Outside In | Why Hong Kong’s rich environment is part of its competitive advantage

Name: Hiking Hong Kong’s MacLehose Trail
Uploaded: 2021-12-03T20:15:10.000Z
Duration: 10 min 2 s
Description: Hiking Hong Kong’s MacLehose Trail

Among all of Hong Kong’s many advantages, its unique juxtaposition of teeming urban humanity and pristine natural wilderness is too often overlooked

We eat away at our green spaces and country parks with full knowledge that we compromise our unique natural heritage at our peril

Reading Time:4 minutes

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Hong Kong’s top trail runner Wong Ho-chung navigates the MacLehose Trail on December 4, 2020. Though unknown to and sometimes feared by Hongkongers, the city’s country parks and rich biodiversity are an important part of Hong Kong’s competitive advantage. Photo: Moment Sports Photography

David Dodwell

Published: 4:15am, 4 Dec 2021Updated: 4:38am, 4 Dec 2021

No Hong Kong minister worth their salt will let a speech pass without recounting our distinct competitive advantages. We know them all by heart: rule of law, financial, legal and accounting services, trading and maritime services – and of course our unique linkages to the Greater Bay Area and as an access point to the mainland. But one competitive advantage always seems to be overlooked: wild boar.

Well, perhaps not exactly wild boar, but the extraordinary natural environment that supports them. As the government launches a debate on culling them – and, more seriously, eating away the edges of our country parks – we should pause for thought. Before we set about destroying it, we should recognise there is no natural competitive advantage more distinct than our unique juxtaposition of teeming urban humanity and pristine natural wilderness.

Here, big city opportunity sits alongside easy access to hundreds of kilometres of tranquil mountain trails and a biodiversity rarely seen elsewhere in the world.

When did a wild boar last stray into a Londoner’s back garden, or a Burmese python snack on a New York family’s cat? What San Francisco partygoer ever returned home to find a 33cm (13-inch) Atlas moth snoozing peacefully above the front door? What Tokyo office worker can leave work at 5pm and 30 minutes later be swimming in the ocean or watching the sunset from a mountain top?

10:02

Hiking Hong Kong’s MacLehose Trail

Many thank Governor Murray MacLehose, who in 1976 set up Hong Kong’s country park system and protected around 40 per cent of the city’s land from development or urban encroachment. We have much to thank him for, but Hong Kong’s unique natural diversity and competitive advantage have more diverse roots than that.

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.css-1m2rp1p{color:#34b8b5;}Outside In | Why Hong Kong’s rich environment is part of its competitive advantage

Outside In | Why Hong Kong’s rich environment is part of its competitive advantage