontent arising from disagreements between policymakers and the public are normal and essential to political life. However, drawing on the arguments made in Lam’s post, we may find that it is not the content of the policies that are causing all the discontent, but the fact that the Development Bureau exhibited three highly dislikable traits: hubris, defensiveness, and stubbornness – all at once.

These traits – or “vices” – are hardly novel concepts. However, it is useful to reconsider the reasons why they can be so “deadly”. Using Lam’s powerful remarks, they can be revisited with a more refreshing lens.

1. Hubris

From the start, Lam was very direct with his words.

“Policymakers must listen and accommodate diverse views […]. The Development Bureau should have analysed in detail the findings  […] and tried to avoid repeating the mistakes made in development projects in other parts of the world, instead of completely rejecting the suggestions [made by LRC] simply because they were not pleasing to the ear. Not only was the Development Bureau unable to demonstrate grace and holism, they appeared very agitated, angry and arrogant  […]. Such attitudes of superiority and conceit are absolutely reprehensible.”

As a matter of fact, Lam’s words apply to policymakers everywhere, regardless of sector. Very often, policymakers will downplay public misgivings simply because citizens usually do not have the relevant expertise and policymaking experience to prove credibility. As a result, the intactness of questionable policy can be preserved.

It is tempting to therefore believe that, if policymakers are trained to become more “environmentally conscious”, so will their policies. That may indeed be true. However, as an article written by Professor Madeline June Kass at the Seattle University School of Law shows, this view misses the point.

Titled Hubris and Humility in Environmental Law, Kass’s piece shows that even the supposedly most “environmentally-minded” policy sectors have had their fair share of environmental misadventures.

One of the examples Kass discusses is the well-known environmental catastrophe caused by the mismanagement of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) in the US from the 1940s to the 1970s. For decades, DDT had been a crucial panacea to pest infestations, protecting populations from insect-borne diseases and crop losses. However, DDT’s impressive insecticidal power came with a plethora of side effects, including decreased reproductive capacity and increased likelihood of cancer. Despite individuals at the time warning against hasty agricultural applications of DDT, the US Government continued to ramp up DDT production because of its irreplaceable insecticidal attributes – and because the US had been making so much from exporting them globally. Although DDT was eventually banned in 1972, this decision came too late; its widespread use meant that its effects on humans and animals would persist for many years and generations.

Cases like this urge policymakers to recognise that nobody is exempt from mistakes. Yet Kass’ article does more than lament the environmental ignorance of the policymakers. She shows that it is not only ignorance but also hubris – “sheer human arrogance, conceit, and unjustified certitude” – that is preventing policymakers from setting things right when they have made a mistake, even when the opportunities present themselves. 

The problem with bad policymaking “is not that [the policymakers] erred. Humans will and should act despite the likelihood of error. The point is that [they] should have expected they might err.” 

There is always something better to strive for and worse to prepare for – and hubris prevents policymakers from anticipating and reflecting on them.

The aim here is not to commend or deny the Development Bureau’s commitment to the project. Instead, it is to point out that just because the Vision is paved with good intentions, does not mean it cannot be faulted. This is why humility is important in policymaking: it “emphasises the need for restraint and for care in light of our lack of knowledge about the environmental impacts of our actions [and] cautions us against exaggerated understandings of our ability to create and implement […] tools that will achieve our intended results.”

2. Defensiveness

Lam also called out the Development Bureau’s unwise decision to resort to name-calling: “The Development Bureau’s post did not contain a single word to prove that the facts in [LRC’s] study were wrong  […] To so casually discredit those who care about the long-term interests of Hong Kong and offer unpleasant but sincere advice simply as ‘doom merchants’, it seems that the Development Bureau is the actual one that is deserving of such criticism.”

The reason why people are losing faith in politicians and policymakers has a lot to do with the fact that so frequently politicians use personal attacks as a way to undermine the arguments put forward by their opponents. These are sometimes also known as ad hominem arguments, among which name-calling can be an example. In the end, the substance of the arguments are not properly scrutinised. Not only is time wasted; as Lam remarked, bridges are also burned.

Not everyone will agree to this view – as world-renowned political journalist and broadcaster Mehdi Hasan writes: “The fact that an ad hominem argument can be fallacious does not mean that it must be fallacious.” 

However, as Hasan himself also warns, name-calling works only when it is used correctly. In the context of environmental advocacy, Dr Hugh Finn, Lecturer at Curtin University, argues that the correct uses of ad hominems are limited to very specific conditions: When a proposed criticism is (i) legitimate, (ii) responsive, (iii) well substantiated, (iv) plausible and (v) complementary. Although Finn’s article appears to be written for the scientific research community, its conclusions are definitely relevant for any actor in the environmental sector, big or small.

So, even if LRC were indeed creating the study only for some kind of self-serving evangelism, “character assassinations” are still going to be of no use if none of LRC’s arguments have been dealt with properly. Rather than get defensive, the Development Bureau should demonstrate a receptiveness towards the unique experiences and perspectives of those they are not so familiar with or disagree with, so that they are able address their concerns more comprehensively and persuasively. The point is not to show them that they are wrong, but to demonstrate to them that they have at least given their concerns some thought.

3. Stubbornness

Lam ended his post with a message for the Secretary for Development: “[P]lease think twice. Just because a previous official has decided to implement the project, does not mean that we should blindly and recklessly continue to do so.”

Lam is alluding to what has been described in policy terminology as path dependency, “the tendency to rely on past practices, decisions, and actions for the outcome rather than current conditions”. Dependency on a particular path for policy arises when existing knowledge, discursive and infrastructure networks are already so well-established that the pursuit of alternative paths becomes less and less attractive due to high switching costs, lack of payoffs or even, fear of reversing a predecessor’s initiative when everything has been set in stone.

Yet many valuable development objectives require policymakers to transcend path dependencies to instigate change. Just because proposals do not align with what was done or emphasised in the past, does not mean they have no utility today. Just because environmental concerns have never been the central concern of past development projects or have never been considered key to their successful implementation, does not mean they will not matter today. Hence, the Development Bureau must take seriously the point that nothing, including the Lantau Vision Tomorrow, is eternally destined for completion and success, even if past practices, decisions and actions hint at that possibility. 

Recognising this does not mean the Vision’s goals and objectives will have to be abandoned; creating a sustainable working and living environment in Hong Kong is still worth pursuing. And even if the LRC’s conclusions appear to be misguided today, it does not mean they will always be wrong and irrelevant. 

There is no rule that says the Lantau Tomorrow Vision should be or be done a certain way. Its methods can indeed be reconsidered for good. Unshakeable allegiance to a so-called noble goal should not be an excuse for policymakers to unhesitatingly refuse the possibility and necessity of change.

Lantau Tomorrow Vision or Lantau Tunnel Vision?

Policymaking is probably one of the most challenging roles to take up – imagine the pressure that comes with having the fate of the city in your own hands. Yet, it is not just the pressure to succeed but also the need to anticipate, manage and respond to public concerns which makes policymaking far more challenging than it should be.

It is unlikely that the government will discontinue or suspend the Lantau Tomorrow Vision project even after a thorough examination of its merits and downsides. But this is not what is most worrying. As the government’s hubris, defensiveness and stubbornness reveal, policymakers might not know when they are going down the rabbit hole. But even if they knew, would they do anything about it?

Being aware of these three deadly sins, policymakers should always engage the public with humility, receptiveness and flexibility. Not only can they make better decisions, they can also acquire greater public support for (or at least less resistance toward) their initiatives moving forward. All policymakers are going to have their loyal critics; but not all critics are haters and not all criticisms are going to be hurled out of hate. 

The challenge for policymakers is to engage with their critics productively to turn those criticisms into constructive ideas for improvement.

Featured image: GovHK

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The post Hong Kong’s Lantau Tomorrow Vision: How (Not) to Respond to Criticism as a Policymaker appeared first on Earth.Org.

In November, world leaders gathered in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt for COP27 to discuss action to tackle climate change. Like past climate summits, this year’s conference addressed the usual issues, including deforestation, decarbonisation, gender equality, water security, and biodiversity. Yet, COP27 also had a slightly different flavour. This year, the theme of war was also brought up, which raised many new questions, bringing to the fore those which have hitherto been buried among other alarming issues plaguing our world today. What is the relationship between war and climate change, and more crucially, what are the opportunities for ecological peace and environmental justice?

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On November 8, 2022, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to fellow delegates at COP27, delivering a haunting statement on Ukraine’s situation under months of relentless Russian aggression: “There are still many for whom climate change is just rhetoric or marketing or political ritual – whatever – but not real action,” he said. 

“The Russian war has brought about an energy crisis, [but it has also] brought an acute food crisis to the world, even worse for those countries that suffer from existing manifestations of climate change. The Russian War destroyed five million acres of forests in Ukraine in less than six months.”

Discussions about the impact of war on climate change are not new. The importance of a global commitment to the protection of human rights around the world has always been a central message of past COPs, and the Russia-Ukraine war today has only provoked more intensive deliberation on such matters. As the EU scrambles for new energy sources, experts and activists have urged for new policies and investment directions, ones that take human rights issues seriously.

Perhaps, as the founder of Ukrainian public relations agency Gres Todorochuk  Yaroslava Gres says, people are already “a little bit tired of Ukraine” after reading headlines about it every day and for so many months. However, as conflicts heighten, or rather, as people begin to grasp the gravity of war on people and the evironment – the moral imperative to examine closely the connections between climate change and violence becomes greater than ever. Regardless of whether or not one wishes to learn about the terrible events unfolding in places like Ukraine, Afghanistan, Palestine or Syria, climate justice cannot be achieved without tackling ongoing violence in these places.

The relationship between climate change and violence has been studied for decades and is well-acknowledged by international organisations around the world. The overarching idea is captured persuasively in the Ecological Threat Report 2022 published by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) this year: “The degradation of resources leads to violence. Violence leads to the degradation of resources”. 

The ways through which these processes occur are endless. Yet the field of peace and conflict studies equips us with useful tools to handle the complexities arising from our understanding of the kinds of violent possibilities that intersect with climate change and environmental degradation.

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Climate Change and Violence

In 1969, a Norwegian sociologist by the name of Johan Galtung – also known as “the father of peace studies” today – published a paper called Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. It was an ambitious attempt at developing a systematic framework for understanding the many dimensions of violence. While Galtung’s work was not specifically written in consideration of the potential existential challenges brought about by climate and environmental changes, the various dimensions that Galtung outlines is still relevant half a century later. We may identify several takeaways from his paper for climate change:

1. Violence that causes, or is driven by, climate change, is not only direct but also psychological.

War is destructive to both people and nature. Not only are bombings directly harming wildlife and biodiversity, the energy consumed – and hence the levels of greenhouse gases emitted – to develop existing military capacities in peacetime is huge. It is not just direct warfare that damages the environment; human activities (agricultural, industrial, and commercial) place an immense burden on the environment in the long run and lead to desertification, rising temperatures, hazardous pollution levels, and sea levels rise, just to name a few.

In either case, the security of goods essential to the fulfilment of basic human needs becomes jeopardised. As war-torn and forcibly displaced communities flee to find new homes,  competition over scarce resources intensifies. While not everyone is as unfortunate to have experienced these direct impacts in their most extreme forms, it is also worth noting that climate change has profound mental health impacts as a result of conflict, heightening socioeconomic precarity or perceptions of a world that is falling apart day by day. It is not hard to see how these factors, in turn, can be key drivers of violent conflict.

2. Climate-related violence is not always intentional but rather symptomatic and intertwined with forms of structural violence.

While countries of the Global South are often blamed for their incapability in combating climate change. Yet, the narrative is very different from reality. Developing nations, which are the ones experiencing the most devastating effects of climate change first hand, are not intentionally trying to dismiss climate change as a real issue. The reality is that massive structural, political, and economic impediments erected and reproduced for long periods of their histories make climate action so challenging to tackle.

While this view certainly does not to justify the brutalities and atrocities that occur today when warring parties compete for scarce resources and land, as highlighted in a report published by the UK’s International Development Committee in October 2022, it sheds an important light on the mess that colonialism and capitalism –a far more pervasive kind of ideology and system which world leaders and international institutions today less eager to admit –have left on the soil of many countries in the Global South.

Fortunately, it’s not all bad news. COP27 decisively marks the beginning of a new phase for an ongoing countermovement against such simplistic narratives of blameworthiness. For the first time, the issue of climate reparations was finally included in the climate summit agenda. The idea of reparations is no longer only an idea in public discourse; it is beginning to inform action at the diplomatic level. The overarching message is clear: it is time rich states, in particular Western states, take responsibility for the contemporary legacies of colonialism on climate change.

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3. Violence that emerges from climate change can take “manifest” (actual) and “latent” (potential) forms.

This is one of Galtung’s more under-appreciated analytical contributions to the field of Peace and Conflict Studies: just because violence does not seem to be, or has yet to become, apparent, this does not mean its seeds have not been planted.

Take the fact that climate change exacerbates violence against women and girls as an example. It is a view well-rehearsed by the UN and as well as a recurrent topic in Egypt. By reflecting on Galtung’s point of view, however, it becomes apparent that it is not enough – and also too late – to analyse violence only when it has happened. Instead, when considering its “latent” forms, we may begin to realise that laws are not enough.

As much as COP27 has pledged to finance and promote women’s empowerment schemes across the globe, these institutional developments are only the tip of the iceberg. The inequalities in cultural and economic domains of society, when unaddressed, continue to disproportionately put women at greater precarity and risk of violence, be it in the context of climate-change or not. Even when violence has not happened – at least to a life-threatening extent – many women live under the fear that it will eventually happen.

As the intensity of discussions taking place among world leaders in COP27 and elsewhere demonstrate, we might also add, on top of the reflections from Galtung’s paper, that:

4. The issue of climate change itself can become a discursive tool of violence.

Discourses in climate change have been employed by countries to vilify rivals in pursuit of certain political agendas that have little to do with climate change and even stifle ongoing collaborative efforts to tackle climate change. To deflect accusations of incompetence or insincerity, they call out hypocrisy or frame accusations as inaccurate and dismiss them as politically motivated.

Today, the US and China are still engaged in a diplomatic row about each other’s alleged empty promises, lies and failures. Yet, everybody knows that nothing good really comes out of these petty quarrels. In the end it is the most vulnerable – domestically and globally – that suffer the most from their ineptitudes and finger-pointing.

As Galtung himself would also argue, there are many more lessons to draw. Moreover, complicating our view of violence only makes it harder for us to feel like we can ever do the right thing. However, this is only an excuse for perfunctory and unambitious action. 

In sensitising ourselves to the complex forms, origins, intertwinings and effects of climate-related violence is essential, we realise that tackling climate violence is not just a task performed by the powerful, but a responsibility that everyone shares. What can we do to prevent further escalation of conflict or unnecessary spillovers to other fronts? And more importantly, beyond containment and prevention, what can we do to transform these cycles of violence?

Climate Change and Peace

Galtung’s most significant contribution to the field of Peace and Conflict Studies has not been his analysis of violence, but rather his commitment to an idea of peace. Galtung was not just interested in a “negative” peace that sought only the reduction of violence, but he also envisioned a “positive” peace which would encompass constructive actions and sustainable relationships.

While Galtung’s work was not exactly environmentally-driven, many of his antecedents have endeavoured to draw on his ideas to develop a kind of peace relevant to climate change. Just as violence fuels climate change and environmental degradation – and vice versa, peace and climate and environmental justice are also intertwined.

This idea gained traction after the end of the Cold War. As the USSR was no longer what was once considered the biggest threat to global security, security threats were being redefined around the world, in which “the environment” came to the forefront of peace research, and later influencing global policy discourses and agendas, the establishment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 in particular. Throughout the years, it has been somewhat implied that sustainability and peace depend on each other; however, as the recent re-realisation of their interdependence suggests, we may have forgotten this, assuming that they are two distinct fields in need of deliberate bridging.

It is difficult to give a clear definition to what it means to have an environmentally-informed notion of peace. Nonetheless, Peace Ecology, written by director of the Program on Justice and Peace at Georgetown University Randall Amster in 2015, offers an interesting perspective, which sees “peace among ourselves [as] contingent upon and necessarily related to our ability to live peacefully on earth”.

While Amster also does not provide a blueprint for peace, his concept of “peace ecology” demands us to develop a “vision of interconnectedness” between “self, society and nature”, as a counterpoint to violence: “apathy, isolation and despair”.

This is to say, societies can only be peaceful if they are sustainable; and sustainable if they are peaceful. Put differently, the factors that fuel war or climate change might be those that drive both; and perhaps similarly, the things that contribute to peace or sustainable transformation, might also be those that promote them.

Global measurements on peace and environmental performance might also indicate so. Briefly looking at the performances of 154 countries on the Global Peace Index 2022 (GPI) published by the IEP and the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) jointly created by Yale and Columbia, we see that:

• Countries with a low GPI score (more peaceful) tend to have a higher EPI score (better performance).
• Of the 30 countries with the lowest GPI scores (top 20% of the GPI), only two (Malaysia and Belgium) countries are in the bottom 50% on the EPI; and all the top 30 countries on the EPI are within the top 50% on the GPI.
• The five most peaceful countries (Iceland, New Zealand, Ireland, Denmark and Austria) are within the top 16% in terms of environmental performance; and the five countries with the best environmental performance (Denmark, UK, Finland, Sweden and Slovenia) are also within the top 22% on the EPI.

There are always exceptions. For example, Ukraine’s ranking on the GPI has gone down by 17 places (because of Russia’s aggression) while its environmental performance remains consistent. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to suggest that peaceful societies tend to also be focused on sustainable development, and “green” countries tend to also be invested in fostering domestic and global peace.

Of course, there is always great value in “learning from the best”. However, the point is not that countries ought to implement in their respective societies whatever the best have implemented in theirs; rather, it is to encourage actors (governments, businesses, NGOs and local communities etc.) to see how similar lines of action might be possible and how strategies can be “re-tailored” to their immediate circumstances.

As Amster also argues, our visions must also be connected to the “past, present and future”; the best countries for sure did not get things right the first time round. Reflecting on their journeys, how might other countries learn from their mistakes and avoid repeating them?

Altogether, interdisciplinary exploration is needed. Why and how might initiatives conducted in the name of sustainability, also foster peaceful interactions? What are the animating principles within existing peacebuilding efforts that might “coincidentally” also encourage sustainable development?

Are Humans Wired for Peace or Violence, Conservation or Destruction?

Wars and atrocities have been as long as the history of humankind. Hence, some argue that human beings are fated to be at war with one another and (at the expense of) the environment. The possibility of a global ecological peace lies in the surrenderance of individuals’ capricious freedoms to a powerful central governing body that will organise us.

Others more optimistic argue that human beings are selfless and peace-loving. Indeed, throughout history, humans have demonstrated the capacity to respect others and devise peaceful and environment-loving arrangements for coexistence. Hence, we are called upon to harness the peace-making potentials of ecology: to acknowledge intimate connections and interdependence with nature to pursue a “good” life and create a “good” world democratically.

Which view is truer remains up for debate. But the answer is irrelevant to whether we should promote ecological peace. Just because humans might be inherently violent, it doesn’t mean that humans have never worked things out peacefully. That international cooperation activities like the COP have managed to not break down for decades shows that humans do believe that peace can and should be pursued. And even if humans are wired to be peaceful and to love the environment, it does not mean peace will exist, and it does not mean we already know how to love our environment. These things need to be learned regardless of human nature.

How can we develop the passion and efficacy to concretely transcend and transform our existing circumstances? Nobody knows for sure. After all, we do not have access to “ultimate” principles for what laws to implement, structures to build or relationships to nurture.

At least, as we recognise the interconnectedness between certain things, we might be able to get those who are determined to put an end to war and those who are adamant on tackling climate change to join hands to make this world more peaceful and sustainable. Rather than “killing two birds with one stone”, perhaps this is what we mean by “feeding two birds with one scone”.

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The post The Need for Ecological Peace In Times of War appeared first on Earth.Org.

In Hong Kong, there is growing research pointing to the disproportionate impacts of climate change on women. However, women’s voices continue to be marginalised and men continue to have the final say over climate policies. If Hong Kong wants to achieve gender and climate justice, decision-making processes need to be more gender-inclusive. But to do so, the city will have to recognise that gender inequality cannot be achieved merely through legislation but also through cultural shifts in how we conceive leadership. This involves challenging taboos and stereotypes that have acted as barriers to women’s ability to become leaders in Hong Kong.

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On March 8, the world celebrated its 111th International Women’s Day, a day commemorating the cultural, political and socio-economic achievements of women. Like most parts of the world, Hong Kong has been a celebrant of the occasion. Building on global momentum, March has been an exciting month for organisations, charities and rights groups in Hong Kong to bring attention to issues like gender equality and reproductive rights, as well as to use the opportunity to promote awareness about violence against women in the city, following a recent study which found that almost 40% of Hong Kong women experienced sexual abuse in 2021.

Recognising that gender inequality is no trivial issue in Hong Kong, there is a growing awareness that citizens need to work together to actively protect and support women from all kinds of injustices. What reflections can the environmental sector make?

Women and Climate Change

The impacts of climate change on women are already well documented in the research literature. Take air pollution as an example. Air pollution is found to be a huge risk factor for breast cancer. High levels of exposure to pollutants, toxins and smoke can disrupt women’s menstrual cycles (e.g. early or late periods), which can have long-term impacts on reproductive health. For pregnant women, the risks are even higher. On top of the aforementioned threats, they are more likely to suffer from cardiac and respiratory disease and other mental health problems. Pregnancies may also be affected, as poor air quality has been found to lead to premature births and low birth weight. These can pose further health risks to mothers.

So not only are women being negatively impacted by climate change, but they are also disproportionately affected, as many of the health risks mentioned above do not apply to men. However, because of existing gender inequalities in society, the climate crisis has led to more women facing increased domestic violence, sexual intimidation, human trafficking and rape because of changing economic circumstances and agricultural practices, especially in developing countries.

In fact, many have described climate change as a “double injustice” to women. As a 2014 paper published by CARE International, a leading humanitarian organisation explains, not only are women disproportionately affected by climate change, but they also lack the resources, options and opportunities to overturn these inequalities. Men have a larger carbon footprint than women, yet climate action policies rarely acknowledge these gender differences.

Are women disproportionately affected by climate change in Hong Kong? While the city remains under-researched as a context, there is a growing body of research suggesting so. Studies have already shown that women in Hong Kong are more sensitive to extreme weather conditions than men. For example, consecutive hot nights can bring a 6% higher risk of death for women, because they tend to have a higher proportion of body fat, which makes them more susceptible to heat and weakens their ability to recover. Hong Kong also has a dreadful air pollution problem, as most pollutant concentration levels still fall short of WHO goals. While the impacts of climate change on local pregnancies are relatively unexamined, the replicability of findings from other contexts to that of Hong Kong is likely high.

Climate Inequality is More Than Just A Number

There’s no question that data and science have all pointed to the disproportionate impacts of climate change on women – climate change reinforces gender inequality. But numbers can be misleading and unhelpful.

Apart from the fact that inequalities can often go unquantified, attempts to quantify inequality through metrics are always reductionist. Take domestic violence against women in Hong Kong as an example. According to a survey conducted by the Hong Kong Women’s Coalition of Equal Opportunities earlier this year, it found that almost 40% of women had experienced sexual violence in the past year. But a statistic like this says nothing about the true impacts of domestic violence. A single experience is great enough to create a cascade of consequences: from contracting sexually transmitted infections to long-lasting emotional problems, broken family relationships or long-term barriers in employment, all of which can never be expressed fully through a simple mathematical equation.

By the same token, the unique effects of climate change on women in Hong Kong can never be quantified in a way that will do justice to their gravity. They will always be omitted from the larger picture. As climate change becomes a bigger issue in Hong Kong, inequalities may only widen. Just because women in Hong Kong may be more resilient and better prepared for future risks today, does not mean that women’s bodies deserve to be continually put to the test.

The question is not why these inequalities have persisted – the reasons are crystal clear – but why it is so hard to disrupt them. To understand why women find it so difficult to effect change on a macro level, it is important to consider constraints to women’s abilities to spearhead Hong Kong’s justice movements.

The headquarters of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong.

The Marginalisation of the Female Body in Hong Kong’s Decision-making Circles

When it comes to decision-making in policy, women are completely outnumbered by men in Hong Kong. For example, female representation in the Legislative Council (LegCo) has never exceeded 20% in its two centuries of history, which is far below the global average of 26% (as of 2020). Most women engaged in climate-related work in Hong Kong reside in non-governmental organisations. Although they may occasionally have an opportunity to express their views in public consultations, they nevertheless do not have sufficient influence in the final stages of policy decisions. As a result, most policy decisions in Hong Kong, whether related to the climate or not, continue to remain in the hands of men who pay scarce attention to the importance of gender. 

As a result, the female body is marginalised in climate policy. As Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), argues, “male-dominated teams will [only] come up with male-dominated solutions”. There is still a tremendous legislative incapacity to recognise the existential impacts of climate change on women: climate change does not only “make life more difficult”; it can put their lives at risk. In the powerful words of Itumeleng Komanyane, International Programme Manager at Sonke Gender Justice in South Africa, “If [male policymakers] don’t understand gender, how can they pass anything progressive regarding women’s rights and empowerment?”

Given the dangers of not having enough female voices in decision-making, the case for more women in positions of decision-making should be clear. But this understanding has not been translated into  support for women to take up leadership roles in Hong Kong. Why is Hong Kong’s “double injustice” so hard to tackle?

Hong Kong’s Gender Inequalities in Leadership is a Cultural Problem

Hong Kong’s gender problem is more than just an institutional problem. Even if there are no structures that explicitly prohibit women from seeking certain advancement opportunities, women can still be disadvantaged culturally. 

In a detailed study conducted at The Women’s Foundation (TWF) in 2015, Marya Saidi found that gender stereotypes remain very prevalent in Hong Kong. They are further exacerbated by media representations, which lead to harmful portrayals of women and men and promote unhealthy perceptions, attitudes and behaviours.

The troublesome consequences of gender stereotypes on women’s career and leadership prospects have been helpfully highlighted by two comprehensive survey-based studies. One was conducted by TWF in 2011 and a more recent one was conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong and released by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) in 2020. Although there is no law that bans women from becoming leaders, the gender stereotypes in Hong Kong can have equally strong inhibitory effects. They can be considered in two dimensions:

• Obstacles to taking up senior roles

According to the TWF survey, almost 30% of women did not wish to be very successful in their careers, because of family obligations such as housework and looking after children. The existence of a “work-family trade-off” for women has yet to be proven, and a trade-off need not exist in the first place if both mothers and fathers are equally involved in domestic responsibilities. Yet, the fact that these tasks are often considered “mainly for women” has unfortunately led to women being more reluctant to develop their careers and reach for leadership positions. It is also not very helpful when more than a fifth of women’s partners do not want their spouses to be successful in their careers for these reasons.

• Difficulties in staying as leaders

But just because some women rise to become leaders does not mean they are free from gender stereotypes. Women leaders continue to be “expected to take good care of their families regardless of their leadership roles”. For men, this is not an expectation but a bonus.

Often, the social expectations placed on women are also contradictory. In Hong Kong, women are expected to embody “feminine” traits of being empathetic and compassionate. In contrast, leadership qualities are often associated with “masculine” qualities of being dominant and assertive. The issue here is not role incongruity, i.e., a mismatch between their “nature” and their “jobs”, but the problematic assumption that women and men need to act “according to their gender”. When women cannot be seen as “good leaders” and “good women” at the same time, their desire to stay on as leaders can decrease drastically.

Gender Inequality in Hong Kong’s Green Sector

To what extent are these findings applicable to the environmental sector? While gender gaps are evident in Hong Kong’s male-dominated industries like finance, engineering or construction, gender gaps also exist within the so-called “socially responsible” and “purpose-driven” sectors (such as the sustainability or green sectors). While the social sector is perhaps one of Hong Kong’s most gender-balanced sectors (more than 40% are women), employment figures do not paint the full picture.

A series of interviews with sustainability professionals in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia conducted by Robin Hicks and Aditi Tandon from Eco-Business showed that in the green sector, women were not given the same respect as their fellow male counterparts. Many found their opinions frequently doubted and undermined, and people often did not know how to manage situations when a woman was in charge. Maggie Lee, currently Asia Pacific Regional Lead for Global Seafood Traceability for WWF, recalling an instance where she felt patronised by a director-level person when he commented on her “youthfulness” – and by implication, inexperience – shared that she would turn her camera off when speaking to top-level officials to avoid condescension. When women are not taken seriously, they are severely hampered in their ability to succeed, like attracting funding that is essential to much of their work.

Women are also subject to many other forms of leadership inequalities such as unexplainable pay gaps and unwanted public attention regarding their body shape, appearances and personal relationships. Together, they hinder women’s social and economic advancement and impede Hong Kong’s journey to becoming a more equal and inclusive society. With regard to climate change, this prevents women from being able to determine what is most important to protect and support themselves as they continue to disproportionately shoulder the impacts of climate-related injustices.

Photo credit: Mongkhonsawat Luengvorapant/Oxfam (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Hong Kong’s Climate Justice Must Begin with Gender

As shown, it is clear that climate change and gender inequality are interrelated. Their effects compound one another: women are more vulnerable to changing environmental conditions; at the same time, the silencing of women’s voices will only exacerbate Hong Kong’s climate change problems. While legislation has been a key promoter of gender equality in many domains of life in Hong Kong, these structural developments have not been enough to remove some of the city’s deep-rooted discrimination and stereotypes. They can be extremely harmful and are the main reason why women continue to experience frustration in their efforts to make a change. 

Women are the building blocks of society; in Hong Kong, they account for more than half of the total population. When they suffer, society suffers with them. Hence, as Sonalie Figueras, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Green Queen asks, “without lifting women up, what chance do we have of creating a fairer, kinder, greener world?”

Thus, Karen Ho, Head of Corporate and Community Sustainability at WWF-Hong Kong, urges Hong Kong needs to really realise and harness the value that women bring to society. The diversity that women bring, along with the unique traits that they offer, enrich organisations and businesses as they offer new perspectives, foster healthier communicative practices within the workplace and help develop more sustainable practices. Relating to climate change, having more women in decision-making positions allows a more inclusive approach to policy. Decisions can therefore be better informed.

The lesson is not that Hong Kong needs to “inject more femininity” into organisations, but that we need to discard those harmful gender labels that specify what a “man” or a “woman” is (not) supposed to be or do. When there is more representation at the senior level, men can also learn from their female colleagues and be encouraged to adopt traits that they believe are not “masculine”.

In fact, since COVID-19, there has been growing interest for organisations to embrace an “androgynous” style of leadership, which emphasises the need to blend these two traditionally diametrically opposed categories. In practice, leadership styles are adopted within organisations based not on who the leader is, but on what works best to support all employees and members.

Overall, Hong Kong needs to be a more receptive society. As David Smith, associate professor at the John Hopkins Carey Business School puts it bluntly, we need “more listening” and “less mansplaining”. For women to be able to speak for themselves, men, having historically been in positions of power, need to be responsive to the concerns of women and pay careful attention to their own practices so as to not let their own egos get in the way of others’ successes.

It is also crucial that gender inequality in Hong Kong is not simply used to reproduce pitiful and patronising narratives about women. Instead, inequality should be seen as an “artefact of absurdity” that can propel all actors in society to start interrogating their own worldviews, values, assumptions and habits to help create a new world.

There is no guarantee that achieving gender equality will lead to climate justice in Hong Kong. Many other inequalities and injustices (along the lines of skin colour, class, religion, age etc.) need to be addressed. Given the challenges of fighting climate change, having more diversity in leadership positions does not mean we will immediately make wiser decisions about our climate and environment – education will have to play a huge part. But if Hongkongers are determined to fight injustice, we must be open to new ideas and solutions – as the saying goes, two heads are better than one. Inviting more people to contribute would be a simple but good start.

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The post Gender and Climate Justice: Why We Need More Women in Leadership in Hong Kong appeared first on Earth.Org.

Biophilia design is a new but steadily growing phenomenon around the world. In Hong Kong, the concept is also gaining momentum, but many challenges persist in incorporating nature more fully into existing urban spaces. What lessons can Hong Kong take from other biophilic cities around the world such as Singapore to achieve its development goals such as improving public wellbeing and sustainable growth?

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What is Biophilia Design?

The term “biophilia” was first used by German-born American psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in his 1973 book The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. He defined biophilia as “the passionate love of life”. The term was later popularised by American biologist Edward O. Wilson, who expanded on the concept in his book Biophilia (published eleven years later). He suggested that biophilia was not simply an energised feeling toward “all that is alive” but also an “innate tendency [for humans] to focus on life and lifelike processes”. Wilson’s hypothesis is well evidenced today: regardless of cultural differences, humans around the world appear to all share a common affinity toward and affiliation with nature. We are connected to and dependent on nature, partly because we co-evolved with nature.

As the idea gained more traction with the increase in research showing how our bonds with nature have not disappeared despite our increasing dependence on technology, different sectors and industries have developed an interest in understanding its implications on society, particularly in the fields of urban planning, architecture and construction. What makes it so difficult (or in fact, impossible) for humans to divorce themselves from nature?

The Benefits of Biophilia Design on Urban Life

Incorporating biophilia into urban areas, or to put it simply, integrating natural elements into our built environments, can have massive health, environmental, economic and long-term developmental benefits for cities everywhere.

How does embedding nature into our everyday architecture enhance social wellbeing? According to numerous studies, exposure to biophilic urban spaces is extremely conducive to achieving good mental health. It promotes positive emotions and reduces negative emotions and enhances cognitive functioning. As a report by the World Health Organisation shows, they allow citizens to engage in a diverse range of physical activities without being exposed to air pollutants as well as promote social cohesion and opportunities for relaxation in highly stressful environments. Biophilia design can also be practised indoors. For example, having wood and plants in indoor spaces can improve air quality and ventilation, which are found to be key determinants of productivity in offices. They can improve attention, stress recovery and work performance and promote clarity in thought. 

There are also benefits to making our indoor lighting systems biophilic. Exposure to blue light, which is found in most white-coloured LED lights, has been shown to affect our natural sleep-and-wake cycles because it can suppress the body’s release of melatonin (a hormone that makes us sleepy) at the wrong times. Moreover, most man-made light sources flicker (change in intensity of light source), which is known to cause headaches and eye strains. By maximising the use of natural light (which does not flicker) during the day and reducing our exposure to blue light in the evenings, biophilic lighting systems follow humans’ natural circadian rhythms (our sleep-wake patterns over the course of a 24-hour day), minimising disruptions to our internal body clocks and allowing us to have good rest at night and high productivity during the day.

Biophilic environments also help save energy. For example, “green” or “living” walls on buildings (vertical structures that are intentionally covered by greenery) can be effective thermal and acoustic regulators. As a study has shown, living wall systems significantly reduce heat loss, meaning that less energy for heating is required to keep inhabitants warm during cold winters; yet at the same time, they are power shades against strong direct sunlight during hot summers and can undergo evapotranspiration, where evaporated water from the leaves help cool down the surrounding air, thereby lowering the overall temperature of buildings and reducing the need for air-conditioning. Plants are also better absorbants and reflectors of sound than most common building materials, meaning less distractions and disturbances and greater sound privacy can be experienced.

From an ecological standpoint, biophilic designs and urban environments have also been found to be crucial preservants of biodiversity. In many cities where biodiversity is in rapid decline, biophilic urban environments are an excellent way to promote human and animal wellbeing simultaneously. Biophilic urban environments such as biophilic streets (streets that foster our connection to the natural environment) not only improve the wellbeing of human inhabitants as we have seen earlier, but also “offer refuge to native biota by providing food, shelter, breeding sites, and ease of movement for wildlife” to help support “the development of a balanced ecosystem”.

Preserving urban diversity also reduces urban sprawl, the rapid expansion of urban developments away from urban centres to areas of the countryside because they allow for more spacious and aesthetic residential or commercial developments. As a study conducted by the European Environment Agency (EEA) suggests, if we are able to bring nature back into our urban areas, citizens’ are able to experience nature without having to spread out at the continued expense of the natural habitats of our precious wildlife.

Challenging our conceptions of where nature is located and our traditional dichotomies of nature versus urban, people no longer need to “go out to the countryside” to experience nature. Biophilia alerts us to the ways in which our urban lifestyles and our innate intimacies with nature can go hand-in-hand. Urban and nature are not opposed categories but can coalesce to generate a plethora of benefits to the wellbeing of both humans and animals.

A common myth about biophilic designs is that they are economically unwise investments reserved only for “elite technologists living in green bubbles”. However, backed by growing evidence, biophilic environments actually deliver huge returns on investment. In their report, The Economics of Biophilia: Why Designing with Nature in Mind Makes Financial Sense, sustainability consulting firm Terrapin Bright Green shows that biophilic designs have saved businesses around the world a lot of money (e.g., saved energy costs, greater employee satisfaction leading to greater retention and thus reduced turnover costs) and increased profits (e.g., because of enhanced worker productivity). While biophilic environments may be slightly costlier to build, upfront costs are no harder to recover compared to usual ordinary environments. So biophilic designs are not just good for the environment; they also enhance the functionalities of everyday urban spaces and the wellbeing of their occupants.

The Challenges of Biophilic Cities: The Case in Hong Kong

Many cities and companies around the world are actively embracing and pursuing biophilic design in public spaces and workplaces. Likewise, Hong Kong is witnessing its own nascent biophilic movement today: development projects such as residential buildings, shopping malls and rooftops are incorporating biophilic elements into their designs or renovations. These changes are partly due to the pandemic (and its work-from-home trend) spurring renewed appreciation for nature. As Director of architect firm Sustainable Design at Ronald Lu & Partners M. K. Leung argues, “Cities are socio-ecological systems. The sustainability of the urban system depends on its resilience in the face of changes – including climate change. Building biodiversity and ecological connectivity into the fabric of cities helps reinforce this resilience.”

While it is good to know that Hong Kong is seeing its own growth of green architecture in its densely populated urban areas, Hong Kong still lags behind other major cities around the world in terms of its commitment to greener land developments.

The first reason is overpopulation. As one of the most densely populated cities, Hong Kong has a massive public space problem. As a report conducted by local environmental policy think tank Civic Exchange finds, although almost 75% of Hong Kong’s territory is green, the majority of day-to-day activities of citizens take place in the remaining 25%. Unless more land is reclaimed, because of Hong Kong’s hilly geography, it is suggested that the city unfortunately only has this 25% to develop on. As urban densification continues, the difficulties of creating more public spaces in Hong Kong.

While Hong Kong has subsequently seen the fascinating development of unique public spaces such as “microparks” in the most bizarre of places, whether they will become a trend remains to be seen. This is because there is limited incentive to create public open spaces in the city. Connected with the fact that Hong Kong’s population is projected to increase to 8.2 million in 2043, development agendas have little choice but to concern themselves almost exclusively with housing expansion projects and less on their quality. Compared with other urban land uses, public open space also has a significantly (and somewhat understandable) lower priority in land allocation. As a possible consequence, Hong Kong’s public space developments have also been quite half-hearted. Many public open spaces have been under fire for their poor architectural designs and lack of user-friendliness leading to their continued underutilisation.

It is good to know that Hong Kong is showing greater awareness for ESG and real estate has played a huge role in vitalising the city’s green finance in recent months. However, just because sustainability is increasingly embraced in urban planning in Hong Kong, it does not necessarily mean the same can be said for biophilia design. Biophilic design is not just about being environmentally or resource conscious when designing our urban spaces, but about realising our fundamental connections to nature and therefore bringing them into our indoor and personal spaces. This is partly due to biophilia design still being a relatively nascent phenomenon in Hong Kong, given that most Hongkongers have not been close with the local wildlife and other ecosystems.

Consequently, our understanding of “green” urban development remains more or less related to using more environmentally-friendly materials or adopting more efficient sources of energy to power our activities (e.g., promoting electric vehicles, retrofitting, encouraging prefabrication of building materials). For example, many tall commercial and residential buildings today are eager to find innovative ways to establish greenery on the premises in Hong Kong. However, as Oren Tatcher, Principal of OTC Planning & Design points out, these developments often miss the biophilic lesson: their purposes go far beyond decoration. Often, these green spaces are then quite inadequate for social or public use. 

Can Hong Kong Still Become a Biophilic City?

There are plenty of opportunities for biophilia design. It is not that biophilia is inherently incompatible with the priorities of Hong Kong’s urban developments, but that its benefits are underappreciated and not taken advantage of.

While it is true that Hong Kong’s urban and rural geographical constraints significantly impede planners and developers’ ability to create biophilic environments, biophilic design does not necessarily entail creating biophilic environments “from scratch” or demand a complete renovation of all existing spaces. Instead, it encourages us to see where natural elements can be reincorporated back into our extremely (or even excessively) artificially-designed urban architecture. This need not always involve large-scale funding or investments to take place, but something as simple as injecting a bit more greenery into existing spaces.

Biophilia design is not just compatible with other development agendas in Hong Kong, but also conducive towards their achievement. If physical space is something that we cannot magically expand, our goal cannot be to forcefully squeeze more spaces into our already burdened infrastructure, but instead to open them up. As Dr. Heesun Choi at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University believes, many of our existing public spaces are filled with “active or passive deterrents” that discourage citizens from using them.

It is not that Hong Kong does not have enough public spaces, but that they are often not inclusive enough to accommodate a diversity of activities, which can range from “casual contact, socialising, community activities, entertainment, political expression, and commercial exchanges”. By emphasising biophilia design, urban spaces adopt an emergent character: because of our instinctive affinities with nature, our inborn abilities to blend into the natural environment, we are capable of discovering and engaging in interactions never imagined before. For example, outdoor environments can be better places for work-related meetings than the traditional conference room. Biophilic design is therefore not about determining from construction the purposes of a space, but about promoting our natural and vibrant imaginations of “doing things differently”.

Hong Kong has all the financial tools it needs to realise biophilic design in urban planning. What it can do today is to learn from other biophilic cities which have been successful in their efforts of directing investment towards biophilic urban development projects. A notable example is regional “rival” Singapore, already recognised as one of the world’s greenest cities.

Introduced by their National Parks Board, Singapore’s Skyrise Greenery Incentive Scheme offers funding of “up to 50% of installation costs of rooftop greenery and vertical greenery” in both residential and non-residential buildings, as part of the city’s overall attempt to improve air quality and mitigate its urban island heat effect (warming up of urban areas because of dense concentration of surfaces that absorb and retain heat, e.g., pavements and buildings). In addition, within Singapore’s Landscaping for Urban Spaces and High-Rises (LUSH) programme which encourages injection of greenery into property developments, property developers are required to replace greenery lost from a site in the form of greenery such as rooftop gardens, urban farms or communal areas.

It is also worth noting that Hong Kong’s “green oases” are mostly found only in the private sector. If Hong Kong wants to promote more equitable biophilic environments, the private and the public sectors need to collaborate. This way, we can harness the expertise and financial capacities within the private sector to promote more equitable outcomes in public wellbeing (e.g., higher quality greenery development in public housing estates) while ensuring that these developments are also commercially viable for them.

There is always a danger of romanticising biophilic urbanism. Just because it can work in harmony with many of our other social objectives, does not mean it can be implemented the same way everywhere. While Hong Kong would certainly benefit from a transition to biophilic urbanism, this transformation cannot be brought about overzealously. Singapore’s example, while certainly impressive, cannot be seen as a “template” to be imported directly into our unique city. Consequently, for Hongkongers to pursue biophilic urbanism, design processes need to be democratic. A more democratic approach would allow citizens to share their hopes and also provide more refreshing perspectives to keep discussions about the use of these spaces open. While all citizens have the technical expertise, urban planners should engage the public early and frequently to help them realise their visions. Even after they have been fully built, biophilic spaces can still be modified or improved to support a richer form of public life in Hong Kong.

The post Biophilia Design and Biophilic Cities: Can Hong Kong Become One? appeared first on Earth.Org.

Recent oil and gas sanctions imposed on Russia, in light of its human rights violations in Ukraine, have revealed major problems in the EU’s energy security. As the EU now scrambles for new sources, questions about the human rights track record of alternative energy providers are raised. How can the EU ensure that its new energy supplies and an energy policy that are committed to the protection of human rights internationally?

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As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, countries in the West have been working together desperately to weaken the superpower and demonstrate their solidarity with Ukraine. Currently, economic sanctions have been the major form of action. In the short run, they can contribute to “ramping up economic pressure on the Kremlin and cripple its ability to finance its invasion”. In the long run, they are a lot more ambitious: beyond frustrating Russia’s military efforts in Ukraine, they aim to end Vladimir Putin’s grip on power, now recognised as a menace to global security.

The EU has agreed on a series of restrictive measures, which include the prohibition of EU transactions with Russian State-owned Enterprises (SOEs), the introduction of import bans on steel products, and export bans on luxury products. Russian oligarchs and business elites linked to the Kremlin or found to be playing a role in Russia’s military operations have also been sanctioned, as countries have been given the green light from Brussels to hit these individuals with travel bans and asset freezes.

As discussions about sanctioning Russia went on, it became increasingly apparent that most EU countries had been extremely dependent on the Russian economy. As governments and businesses find themselves in urgent need of new economic partnerships to replace their economic relations with Russia, the question of how has been raised.

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky

EU’s Current Energy Policy and Reducing Dependence on Russia

Never has the EU’s realisation of their extreme dependence on Russia’s energy sector been made more clear until the war in Ukraine. As the third-biggest producer of oil in the world (behind the US and Saudi Arabia), Russia’s gas accounts for about 40% of the EU’s natural gas imports. This reliance has therefore enabled Russia to strengthen their bargaining power in the global order and eventually allow them to get away with more ambitious foreign policy directions, which a report produced by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for External Relations in 2018 predicted so accurately. Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and Eastern Europe have long existed. The EU’s continued reliance on Russian crude is also a key revenue stream of Russian exports which has been vital to Russia’s military funding today.

To end their dependence – and therefore Russia’s hostage over European oil markets – many countries in the EU have agreed to move away from investing in Russian energy companies by looking at alternative energy providers and sources. It is hoped that by the end of 2022, the EU will be able to cut Russia gas imports by 80%. Italy has frozen a share loan of USD$561 million for a Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) plant project. Germany has halted a gas pipeline project that was designed to double the flow of Russian gas to Germany.

Given the current situation, the EU has little choice but to look for alternatives to Russian energy. On March 24, the EU took advantage of its friendly partnership with the US and agreed on a new LNG deal  following US President Biden’s visit to Brussels. With the deal, they are expected to take over more than 20% of Russia’s current gas supplies. Other options include making deals with countries like Canada, United Arab Emirates (UEA), Qatar, Nigeria, Lithuania, Norway, Iran, and Algeria.

However, several nations are already operating at full capacity and whether they are willing to make new deals with the EU remains uncertain, especially those in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as group  officials have expressed concerns about the destabilising impacts of banning Russian oil on the global economy.

Since the EU’s energy infrastructures have always been so oriented towards the East, many are expecting a rise in costs of living in Europe and a stagnation in economic growth. Electricity prices in some European countries are already very expensive (like Germany), as most electricity is imported. If gas prices continue to soar (due to increases in costs of importing them), energy poverty will proliferate in Europe, especially in colder climates. If energy disruptions persist, the International Energy Agency (IAE) warns that we could be launching ourselves into “the biggest supply crisis in decades”.

From Despot to Despot: Are Our Alternatives Better?

The oil embargoes implemented were designed to punish Russia and show the EU and the West’s position against Russia’s warmongering behaviour, as well as demonstrate its commitment to the protection of global human rights.

Recently, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson met with leaders in the Gulf to discuss potential opportunities for partnerships. However, critics charge that this may not be the right move either, especially with Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest exporter of oil. Saudi Arabia has long had a reputation for human rights abuses, where mass executions following unfair trials and extrajudicial killings are commonplace. Similar things can be said for Qatar, as media exposure building up to the World Cup this summer have also shed light on the death of 6,500 migrant workers (many of which remain uninvestigated) since winning the bid for hosting the World Cup in 2010.

So while countries might not be funding Russia, they might still be funding human rights violators elsewhere. As UK Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer speaks to the BBC, “going cap in hand from dictator to dictator is not an energy strategy”.

Decarbonisation as the Way to Energy Independence in the EU

Today, activists and politicians are calling for governments to view the Russia embargo as an opportunity to fast-track domestic initiatives to promote energy independence and self-sufficiency. However, we must accept the fact that eventually, countries will have to work with Russia to address global energy security problems in the long term.

This, however, does not mean the EU should abandon its current line of action. Instead, as Sammy Roth from the LA Times writes, countries need to wean themselves off dependencies that may inhibit their ability to negotiate with Russia. This means that the EU’s energy policy must recognise the urgency of transitioning to energy sources that are “harder for bad actors such as Russia to disrupt”.

Decarbonisation may be a solution. There is no better opportunity than now to do this collectively, as there is common understanding that key to energy security without Russia is to diversify energy supply and explore the development of non-carbon renewables. It is no surprise that Europeans are finding all sorts of reasons today to push forward the EU Green Deal today which aims to pass the EU through to a more sustainable economic model. 

To aid member states in making greener energy policy decisions without sacrificing current energy security, the IEA swiftly published a 10-Point Plan. It proposes that members stop all gas contracts with Russia and look for alternative gas suppliers while accelerating the development of local solar, wind, nuclear and bioenergy projects. At the same time, it is also encouraging citizens to turn down their thermostats by 1 degrees Celsius to deliver immediate annual savings and bring down energy bills.

At the same time, the IOE is aware of the economic and infrastructural impossibility of making green energy an immediate substitute for gas and oil – this would have to take years. Nevertheless, as a long-term investment, not only will decarbonisation help achieve the EU’s environmental and energy objectives but also help free itself from energy captivity by non-democratic countries that pay little attention to human rights, which will allow it to strengthen its foreign policy standing against them.

Human Rights Issues in the Development of Renewables

As Yadaira Orsini, Principal Consultant (Human Rights) at ERM writes, “[i]t is easy to perceive renewable energy as ‘inherently good’ or to assume that it is protected by a ‘green halo.’” However, there are growing concerns that green projects are failing to incorporate human rights into their models. In an outreach to 50 global green power companies conducted by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) in 2016, only five of the companies were found to have a “stated commitment” to human rights. Worse, only three were facing allegations of human rights violations. 

Hence, while the horrors of Russian imperialism today have demanded us to focus more on human rights when devising new energy policy strategies, we must also pay attention to the less visible practices of exploitation and displacement arising from the expansion of the renewables industry, which are virtually prevalent along every step of the supply chain. For example, according to a study by Sheffield Hallam University in the UK, the solar panel manufacturing process has been found to be heavily imbricated with forced labour in the Uyghur region, responsible for around half of the world’s production.

In Norway, the government has ramped up land-based wind power developments to reduce dependence on oil and gas. However, these developments, often in the countryside, have frequently led to the dispossession of Norway’s indigenous peoples, the Sámi. For decades, these green industrial projects have disrupted their traditional ways of life.

While the intensity of displacement of these projects might not be comparable to that of the devastation violently unleashed by the Russians on Ukrainian soil within the short span of a month, climate change – and the measures designed to counter it – can just be as violent in the long run, albeit “slowly”. These instances of “green slavery” or “green colonialism” show how climate justice can be invoked as a discourse just to gloss over human rights abuses.

As the EU looks to phase down Russian energy, it needs to be able to invest responsibly and accelerate the development of renewables to ensure energy independence and security in these times of precarity. Yet, the limitedness of available options can lead to controversial energy investment decisions, and supply chains are often harried with human rights issues that often go under the radar or are downplayed. If the EU claims to be so committed to the protection of human rights around the world, how can citizens and governments ensure that future energy policies will put human rights at the centre?

A Rights-Based Approach to Energy Policy

To guard itself against its possible perpetration of human rights abuses that it has sought to avoid, the EU must put human rights at the centre of all its policies. It is not just about devising sanctions and measures to pressure aggressive countries like Russia to improve their human rights records, but about ensuring that the policies promote the rights of all who may be affected by them.

A rights-based approach to energy policy would ensure that energy services, at every step of its delivery, prioritises human rights. Not only should governments see energy policies as vital to the promotion of dignified life outcomes for all citizens including future generations, but they should also recognise citizens’ status as key actors and stakeholders throughout their decision-making processes and after the decisions are made.

Moving forward, a few questions are vital for policymakers:

1. Are policies targeting the right people?

Every policymaker must first ask whether the benefits of a policy can reasonably outweigh its risks. But in the context of the EU’s position on the Russian invasion, sanctions are deliberately “harmful” – they are designed to “harm” those who might be lending support to the Kremlin. It is not clear how many Russians truly support Putin’s current actions.

Nonetheless, many innocent Russian citizens are suffering from the sanctions today and are struggling to keep up with the country’s inflation rate of 14.5%. As consumption and costs of businesses continue to rise, sanctions could indeed cripple the Russian economy and lead to an increase in poverty.

Furthermore, the sanctions can affect countries that are not directly involved in the conflict or are not the intended targets of the sanctions. For example, Lebanon is now facing a fuel and wheat crisis, as sanctions have only worsened the country’s already troublesome food security crisis.

Hence, instead of simply asking whether the benefits of a policy outweigh the risks, policymakers should consider whether the policies are targeting – or in this case, punishing – the right people. Given the destructive impacts of sanctions (though nothing like the deadliness of bombings and airstrikes), policymakers should also consider the wellbeing of those who have been unwilling dragged  into the EU-Kremlin saga today.

EU policymakers might want to reconsider sanctions on human mobility to allow Ukrainians and affected Russians to seek asylum. In particular, wealthier and better-resourced member states in the EU should also take more initiative in providing additional support for other countries like Lebanon that may have been affected by the war and the sanctions in these difficult times.

2 How should the EU evaluate its energy investment options?

As we have seen, the EU’s options for energy investments beyond Russia are not without controversy. Many of the options laid out by energy experts involve partnerships with countries whose human rights records can hardly be regarded as reputable.

Policymakers should therefore require companies to develop a comprehensive policy commitment to human rights, specifically to the first two principles of the UN Global Compact, that businesses should protect human rights and make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses. Concomitantly, to aid companies in making responsible investment decisions, rigorous investment risk assessment tools that incorporate human rights and geopolitical risk into their measurements should be popularised to help businesses and governments pay scrupulous attention to the deals and projects that they are about to commit to. Adopting a “risk to people” approach, the international accounting firm KPMG, for example, now actively helps companies develop long-term strategies for identifying risks related to human rights.

3. How can EU member states guard against the temptation to ignore human rights in the future?

Even if initial risk assessments of energy investments indicate low risks associated with human rights issues, there is always the possibility of oversight and the contingency of change when an energy programme is being implemented. Of concern here is how states and companies can continue to abide by human rights principles after a policy or investment decision.

It is essential that opportunities and channels for continued stakeholder engagement with projects and policies are institutionalised and put into regular practice. Especially when the EU is moving towards more localised developments of renewables, local populations will see themselves increasingly implicated in the consequences of energy-related activities. Precisely because some populations are going to be more affected than others, to prevent their marginalisation we need to place their voices at the centre of public discussions.

To ensure corporate and state accountability, the energy sector needs to establish clear guidelines on improving participation in stakeholder engagement procedures. Moreover, citizens should have easy access to complaints mechanisms and judicial remedies, so that critical voices on the planning and implementation processes of energy programmes (e.g. relating to corruption, exploitation or discrimination etc.) can be heard. Altogether, they can promote the democratic renewal needed to preserve the spirit for improvement.

To promote genuine participation, transparency of information is of paramount importance. Knowledge of what happens in the procurement and supply chains needs to be made available to companies, consumers and the general public. Consequently, traceability is important, as information about “the provenance and journey of products and their inputs, from the very start of the supply chain through to end-use” can be made visible. Traceability protocols allow public inspection of where and how (humanely) things are being done in energy projects, for example, how solar panels might be manufactured and delivered from other parts of the world, or offer insight on where the next wind farms might be best located to minimise harm on indigenous groups.

Collective accountability among member states of the EU will also be crucial. To foster this, policymakers may want to consider EU-wide benchmarking practices to ensure that energy projects throughout Europe are consistently in accordance with principles enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. This will be a crucial ingredient against charges of hypocrisy by other countries.

Concluding Thoughts

While the EU is still trying to work out a better plan to stop Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, sanctions will likely remain the most extreme course of action to be adopted by the EU. But how effective will they be? Research findings have been mixed: while some argue that the economic hardships generated can lead to growing dissatisfaction with Putin’s regime and therefore propel democratisation, others believe that sanctions might only drive Russia to unite with other authoritarian regimes like China and Iran, which might only insulate itself from some of the impacts of the West’s tough sanctions.

There is no silver bullet solution to the global problem of human rights. After all, as our incapacity to learn from history has shown, no practice can ever guarantee our invulnerability from the inherent darkness of the human condition. However, while Russia does not seem to be interested in stopping its military operations any time soon, the geopolitics of energy in Europe has revealed cracks and potential opportunities for countries to make an impact on the global human rights landscape. For certain, the international community will not give up on Ukraine so easily.

The post Lessons from Russia: A Rights-Based Approach to Energy Policy in the EU appeared first on Earth.Org.

Climate change and public health are interconnected; as climate-related health problems proliferate across the world, healthcare systems around the world are faced with unprecedented challenges. The problems in Hong Kong’s collapsing healthcare system today serve as a perfect lesson for the world; not only do we need to put more effort into building up the resilience of citizens, but we also need to go beyond resilience to change the very social and climate conditions that affect our public health. This article argues that governments need to put health at the centre of social and climate action.

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Given the overwhelming scientific evidence today that points to the health impacts of climate change, health policy agendas around the globe are now beginning to realise how big of a public health threat climate change is to humanity. It is understandable, therefore, that health emerged as a key topic in the COP26 discussions. The COP26 Health Programme was established to “prioritise health and equity in the international climate movement and sustainable development agenda.” Within the programme, an Adaptation Research Alliance (ARA) was created to “catalyse and scale investment in action-oriented research and innovation for adaptation that strengthens resilience in communities most vulnerable to climate change.”

It is also common to find research illustrating how the health effects of climate change are worse for developing countries. However, this has unhelpfully reinforced a kind of “developed-country complacency syndrome”: able to escape the worst effects of climate change, many developed countries do not feel like they need to do much.

Hong Kong also suffers from this syndrome. With an impressive score of 0.949 on the Human Development Index (HDI), Hong Kong’s standard of living is ranked 4th in the world. Many Hongkongers really do not have to worry about the effects of climate change in this city. Although Hong Kong is experiencing stronger and stronger typhoons and record-high temperatures are broken almost every year, most people are relatively unaffected.

But one need not have experience of something as serious as the destruction of their home to feel the health effects of climate change. In fact, they do impact our everyday lives, albeit subtly.

The Everyday Effects of Climate Change on Hong Kong Public Health

In Hong Kong, for every increase of 1C above 29C, hospitalisation rate increases by almost 5% and mortality by almost 2% –  which amounts to approximately 1,000 more deaths per year. This is because temperature rise indicates rising greenhouse gas emissions and these gases have significant impacts on cardiovascular (relating to the heart), respiratory (relating to lungs), and integumentary (relating to the skin) health. During the hot summers, many people feel dizzy too.

Climate change is also facilitating the spread of communicable (infectious) diseases in Hong Kong. Changing rainfall patterns have been conducive to the transmission of vector-borne diseases such as dengue fever, hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD), and malaria.

Rising temperatures can also affect mental health. According to a study, they can be “direct or indirect, short-term or long-term, … or even transmitted to later generations”. Consequences also vary in severity, ranging from “milder” symptoms of distress to more serious clinical disorders such as depression or even suicide. In fact, haze events (such as smoggy days) are already enough to increase mortality risk by almost 3 per cent in Hong Kong; for those with existing mental disorders, the effects are far worse.

However, while everyone is affected, certain social groups are disproportionately more affected than others.

The Health Inequalities of Climate Change in Hong Kong

As a report published by the Institute of Health Equity of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK IHE) finds, economic inequality is a huge determinant of health inequality in Hong Kong. With a striking Gini coefficient of 0.539, Hong Kong is in the top 10 in the world in terms of income inequality. As Hong Kong’s temperatures rise, the city ’s poorest suffer the most. Unable to afford quality housing, many live in terribly conditioned subdivided flats with poor air quality, hygiene and suffocating temperatures. These living spaces have also become breeding grounds for diseases as mosquitoes are found swarming them all the time.

More than 30% of Hong Kong’s elderly live in poverty; with the pandemic still in force, this figure has likely risen. Without a stable source of income and surging house prices, many have become “cardboard grannies and grandpas” with nowhere but a cardboard box to live in. Deprived of a decent environment to live in and without anyone to be looked after by, they are most vulnerable.

But these health inequalities only show half of the picture. For instance, while hospitalisation rates may be a useful indication of the severity of health problems, it fails to account for the fact that there are people who have health problems but do not/are not able to go to hospital. This is evident within ethnic minority communities, as cultural and linguistic barriers (on top of financial barriers) often hinder their ability to access local healthcare services.

Image by: Hong Kong Hospital Authority

A Collapsing Hong Kong Healthcare System

Despite ranking 8th globally on the World Index of Healthcare Innovation, Hong Kong’s healthcare measurement in the “Quality” category has been labelled “poor”, as it suffers from overcrowding and a serious deficit of healthcare workers. According to local think tank Our Hong Kong Foundation (OHKF), there are less than two doctors for every 1,000 people, a statistic significantly below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of 3.5 and lagging way behind regional rival Singapore (2.5). Hong Kong’s healthcare expenditure levels are also low in comparison with OECD countries: total health expenditure as a percentage of GDP is around 7% (2% points below OECD average). 

The OHKF has described Hong Kong’s healthcare system as “hanging on a rope stretched too thin”. The reasons show that such a claim is far from an exaggeration:

• Undesirable working environment

There is an increase in the attrition rate of doctors and nurses in recent years, partly because of growing emigration out of the city. As perceptions of job precarity grow (for work-related, economic and political reasons), the manpower within the healthcare sector faces more uncertainty than ever.

• Hong Kong’s rapidly ageing population

On one hand, this is a testament to the fact that Hong Kong has the world’s longest life expectancy of 85 years. On the other, it is projected that the proportion of citizens in Hong Kong older than 65 will be 27% by 2033 and a staggering 37% by 2066. Co-Director of PolyU’s Institute of Active Ageing under the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences Professor Teresa Tsien believes that, as people live longer, “the chances of dependency on medical, welfare and other services will be greater.”

Climate change will make things more complicated. More people today, young and old, require medical attention. Even if the number of medical staff continues to increase, it may still struggle to keep up with the rate of increase of vulnerable people in Hong Kong.

• Public-private disparities in healthcare provision: a vicious cycle

Hong Kong has a dual public-private healthcare system. However, their disparities are great. The number of doctors in private and public hospitals is approximately the same – but public hospitals provide services to 90% of in-patients in Hong Kong. It is predicted that more doctors in the public sector will “defect” to the private sector because of better pay, working hours, and conditions. With decreased manpower, the workload of those who remain in the public sector will only increase, and this will lead to even longer waiting times. This creates a vicious cycle.

• Curative over primary care in Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s public healthcare focus is weighted significantly towards curative care, which is mainly concerned with curing and rehabilitating patients. In the case of climate health, curative approaches are certainly important, but they only cure the “symptoms” and not the “disease”, i.e. climate change itself.

Although the WHO describes primary care as being “the first level of contact of individuals, the family and the community with the national health system” and therefore fundamental to any healthcare system, Hong Kong’s primary care remains inadequately provided. Most providers are private (70% of market share) and are accessed exclusively by the rich. In contrast, there are only 73 public clinics that provide primary care to a population of 7.5 million; they also tend to be underfunded. Although vouchers have been introduced to support access, a lack of publicity has deemed the programme quite ineffective. 

It is no surprise that Hong Kong’s curative-oriented healthcare system is collapsing. So what can be done?

Mentality Shifts Needed for Hong Kong’s Healthcare System

Today, global health policy discourses are realising the need to build “climate-resilient health systems” that can “anticipate, prepare for, and respond to hazardous events, trends, or disturbances related to climate”.

In Hong Kong, health policy discourses have recognised the need to go beyond curative approaches towards preventive and promotive approaches. For example, public health academic Emily Chan argues that the government should devote more resources to enhancing Hong Kong’s risk reduction, preparedness response and recovery abilities, which involves workforce training and promoting public health literacy in light of growing climate-induced weather events in Hong Kong.

Government and non-governmental bodies have also stepped up efforts to foster public resilience. The Hong Kong Observatory’s “MyObservatory” mobile app, for example, allows citizens to access live weather information so that they can be better prepared for weather events. Another example can be found in the development of the Hong Kong Air Quality Health Index (HK AQHI) app by the Environment Protection Department (EPD), which provides citizens with live information about air quality when they travel.

But Hong Kong’s healthcare challenges are not simply issues of manpower and literacy. Even though the government has encouraged a lot more public-private partnerships (PPPs) to improve quality and efficiency, they only upgrade Hong Kong’s “defensive capabilities”. Professor Veronika Schoeb at the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at PolyU argues, “healthcare practitioners have only minimal control over health-related social issues such as education, work environment, or housing.” As a result, the underlying social determinants of public health remain unconsidered. In framing action only in terms of keeping pace with the rate of climate change (which is common around the world), it seems as if we are only trying to “delay the inevitable”.

Hence, healthcare systems need to be more active in other areas of policy. For Hong Kong, public health should be at the centre of different forms of social justice – which includes climate justice.

Image by: GovHK

A Climate-Sensitive Healthcare System

The COP26 Special Report on Climate Change and Health provides useful suggestions for within-sector and cross-sector developments that may be appropriate for Hong Kong.

Within-sector developments

• Increase accessibility to primary care

Apart from curative care, the best healthcare systems in the world have a robust primary healthcare infrastructure. Beyond expanding the capacity of hospitals or upgrading medical equipment, Hong Kong needs to diversify its healthcare services beyond curative care. It can learn from countries such as Canada and Finland in expanding and strengthening primary care services. The benefits are profound: as the OECD argues in a report published in 2020, Realising the Potential of Primary Care, “[p]rimary health care can save lives and money while levelling the playing field to achieve more equal access to medical treatment”.

• Improve professional engagement within the community

For healthcare services to be used wisely, community engagement, which is found to be quite poor in recent years (because of politics and the pandemic), is important. The majority of community engagement today are organised by non-governmental organisations. Taking a backseat, the government has failed to create a coherent vision and provide appropriate support to these programmes. This might also explain Hong Kong’s poor health literacy.

A way to foster engagement is to increase involvement of health professionals, who often command more respect from the public (than the government) “to communicate the health risks of climate change, and to promote policies that protect public health from climate impacts”. Actions can be as simple as providing educational materials to patients or visiting vulnerable households. On a larger scale, health talks and forums can be organised within communities.

• Improve coordination between health services

Hong Kong’s healthcare sector is often also criticised for its lack of coordination: services are often set up only reactively, resulting in a lot of redundancy. To improve governance within the healthcare sector, communication is important. A starting point, for example, is to develop health data harmonisation, which involves data sharing between health departments. This can improve the efficiency and quality of services by making the whole process a lot smoother for both the staff and the patient.

Cross-sector developments

While within-sector changes are important, they are insufficient. As we have seen, (climate) health is very much socially determined. This is why the COP26 Special Report resolutely argues that we need to “include health in all policies”. Hence, in the words of IHE CUHK, “[t]he government should work with other sectors, including academia, social care and healthcare, professional bodies, businesses, charities and voluntary organisations, in developing policies across the board to mitigate the social determinants of [climate] health inequalities.”

Hong Kong needs a constructive approach to climate change-related public health. Apart from enhancing health resilience, how can we make our city a greener and more liveable place?

• Urban planning and transport

It is good to know that concepts of liveability are being recognised in Hong Kong’s newest Clean Air Plan 2035 and are increasingly connected to health and wellbeing. For example, the government has been trying to promote a low-carbon transport infrastructure by installing roadside air quality detectors and financially incentivising the use of electrical vehicles and public transport.

However, housing has been overlooked in the plans. As we have seen, the government needs to improve the living conditions of public housing in many areas such as by installing or updating their cooling and ventilation systems. To ensure continued accountability, assessment tools such as the Hong Kong Green Building Council’s BEAM Plus New Buildings should be actively employed to crucially ensure that future construction projects are “human-centric”, green, and practical.

Furthermore, according to a report by local think tank Civic Exchange, urban development is not just about infrastructural improvement but also about discovering their “vibrancy”. In a densely populated city like Hong Kong, this is not going to be easy. But as the authors Carine Lai and Antonio Da Roza show, vibrancy need not be about developing extravagant spaces such as shopping malls (which are also energy-intensive) but can also be achieved through the creation of accessible, green, open and user-friendly spaces for public activities such as street hawking and performance. As such, they can be enjoyable spaces – as the evidence shows, they are also opportunities for enhancing mental and physical health – without necessarily being environmentally damaging.

• The power sector needs to consult the medical sector more

In line with global discourses on sustainability, talk of green and just transitions to renewable energy in Hong Kong have grown. However, discussions have primarily framed relevant strategies of decarbonisation or energy diversification only in economic or environmental terms, where public health is only of secondary importance.

Hong Kong’s climate action needs to be “people-centred”. The medical sector should be a bigger stakeholder in Hong Kong’s power discussions, so that future decisions and investments can be improved: they should consider not only the scarcity of natural resources – that humans can only exploit so much of – but also the potential health ramifications of such initiatives.

• Transform climate education

Finally, to sustain climate action, climate education needs to be transformed. Apart from learning about the adverse health effects associated with climate change so that people can protect themselves better, the education system should focus on cultivating sustainable mindsets and lifestyles that will enable future generations to imagine different pathways to a healthier Hong Kong.

Overcoming Hong Kong’s Healthcare Crisis: Lessons for the World

Hong Kong has all the expertise and resources it needs to make those changes possible – it has access to a remarkable pool of professional talent that not every country can boast of. However, Hong Kong’s poor management of the healthcare sector and its failure to situate health issues within climate discussions (and vice versa) are lessons that healthcare systems around the world can draw on.

The COP was created in 1992 with the noble aim of creating a globally coordinated strategy to tackle climate change and governments around the world will continue to bear this in mind and harness the opportunities provided by COP26 to develop more cross-regional collaborations to help improve public health around the world together.

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