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Tree care has too many branches

Chloe Lai

Hong Kong would have an urban tree advisory board and a tree authority to plan greening strategies and care for, protect, remove and replant trees in the city, under draft legislation prepared by Professor Jim Chi-yung.

The chairman of geography at the University of Hong Kong criticised the present arrangement. 'There are 17 government departments responsible for trees,' he said, 'The arrangement is confusing and the role of the private sector is missing.

Under his proposal, any development site bigger than 5,000 square metres would have a tree-planting plan.

Private land planted with trees would become a public area. In return, the government would allow the developer to transfer the development potential of the area planted with trees to the remainder of the site.

The mainland and Singapore have a tree ordinance to specify greening policies.

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