The Real Threat to Hong Kong’s Country Parks
If you think Hong Kong’s country park development debate is done and dusted, you’re mistaken. The battle is now taking place in “country park enclaves,” where there is little environmental regulation on development projects.
Tai Tan Village, inside the Sai Kung Country Park, is erecting 20 new village houses. Wildlife such as turtles and kingfishers live in a nearby stream. Wild boars, snakes and porcupines reside in the area. But the government didn’t carry out any environmental impact assessment before approving the plan to build 20 new houses in the village.
One Tai Tan resident tells SCMP that he hasn’t seen any wildlife in the area since construction work commenced. "Government officials said it does not affect the country park," he says. "But of course it does.”
Even though the Sai Kung Country Park surrounds Tai Tan village, small-houses development are fine because the area is a “country park enclave.”
What are country park enclaves, and what’s happening to them?
Country park enclaves, in HKU Geography professor Ng Cho-nam’s own words, come from “a twisted policy” the colonial government used to speed up the setting up of country parks. “No other country parks in the world have enclaves,” Ng says. “Only Hong Kong’s country parks have these little holes.”
Ng explains that the government zoned areas inhabited by indigenous villagers as enclaves in 1991 so that the setting up of country parks would go smoothly. “It was a political compromise that sacrificed conservation,” he says. Enclaves aren’t required to follow stringent conservation policy country parks are subject to, meaning that construction is often insensitive to the site’s ecological and biological properties.
Development in enclaves is nothing new. Take Tai Tam’s luxury villa Hong Kong Parkview, located on the periphery of the Tai Tam Country Park. “It’s right in the middle of the Tai Tam hiking trail,” Ng says. “Conservation is also about the landscape and the heritage, but the Hong Kong Parkview has ruined the country park view.” What’s new and increasingly unsettling is that similar projects are tipped to happen across the city.
Where else?
Tai Tan and Tai Tam are not the odd kids out. The same thing is happening to other ecologically sensitive areas. At the northern cap of the Sai Kung peninsula and surrounded by the Sai Kung West Country Park is paddlers’ heaven Hoi Ha Wan, a stunning beach leading to the Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park. There’s a plan to build 84 small houses.