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The Chief Executive unveiled his plan on the
restructuring of policy bureaus on 3 May 2007. The suggested plan of
creating a Development Bureau and the shuffling of policy portfolios
of the future Environment Bureau will have direct impact on the
sustainable development of Hong Kong.
The Development Bureau would be responsible for speeding up the
implementation of large-scale projects and development-related
heritage conservation. But there are two ways of speeding up
projects: 1) identifying all the built heritage and landmarks and
design the infrastructure afterwards so that they could be preserved
in situ or 2) plan the infrastructure first, then see what built
heritage or landmarks are in the way and bulldoze them.
It is not yet known what the modus operandi of the Development
Bureau would be, but heritage conservation is too important to be
left to the hands of a single bureau. We suggested that the
Development Bureau should seek policy guidelines from the Council on
Sustainable Development. And as the Development Bureau is only
responsible for development-related heritage conservation only, the
Environment Bureau should take up the responsibility of both
nature and heritage conservation, besides taking up matters on
energy.
We would also like the Development Bureau to speed up sustainable
development projects such as HATS 2B and Integrated Waste Management
Plant.
We are of the opinion that CS should still head the Council for
Sustainable Development, as sustainable development cut across all
the policy portfolios. The CSD should formulate a Sustainable
Development Bill, with a view to giving legal and statutory status
to SD policy, such as requiring large scale infrastructure projects
such as those responsible by the Development Bureau to conduct
sustainability impact assessments (SIA). The Environmental
Protection
Department should be the enforcement agency.
The Sustainable Development Unit, which serves as the secretariat
for CSD, could be under the Environment Bureau. |
