History will be made today if Legco's Finance Committee approves funding for an environmental proposal that would see taxpayers' money spent on pollution control measures outside Hong Kong for the first time.
The government's proposed HK$93 million industrial cleanup scheme would also see cash incentives going directly to individual Hong Kong factory owners in the Pearl River Delta - another departure from normal practice.
A more far-reaching implication, according to environment secretary Edward Yau Tang-wah, is that the Hong Kong-funded initiative would sow the seeds for greater collaboration with Guangdong province officials and businesses in tackling cross-border air pollution.
The latest available data released this week - 2003 for Guangdong and 2006 for Hong Kong - show emissions rising in the delta but falling in Hong Kong, with the exception here of sulfur dioxide emissions, mainly from local power generation.
'If it can secure money from Legco, this project will be a milestone because it represents a change of mindset,' Mr Yau said. 'It goes beyond the boundary of Hong Kong and is being used as a catalyst to involve third parties on the basis of dollar-for-dollar matching, with a very clear parameter that the money is spent on measures that bring an immediate improvement through cleaner production.
'It also underlines the importance of looking at air pollution and other environmental matters from a regional perspective because we all live in the same air shed,' he said, noting that Hong Kong both contributed to and suffered from the problems.
Hong Kong and Guangdong jointly agreed in 2002 to reduce emissions of four major air pollutants by up to 55 per cent by 2010, taking 1997 as the base year. With faster economic growth in the delta than initially assumed, Guangdong is at risk of missing its targets. It also significantly underestimated baseline emissions for three out of the four pollutants, making it even more of a stretch to hit the 2010 targets.