Enforcement failure in protected Hong Kong wetlands area
WWF-Hong Kong has criticised planning officials for their poor record of issuing penalties to those caught damaging the protected Inner Deep Bay area
Planning officials have come under scrutiny for weak enforcement ability as 435 cases of unauthorised development were recorded in the ecologically-sensitive Inner Deep Bay area over the last two decades.
Nearly 20 per cent of the cases involved illegally filling in wetland fish ponds, but only a third of those responsible were required to reinstate the ponds to their original condition, according to analysis by WWF-Hong Kong. Just six per cent were fined.
“Unauthorised development in the area has been on an upwards trend since 1992. Some of the areas have been degraded into open storage uses, filled or turned into contiguous ponds,” conservation officer Tobi Lau Shiu-keung said.
The scope of unauthorised development between 1992 and 2015 span about 153 hectares, which Lau said may have already caused irreversible damage to the wetland ecosystem. Annual cases have more than trebled in this period.
Inner Deep Bay, off Yuen Long, is an internationally recognised and vital wetland site under the 1995 Ramsar Convention. It is a wintering site for a tenth of the world’s black-faced spoonbills, an endangered migratory water bird. The area is protected by wetland conservation area (WCA) and wetland buffer area (WBA) planning controls .
Only 28 cases in the stated period led to prosecutions, with average fines of HK$66,392 per case, a figure which the WWF said was markedly lower than the HK$500,000 maximum penalty possible under the Town Planning Ordinance.