Hong Kong’s new environment minister pledges to move on green targets, start testing hydrogen powered cars by 2024
- Tse Chin-wan says new Environment and Ecology Bureau aims to tackle green issues ‘holistically’
- Protecting biodiversity, including in Northern Metropolis project’s wetland areas, a priority too
Hong Kong’s new environment chief has pledged to put hydrogen vehicles to the test in as little as two years, as the city’s new leadership moves to meet its green objectives.
Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan also promised to be more proactive in conserving biodiversity and fighting global warming, by updating targets set by the previous administration.
The Environment and Ecology Bureau was created in a government reshuffle last month, replacing the former Environment Bureau. It has taken over sanitation services from the now-defunct Food and Health Bureau, and the Observatory from the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau.
“This new bureau will address environmental issues more holistically,” Tse said in his first interview as minister. “In the past, we usually focused on natural ecosystems or wild animals when discussing ecological problems. But human beings are part of the ecology too.”
Bringing the Observatory under the bureau could help to provide a strong scientific basis on issues related to climate change, he added.
Unlike his predecessors, Tse, 64, is the first to have worked his way up to be environment minister since the handover in 1997. He started at the colonial government’s Environmental Protection Agency in 1985.