HONG KONG
LEGISLATIVE 香港立法局————————————一九八九年七月十九日
COUNCIL
19 July 1989
104
success story of Hong Kong has been told many times and has won the admiration of many around the world.
But, Hong Kong's economic success has not been achieved without a price. The rapid urbanization and industrialization of Hong Kong has led to the inevitable deterioration of our environment. The White Paper on pollution in Hong Kong acknowledges that both the Government and the community "made choices which gave too little emphasis to the needs of the environment".
This was understandable and Hong Kong has not been alone in this. There were two major reasons why efforts to protect our environment have been lacking.
1. In the years that we had to fight against overwhelming odds for
economic survival, considerations for quality of life took second place.
2. Hong Kong has been regarded by not a few of its inhabitants, even long
before the 1997 question was talked about, as a home in transit, a place where the quickest profit could be made; the primary goal has been the highest production at the lowest cost.
It would be difficult to change the feeling of this group of people in the light of the current confidence crisis. But, for the majority of our people, the 1997 question brought home the need to reaffirm Hong Kong as a place with its own identity and permanence, under the concept of "one country, two systems". To these people, we must commit to improve their quality of life by cleaning up and protecting our environment.
The White Paper spelt out different measures to combat pollution problems in Hong Kong, and they deserve our most serious consideration.
In essence, there are really three ways forward:
1. To introduce legislation to reduce existing sources of pollution and to
provide sufficient resources for enforcement and control.
The need for such legislation is fundamental: existing problems must be capable of being remedied at source. It must be recognized that the community would have to pay for the cost of such remedies. For industry which to a large extent has been responsible for much of our pollution problems, it is estimated that, for example, to effect the