AMILESTONE has been reached during the past week in Hong Kong's approach to environmental issues. We have started what we hope will be a major debate by publishing the Government's first comprehensive environmental review.
No one can doubt that, at present, Hong Kong does too little to safeguard its environment, or that the subject has a low priority in a society devoted to economic expansion.
The debate, therefore, is about the level of environmental degradation we are prepared to accept in the name of ''prosperity'' or, to put it more positively, how much we are prepared to pay in order to protect and sustain our environment.
That is why we have called our review, ''The Hong Kong Environment: A Green Challenge for the Community''. And that is why I have chosen to base this article on the challenge for business, not just Hong Kong's largest companies, but the territory's business community as a whole - all those involved in our economic success.
In a preface to the review, Governor Chris Patten says: ''In Hong Kong, healthy economic growth has not always been accompanied by quite such a wholesome regard for our environmental well-being. Rightly, we demand high standards from so many aspects of our daily lives as we pursue success for our companies, success for ourselves.
''Now is the time to start paying the same attention to the way in which we look after the environment in which we actually live, not least if we are to enjoy the prosperity we all value so much.'' The particular challenge for business and industry, I suggest, is to face concepts that may be anathema to generations of businessmen: for example, that there are limits to growth, limits to the environment's capacity to absorb wastes, and that there aregood reasons why the present levels of consumption cannot continue.
If businessmen are seen to be taking up the challenge in a society such as ours, they will be setting an example to the community. That is no mean challenge in itself, given the speed with which the emporium that is Hong Kong revolves around the mighty dollar, forever demolishing and building and eating into our scarce natural resources.
