ENG-2010 — Page 333

The Environment 279

Land Use Planning

For major land use planning studies, a Strategic Environmental Assessment is required to incorporate environmental considerations into the formulation of land use plans. Under the Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance, an EIA must be carried out as part of the engineering feasibility study of urban development or redevelopment projects with a study area of more than 20 hectares or involving a population of more than 100 000 people. These environmental assessments are an integral part of the planning studies and help identify major environmental issues and possible mitigation measures for inclusion in the land use plans.

Environmental Management and Sustainability

The Government promotes environmental management in both the public and private sectors through the Green Manager Scheme, environmental auditing, environmental management systems and environmental performance reporting. All bureaux and departments have appointed Green Managers and publish annual reports of their environmental performance. Since 2007, all annual environmental performance reports incorporate, where appropriate, the principles of the 'Clean Air Charter' which the Government supports to improve Hong Kong's air quality. To further promote environmental performance reporting in the private sector, the EPD has established a dedicated webpage encouraging listed companies in Hong Kong to share their environmental or sustainability information with their stakeholders.

Rural Developments

The Government is committed to improving the quality of life in rural areas and to ending or removing land uses that downgrade the rural environment. Sewage disposal facilities in the rural areas of the New Territories are better than before and are still being improved. In 2010, while continuing its efforts on the construction of such sewerage facilities, the Government drew up plans to invest further in projects with village sewerage components to provide public sewers to enable domestic discharges from villages in rural and other unsewered areas to be conveyed to sewage treatment works. Loan and grant schemes for eligible householders to make house connection to public sewers are available.

Cross-boundary Co-operation

Since environmental pollution transcends administrative boundaries, Hong Kong and Guangdong have been working together on environmental matters for over 20 years.

The HKSAR Government and the Guangdong Provincial Government have drawn up a Regional Air Quality Management Plan that aims to reduce emissions of four major pollutants in the region by 20 per cent to 55 per cent by 2010, taking 1997 as the base year. Since November 2005, a regional air quality monitoring network, comprising 16 monitoring stations, has published a daily Regional Air Quality Index, and the reports on the monitoring results were released in April and October 2010.