The project calls for turning more than 600 hectares (1,483 acres) near the city’s border into a technology hub. About half of the land will be used to develop innovation and technology industries, while the rest will become a new town centre, yielding up to 54,000 flats.

Green groups are concerned that the technopole project will result in the loss of 240 hectares of the Wetland Conservation Area and the Wetland Buffer Area south of the Shenzhen River.

Most of that wetland area was added in a 2023 amendment to the plan when an environmental impact assessment was already under way.

2. How does the environmental impact assessment work?

According to a law enacted in 1998, any development project involving an area of at least 50 hectares is required to carry out an environmental impact assessment to examine whether a project proponent has done its best to avoid or minimise adverse impact of the ecosystem.

The outline of the San Tin Technopole’s environmental impact assessment was decided in June 2021, two years before the project expanded into wetland conservation areas. The report was released in February for public viewing.

The Advisory Council on the Environment is due to review and make recommendations on the report on Monday. It will be up to the director of the Environmental Protection Department to decide whether to accept the report.

Rejecting such a report for a major infrastructure project is rare.

One precedent is the Lok Ma Chau Spur Line construction project, which had to replace an above-ground railway line with a tunnel in its design plan after authorities rejected the assessment report in 2000.

Environmental impact report on Hong Kong border project misidentified birds

3. What are environmentalists’ concerns?

Ten advocacy groups, including Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund Hong Kong and the CrossBorder Environment Concern Association, have called on government advisers on the council to reject the report.

The groups said they has identified 35 violations of statutory requirements and guidelines in the February report, including one that asked for a new assessment summary if amendments were made that “fundamentally” changed the scope of the areas under review.

They also identified 27 “serious technical assessment and data errors”. For example, there was no proper assessment of how habitat loss and fragmentation may affect the survival of Eurasian otters, which were “rediscovered” in the Mai Po wetland Park in the 1980s.

One major oversight, the groups claimed, was that the report only picked four bird species that primarily eat fish to assess the functional values of the fish ponds affected by the project

That meant that many other species were overlooked, such as otters, diving ducks, little grebe, white-breasted waterhen, black-crowned night heron, dragonflies, amphibians and reptiles. Some of the species are listed as endangered.

“If [they] approve an [environment impact assessment report] that is riddled with errors and flaws, is unscientific and substandard, there is a high chance that it will follow in the footsteps of the golf course [in Fanling] and may incur the risk of judicial review,” Chan Hall-sion, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace, said on Wednesday.

The Environmental Protection Department has defended its handling of the process, saying it would give comprehensive and careful consideration to the requirements in reviewing the report.

It also maintained that new “conservation parks” would ensure that there would be no net loss in ecological functions or carrying capacity in the wetlands concerned.

4. How might a legal challenge affect the project?

A judicial review, if initiated by a relevant stakeholder and accepted by the court, can stall government projects, regardless of the outcome.

In 2010, a Tung Chung resident filed a lawsuit against the environmental impact assessment study of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge.

The Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the government in September 2011, but the case still delayed the start of construction by about a year and resulted in an increase in the budget of about HK$6.5 billion.

A plan to build public housing on part of the Fanling golf course is facing the same threat after the Hong Kong Golf Club lodged a judicial review to challenge “the errors and non-compliances” of the impact assessment report for the housing project on the 32-hectare site.

Innovation and technology sector lawmaker Duncan Chiu said the sector was “deeply concerned” that the site preparation work for the technopole would be stalled as a result and hoped the government could reach a consensus with all stakeholders to prevent a delay.

Lawmaker Edward Lau Kwok-fan voiced his support for the development, saying the assessment report complied with prevailing rules. He said he was confident the wetland habitat would not be undermined by the construction.

Reject impact assessment for Hong Kong technopole project, green groups say

Four business lobbies, including the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce and the Chinese Manufacturers’ Association of Hong Kong, on Friday suggested the government could develop “strategies” to ensure construction could commence at the earliest.

“The proportion of the relevant land in issue under the current plans for the San Tin Technopole is relatively small and should not delay the project’s overall progress,” they said in a joint statement. “The issue in question is not insurmountable.”

5. What’s the government’s plan to compensate for wetland loss?

The Civil Engineering and Development Department said it would construct a 338-hectare wetland conservation park at Sam Po Shue, an existing low-lying wetland area just a stone’s throw from the built-up areas of Shenzhen. But no details have been offered yet.

Officials have reiterated that compensation plans should “focus on quality rather than quantity”, implying that a smaller but well managed conservation zone would be sufficient to make up for the larger wetland area lost to the development.