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Letters | Let Japanese model show Hong Kong the natural way forward
- Hong Kong needs well-preserved natural spaces, not another purely commercial project or white elephant
- The Satoyama Initiative is the perfect reference model for Hong Kong to revive countryside land
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Why you can trust SCMP
Amid the heated debate over the Hong Kong government being bent on bulldozing through the massive “Lantau Tomorrow Vision” reclamation project, and a recent proposal from former chief executive Leung Chun-ying to build public housing on the fringes of a country park, calls are growing louder again for society to pay attention to natural conservation.
The number of Hongkongers visiting country parks has increased since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, raising the value of these green spaces in the eyes of the public. While opposing costly white-elephant infrastructure projects, we must also never overlook the importance of having a sustainable model for countryside conservation.
Conservation should always come before development. About 75 per cent of Hong Kong’s 1,108 square kilometres of land is countryside. The government’s Countryside Conservation Office was established under the Environmental Protection Department in 2018. But Hong Kong lacks an effective unified model of conservation.
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The Satoyama Initiative, a Japanese concept of a rural land-use system based on sustainable conservation has been adopted by countries around the world since 2010. This model aims to sustainably nurture “societies in harmony with nature”.
It aims to enhance socio-economic activities on a local scale through a three-fold approach: first, consolidating wisdom on securing diverse ecosystem services and values; second, integrating traditional ecological knowledge and modern science to promote innovations; third, exploring new forms of co-management systems or evolving frameworks of “commons” while respecting traditional communal land tenure.
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Why Carrie Lam’s Lantau land reclamation plan is so controversial
Why Carrie Lam’s Lantau land reclamation plan is so controversial
In Hong Kong, the Sustainable Lai Chi Wo Programme launched in 2013 set a great example of how the Satoyama Initiative could be implemented to revitalise rural areas.
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