China Daily: Bay Area cities 'should team up to go green'

HONG KONG – Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area cities should collaborate to jointly solve pollution issues and discover new business opportunities, environmental academics and experts say.

A conference in Hong Kong held to explore how the city could contribute to the Bay Area becoming a world-class low-carbon economic hub drew more than 180 industry experts, business leaders and academics.

Christine Loh Kung-wai, chief development strategist in the Division of Environment and Sustainability at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said mainland officials were knocking on Hong Kong’s door to see how they can help resolve the air-quality issue. However, when mainland officials plan to solve problems, they have many internal discussions.

Loh said it was critical for Hong Kong to attend these discussions to play a role in improving the Bay Area environment.

Echoing Loh’s view, Freeman Cheung Chun-ming, vice-president of Hong Kong Institute of Qualified Environmental Professionals, said the Hong Kong and Guangdong governments had a long history of environmental collaboration. They had worked on issues including regional haze, water quality, ecological development, coastal floods and ocean storms.

To further protect the Bay Area from environmental and climate risk, smart technologies should be integrated into development of various cities, he suggested.

Officials should prioritize ecology and pursue green development by focusing on sustainable development of the city cluster, added Cheung. He suggested governments set common environmental policies and objectives to align practices among Bay Area cities.

Environmental professionals would play a very important role in bringing about a cleaner, greener and smarter environment in the Bay Area by introducing better green technologies, Cheung said.

Apart from cooperation at government level, Board Director of Business Environment Council and  Managing Director of Dunwell Technology (Holdings) Ltd. Daniel Cheng Man-chung predicts that as the Bay Area is turned into a “smart region”, business in smart traffic and a new lifestyle will boom in future.

Electric cars, green transport and solar power will be more popular. Cheng suggested Hong Kong businesses look into these fields, work with their mainland counterparts and cooperate instead of competing with them.

The 56,500 square-kilometer Bay Area comprises 11 cities – the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and the cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Zhongshan, Dongguan, Huizhou, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing in Guangdong province.

The region has a population of 67.7 million and annual GDP of US$1.3 trillion, according to data from 2016.