Environmental policy and sustainable development in China: Hong Kong in global context 9781447314226

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environmental policy and sustainable development in china hong kong in global context

paul g. harris

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA Hong Kong in global context Paul G. Harris

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by The Policy Press University of Bristol Fourth Floor Beacon House Queen’s Road Bristol BS8 1QU UK t: +44 (0)117 331 4054 f: +44 (0)117 331 4093 [email protected] www.policypress.co.uk North American office: The Policy Press c/o The University of Chicago Press 1427 East 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637, USA t: +1 773 702 7700 • f: +1 773-702-9756 [email protected] • www.press.uchicago.edu

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested. ISBN 978 1 44730 507 1 paperback ISBN 978 1 44730 508 8 hardcover The right of Paul G. Harris to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The research on which this book is based was generously funded by the Hong Kong Council for Sustainable Development’s Sustainable Development Fund, Project Number SDF 299. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of The Policy Press. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or The Policy Press. The University of Bristol and The Policy Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. The Policy Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design by Qube Design Associates, Bristol Front cover: images kindly supplied by Paul G. Harris/iStock/alamy Printed and bound in Great Britain by Hobbs, Southampton The Policy Press uses environmentally responsible print partners.

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Other books by Paul G. Harris Climate change and American foreign policy, St Martin’s Press/Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. The environment, international relations, and US foreign policy, Georgetown University Press, 2001. International equity and global environmental politics: Power and principles in US foreign policy, Ashgate, 2001. International environmental cooperation: Politics and diplomacy in Pacific Asia, University Press of Colorado, 2002. Global warming and East Asia:The domestic and international politics of climate change, Routledge, 2003. Confronting environmental change in East and Southeast Asia: Eco-politics, foreign policy, and sustainable development, United Nations University Press/Earthscan, 2005. Europe and global climate change: Politics, foreign policy, and regional cooperation, Edward Elgar, 2007. The global politics of AIDS (with Patricia D. Siplon), Lynne Rienner, 2007. Climate change and foreign policy: Case studies from East to West, Routledge, 2009. Environmental change and foreign policy:Theory and practice, Routledge, 2009. The politics of climate change: Environmental dynamics in international affairs, Routledge, 2009. World ethics and climate change: From international to global justice, Edinburgh University Press, 2010. China’s responsibility for climate change: Ethics, fairness and environmental policy, Policy Press, 2011. Ethics and global environmental policy: Cosmopolitan conceptions of climate change, Edward Elgar, 2011.

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Contents List of tables, figures and boxes vi Acknowledgements vii Preface ix one

Introduction 1

Part One: Conceptions of sustainable development two Conceptualising sustainable development three Origins and critiques of sustainable development four Implementing sustainable development

19 33 51

Part Two: Contexts for sustainable development in China’s world city five Geography and population 75 six History and development 91 seven Government institutions and policy priorities 105 eight Consumption and a city’s environmental footprint 123 Part Three: Challenges of sustainable development nine Air 141 ten Water 161 eleven Energy and climate change 179 twelve Transportation 197 thirteen Environmental spaces 217 fourteen Conclusion 237

Bibliography 247 Index 283

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Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

Tables, figures and boxes Tables 3.1 5.1 7.1 7.2 9.1 9.2 9.3 12.1

Types of sustainable development Land utilisation in Hong Kong, 1975 and 2008 Electors for functional constituencies (2009 final register) Recognised and unrecognised constituencies in Legco World Health Organisation air quality guidelines and interim targets (2006) and Hong Kong’s air quality objectives (1987) Total emissions of key air pollutants in Hong Kong, 1990 and 2007 Fuel duties in Hong Kong Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation in Hong Kong

45 80 112 114 146 146 149 199

Figures 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 11.1 12.1

Hong Kong’s location Map of Hong Kong Administrative map of Hong Kong Population distribution in Hong Kong Comparison of Hong Kong’s production- and consumption-based emissions Comparison of transportation fuel consumption, 2005

76 77 81 86 184

How is sustainable development understood in Hong Kong? Some key texts in the limits-to-growth debate Streams of modern environmentalism Environmental citizenship Human ecology, urban growth and sustainable development The compact city and urban sustainability The Opium Wars Some indicators of Hong Kong’s ecological footprint Reservoirs and dams: environmental and social consequences The proliferation of solid waste

24 34 46 65 83 87 95 130 173 226

199

Boxes 2.1 3.1 3.2 4.1 5.1 5.2 6.1 8.1 10.1 13.1

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Acknowledgements This book arose from a project on environmental policy and sustainable development, with particular focus on Hong Kong, which I directed at the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd). That project was generously supported by the Sustainable Development Fund (SDF) of the Council for Sustainable Development (CSD), Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government (Project No. SDF 299). Some of the results of another project that I directed, supported by a General Research Fund (GRF) grant provided by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Project No. HKIEd 340309), have also found their way into this book.Additional support was provided by HKIEd via research grants, knowledge-transfer funding and financial assistance from the Department of Social Sciences. Even more important than financial assistance has been the support and help provided by the many people involved in the SDF and GRF projects. This volume is not the product of a single person’s efforts; it is very much the result of a collective team effort by a number of hard-working colleagues. I am very grateful to everyone involved, especially the following individuals (acknowledged here in alphabetical order): Alice S.Y. Chow had an instrumental role in producing the book and in completing the research projects. She conducted research, drafted material (particularly related to geography, urbanity and transport), created many figures and tables, and—vital for a big undertaking such as this—provided expert project management. Rasmus Karlsson helped to draft initial summaries and learning materials, and he provided some insightful comments on an earlier draft of the book. Elias Mele helped by checking the manuscript and the references, and by finding sources. Lucille Ngan and Peter Poon conducted literature searches and checked sources. Jonathan Symons played an important role. Where Alice’s contributions were crucial in the middle and final stages of the SDF and GRF projects and in bringing this book nearer to reality, Jon’s role in the SDF project was very important, including in helping to secure SDF support, conducting research, drafting material (particularly related to sustainability, history, government, and several environmental policy issues) and by serving as project manager. A number of other people assisted in transferring related knowledge to the community and in helping to keep related research projects going: Horry Chan, Eddie Ping Sheng Chen, Reali Suk Ching Cheung, Bill Leverett, Elysia Ng,Thanh Nguyen and Ada Wai Bun Wong. Librarians at HKIEd assisted with consistently professional (and friendly) service. Several Hong Kong-based experts provided extremely helpful comments on the original manuscript.Andy Cornish at WWF Hong Kong read the manuscript in great detail, providing invaluable comments and, admittedly, slightly more than a few corrections. The book has benefited from his genuine expertise on environmental issues in Hong Kong especially. Winnie Law of the Kadoorie vii

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

Institute, University of Hong Kong, provided valuable comments on the draft manuscript as well, pointing to overarching themes and issues worth revisiting. Fred Yok-shiu Lee of the Department of Geography at the University of Hong Kong also thoughtfully reviewed the draft manuscript. His comments directed me toward important changes that have resulted in a book that is much more useful to readers, particularly students. Two anonymous referees commissioned by the publisher also provided very useful insights. My thanks go to all of these people for giving their valuable input. I also wish to acknowledge gratefully the many kind and professional folks at The Policy Press who ushered this project along, including Emily Watt, Laura Vickers, Laura Greaves and Kathryn King. As always, I am personally grateful to K.K. Chan for day-to-day support (and more than a little tolerance) over a dozen years, during which I have worked more or less continuously on books and other writing projects.

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Preface Sustainable development—economic and social progress achieved without exhausting natural resources or undermining the earth’s ecology—is by now an aspiration of most of the world’s governments. It would be difficult to find responsible officials who do not at least claim that they want to advance their communities’ welfare in an environmentally responsible way.This is certainly the case in China, where the country’s leaders frequently invoke the need to achieve sustainable development. But, truth be told, in most places sustainable development is routinely practised in the breach.Almost everywhere, environmental conditions are growing worse as more people become more affluent, consuming more natural resources and producing more pollution. One might expect that all wealthy societies would be able to break this cycle. Indeed, some are moving in that direction. Surely it is affluent countries and communities that are most able to implement sustainable development. If they cannot do it, it is hard to imagine how poor societies will be able to do so. Hong Kong is one affluent place where sustainable development has become a declared objective of government, and indeed of many businesses, but which has done far too little to create a truly sustainable economy and society. Despite its extraordinary wealth, Hong Kong has terrible roadside pollution, devastated local fisheries, sewage flowing into the sea, infuriating noise pollution, enormous rates of material consumption, too many people living in poor housing, thousands of energy-hogging (and un-insulated) skyscrapers, and one of the world’s largest per capita carbon footprints. In short, while it has become a wealthy society, Hong Kong’s development has been unnecessarily unsustainable. There is a story behind Hong Kong’s lack of progress—something that might best be described as a lack of effort—toward achieving sustainable development; telling much of that story is one of this book’s chief objectives. Significantly, there are lessons in the Hong Kong story for other cities in China and beyond. Where Hong Kong has got it right—where it has implemented sustainability—it is worthy of emulation.Where it has failed it is a poster child for wasted potential and thereby a warning to other communities. Importantly, sustainable development in Hong Kong is a work in progress.There are signs of success in some areas, and there is great potential, given the city’s wealth and talent, to create one of the most environmentally sustainable societies in the world. This book aims to highlight this potential, and the associated pitfalls, for readers interested in sustainable development, environmental policy and related issues, particularly as they relate to one of China’s most prominent cities. The book is inevitably incomplete. Much as in most other Chinese cities today, Hong Kong is characterized by change above all else. The built environment is constantly evolving—not always for the better—and Hong Kong society and politics are ever changing. The contents of this book are but a snapshot in time; even as this book goes into production, new issues are gaining in prominence. For example, ix

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plans to expand the airport are exercising the courts and providing fodder for local politicians, and the outgoing chief executive is being pressed to explain, with some difficulty, his government’s failure to implement more stringent air quality guidelines. Hong Kong is also a very complex place. Consequently, some readers may find that some of what follows has been overtaken by events. Nevertheless, the book provides a foundation for understanding those events and helping to put them in context—locally, nationally and indeed globally. The primary audience for this book is undergraduate university students. I have two groups of these students in mind. First, the book can serve as a primary text in courses on environmental policy and sustainable development in Hong Kong and China. Such courses are essential, especially here in Hong Kong where far too little attention has been given at the university level to environmental and sustainability policy. Whereas environment and sustainability are essential (albeit too small) parts of primary and second curricula here, they are not mandatory at most universities. This will have to change if Hong Kong and China more generally are to achieve environmentally sustainable development. Second, the book can serve as a primary or supplemental text for courses on environmental policy, sustainable development, urban sustainability, Asian and China studies, Hong Kong politics and related subjects.The book is also intended for advanced secondary students, particularly those in liberal studies and associated areas. I also hope and expect that the book will be of interest to more general readers who are concerned about environment and sustainability, especially in China and Hong Kong. In many respects, the future of the global environment will depend on the extent to which sustainability is embraced here. Readers are strongly encouraged to explore other books and materials listed in the references at the end of the book—and indeed to seek out other materials, including those published after this book, to develop a more complete picture of events and their causes. To help readers, particularly students and teachers, get to grips with the issues raised by this book, and more specifically to help a little bit in fostering additional thinking about them, each chapter is followed by a short appendix listing some of the chapter’s main objectives, key points and important terms, as well as several discussion questions and additional resources. In an effort to do a tiny bit more to promote environmental protection and support sustainable development in Hong Kong, and as an expression of my own and my colleagues’ appreciation of the important work of local nongovernmental organisations toward this end, all of the royalties from this book will be paid by the publisher directly to WWF (Hong Kong) and Friends of the Earth (Hong Kong). Paul G. Harris New Territories, Hong Kong

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One

Introduction Since the 1980s, ‘sustainable development’ has become a watchword for governments, international organisations and businesses. Indeed, the concept has become so widespread as to constitute a ‘norm’—albeit one often honoured in the breach—that governments are expected to follow as they work toward enhancing the economic wellbeing of their citizens. At its core, sustainable development is about improving human welfare in ways that do not harm the environment, or more realistically it is about promoting economic development while using natural resources sustainably and minimising harm to ecological systems. Sustainable development was most famously defined in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development, also known as the Brundtland Commission after its chairperson, former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED 1987, 43). According to the Brundtland Commission, sustainable development is premised upon two key ideas: “the concept of ‘needs,’ in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organisation on the environment’s ability to meet present and future goals” (WCED 1987, 43). Sustainable development encompasses questions of human welfare and justice (domestic and international), economic development and environmental health. It cannot be achieved without all of these questions being addressed. In short, according to its advocates, for sustainable development to be realised, economic activity must be managed so as to advance environmental protection and social welfare. While the idea of sustainable development has spread around the world, the extent to which it has been achieved has varied greatly. Perhaps nowhere is the challenge to its implementation greater than in Asia, where expanding populations and growing economies are putting unprecedented stress on the environment. Asian countries are only now experiencing the levels of economic growth and development witnessed long ago in the world’s wealthy countries.The difference is that there are far more people in Asia enjoying the fruits of modernisation than there were at similar stages of development in the West, meaning that the environment is now being depleted and polluted on a scale never experienced in human history. The most visible example of this simultaneous growth and environmental harm can be seen in China, where millions of people are joining the global middle class and adding to local, regional and global environmental burdens. A case in point is Hong Kong, a former British colony that came under Chinese sovereignty in 1997 and which overnight became China’s wealthiest 1

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

and most modern city—and which the Hong Kong government and its tourist officials refer to as ‘Asia’s world city’.  As the former colony of a developed country, Hong Kong has the unique attribute of having enjoyed the fruits of Western development in the past, and some of the benefits of China’s economic rise in the present. It provides a window into the potential for sustainable development in the developing world: if Hong Kong, with its all its wealth and historical advantages, cannot achieve sustainable development, it is hard to have much hope for poorer cities, regions and countries that are only now emerging from histories of economic poverty. With this in mind, this book uses Hong Kong as a case study for exploring the extent to which the idea of sustainable development can be realised, particularly in China but also in other parts of the developing world. It identifies both barriers to achieving sustainable development and potential resources that might help to carry a sustainability agenda forward in the future. It examines different explanations for why environmental issues come to prominence and why the government and other actors might adopt policies promoting environmentally, socially and economically sustainable development. Alas, Hong Kong’s people have become all too aware of the city’s environmental shortfalls. This is dramatically demonstrated in the city’s heavily polluted air, revealing the extent to which human activities are harming the environment as well as people’s health, and arguably undermining the local economy as multinational businesses increasingly point to air pollution as a possible reason not to locate their offices in the city. Even this most obvious of environmental problems is not something the Hong Kong government has had much success in tackling.While many factors militate against concerted action against air pollution, as with other challenges to sustainable development, the enormous influence that business interests have over the Hong Kong government makes implementation of policies that bring economic decision making into alignment with environmental and social priorities extremely difficult. While Hong Kong’s poor air quality is probably its most discussed environmental challenges (see Chapter Nine), the local environment has been despoiled in many other ways. Hong Kong’s waterways and coasts are heavily polluted and severely overfished. Hong Kong retains a significant level of biodiversity, but its remaining agricultural land and some of its country parks are damaged by illegal development, rubbish dumps and water pollution (see Chapter Thirteen). Hong Kong’s highly consumerist culture has resulted in the achievement of an unenviable record: Hong Kong now produces the world’s largest amount of household rubbish per capita and ranks very low internationally for its level of waste recycling (Cheung 2010a, 1; see Chapter Eight). Hong Kong also adds to global environmental problems. When its contribution to global warming is assessed on the basis of per capita consumption, Hong Kong emerges as one of the world’s greatest polluters (Hertwich and Peters 2009; see Chapter Eleven). In addition to these environmental problems, Hong Kong faces many social challenges. Over the last half century its economic growth has been astonishing, 2

Introduction

and it has been transformed into a first-world economy. However, this new wealth has not been widely shared; Hong Kong has one of the world’s highest levels of income inequality (UNDP 2009, 195; see Chapter Seven). Taken together, these realities mean that realising sustainable development is an ecological, economic and social challenge for the Hong Kong government and the local community. Nevertheless, despite the many challenges it faces, Hong Kong society has many resources that support sustainability. Measures of ‘human development’ show that Hong Kong people, on average, enjoy good health, long life expectancy and good access to education and social services—notwithstanding the high level of inequality. In 2010, the United Nations Development Programme ranked Hong Kong twenty-first among 169 nations/territories in terms of human development (UNDP, 2010; see Chapter Four).

Linking economic, social and environmental sustainability Although there is much debate about the concept of sustainable development, and even though the Brundtland Commission’s definition—“development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED 1987, 43)—contains ambiguities, we can use the Brundtland definition as the reference point throughout this book. The Brundtland Commission was faced with the challenge of balancing the need to address environmental problems against the goal of reducing global poverty. On one hand, economic development seemed necessary to lift communities in the developing world out of poverty. On the other hand, increasing numbers of people had come to suspect that continued economic growth was not consistent with the goal of environmental protection and respect for limits to the earth’s carrying capacity. The question was how to reconcile these conflicting motivations. The Brundtland Commission proposed an elegant compromise via the concept of sustainable development. In essence, the commission proposed that it is possible for economic development to support, rather than detract from, environmental stewardship. Sustainable development was thus an idea that could appeal both to advocates of economic development—even economic growth, from the commission’s perspective—and to environmentalists who believed that social and economic transformation was needed. The resulting idea of sustainable development has been an enduring rhetorical success, finding its way into the lexicon of government agencies, businesses and civil society. However, while some critics acknowledge that sustainable development is an attractive slogan, they suggest that harmony between environmental protection and economic development is impossible to achieve, let alone harmony with economic growth, (see, for example, Shue 1995, 460). The challenge for governments, businesses and societies is to find ways to ensure that future economic development begins to address the many environmental and social challenges that societies face without undermining existing resources and strengths. This is true in Hong Kong, in China, and throughout the world. 3

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

Sustainable development is frequently described as a combination of economic, social and environmental sustainability: this is the Hong Kong government’s perspective, at least in principle (see Planning Department 2001a). However, as we see below, these elements are not equal. Sustainable development involves at least two key departures from traditional approaches to development: First, there is a recognition that human development and economic activity proceed within an ecological context. Second, there is an assumption that development policy should not simply promote economic growth; it should also target human needs and social development.The concept of sustainable development therefore seeks to disconnect economic development from growth in resource utilisation, and also to disconnect human development from environmentally harmful economic growth. Growing scientific knowledge concerning environmental dangers, such as those posed by global warming, underscores that human economic activity is currently unsustainable on a global scale. If global pollution and the exploitation of resources do not change, we will jeopardise the earth’s capacity to meet the needs of future generations—and very likely even the needs of many people living today.Thus, central to the idea of sustainable development is the understanding that protection of the global environment is an essential precondition for the sustainability of human development. Put another way, sustainable development requires activities to be assessed on the basis of their total social, environmental and economic impact, rather than only on the basis of their economic value. While most people would agree that the purpose of economic development is the advancement of human welfare (although many people are also concerned about the welfare of nonhuman species), this commonsense wisdom is often lost during policy making. For example, the widely used technique of cost–benefit analysis assesses the economic costs and benefits of policy proposals without considering their social and environmental impacts. Environmental impact assessments, if done correctly, aim to remedy this imbalance by also assessing impacts on the environment. Even in Hong Kong, where sustainable development has been implemented much less comprehensively than in many other parts of the world, most major projects are now subject to environmental impact assessments—albeit with many very serious shortcomings in practice (see Chapter Four). Government officials in Hong Kong and elsewhere now routinely invoke the concept of sustainable development, but its actual impact on policies is always in doubt. Much as in China and in many countries, in 1999 Hong Kong’s former chief executive, Tung Chee Hwa, committed Hong Kong to the goal of sustainable development (Tung, 1999). Shortly thereafter, the concept was adopted as a central policy objective of the Hong Kong government (Planning Department, 2001b). However, these commitments have not been fully matched by action. Some progress has been made, to be sure. For example, marine pollution has been addressed through investment in sewage treatment facilities (see Chapter Ten), reliance on coal for electricity generation has been reduced (see Chapter Eleven) and some enhancements to the environmental impact assessment mechanism have 4

Introduction

been put in place—although in a landmark case in 2011, the Hong Kong courts indicted the government for failing to consider adequately the environmental impacts in the environmental impact assessments of some major projects (see Chapter Twelve). Generally speaking, however, there is little sign of the Hong Kong government effectively implementing a truly comprehensive sustainable development agenda. Much as in other places around the world, sustainable development is a benchmark that is not always achieved. Given that Hong Kong is one of the wealthiest communities in the world, an important question is why it has been unable to fulfil the ambition of sustainable development that has percolated around the globe for a quarter century or more. Is the hesitation to develop in ways that are genuinely environmentally sustainable and more sensitive to human welfare a function of economics, politics, history, geography or some other factors? What does the answer tell us about whether and how sustainable development can be implemented in the rest of China, and indeed farther afield, especially throughout the developing world?

Outline of the book To a significant extent, the concept of sustainable development has become internationalised: all governments claim to promote environmentally sustainable development.This book looks at the extent to which this aspiration for sustainable development has been and can be realised in practice. This is accomplished through a case study of sustainability in the context of one the world’s most important city-regions: Hong Kong. There are few places where the conflict between environment and development is more acute than in China and few places where developed-world affluence and developing-world environmental conditions coexist in such close proximity. China was the first country formally to implement (at least on paper) Agenda 21, the United Nations-endorsed blueprint for local implementation of the sustainable development that was agreed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. In Hong Kong, statute books and administrative processes frequently include measures that mirror the sustainability assessment tools and environmental quality indicators that are widely utilised elsewhere. However, as suggested above, these policy instruments have often failed to do enough to improve environmental outcomes. As in many of other places, weak standards and ineffective compliance mechanisms in Hong Kong, and grossly inadequate enforcement in other parts of China, have frequently blunted the impact of apparently robust sustainability policies. The chapters that follow identify both barriers to achieving sustainable development and potential resources that might help to carry a sustainability agenda forward in the future. It looks at different explanations for some environmental issues coming to prominence and why government agencies and other actors might adopt policies promoting environmentally sustainable development.Among the factors considered are the influence of history and geography, public attitudes and the role of civil society organisations, increasing affluence amid growing 5

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

disparities in wealth, political institutions and entrenched business interests, and global affairs, including international environmental agreements.The book draws lessons from the Hong Kong experience that might be applied in other places, especially other ‘world cities.’ In so doing, it exposes many of the promises of sustainable development, and some of obstacles to its implementation. The book is organised into three parts that explore: (1) the concept of sustainable development; (2) the Hong Kong context for sustainable development; and (3) specific environmental policy challenges faced in Hong Kong. To assist teachers and students who might be using the book in courses, assorted learning materials, including lists of objectives, key points, key terms, discussion questions and additional resources follow each chapter.These materials are designed to aid readers in thinking about the issues raised in each chapter, and indeed to help them start moving beyond what is here.The remainder of this chapter summarises the major issues to be explored throughout the book.

Conceptions of sustainable development Part One (Chapters Two–Four) expands on the concept of sustainable development, discusses its historical context and highlights some of the strategies used to implement it. The importance of sustainable development is further examined in Chapter Two. As suggested above, the concept of sustainable development has been influential in policy debates since at least the 1980s. What sustainable development brought to older notions of development was a recognition that economic and human development occurs within an environmental context. The key is to bring environmental, social and economic goals into general harmony. Practical policies for actualising this idea of sustainable development differ among countries, and indeed even within them. In the least-developed countries, strategies for sustainable development should presumably aim for a progressive improvement in human wellbeing through economic development, traditionally assumed to mean economic growth, which benefits the poor. In affluent countries, sustainable development is thought to be less dependent on economic growth. Thus sustainability policies there should presumably focus on environmental conservation and the reduction of environmentally harmful forms of consumption. The relation between economic growth and environmental protection is highly contested. Much of the debate on these issues has been focused on whether the environmental degradation that comes from economic growth will start to decrease once an economy reaches a certain level of development. This pattern has been observed in some countries and with some forms of pollution. However, when looking at aggregate environmental impact, the improved ecological efficiency of wealthy communities does not compensate for their increasing pollution from growing consumption rates. Indeed, much of environmental impact of consumption by wealthy countries is manifested in poor countries as polluting industries move from the former to the latter. Thus the notion of 6

Introduction

sustainable development raises a number of fundamental questions about our common future, especially when we consider the industrial rise of countries such as China and India and the resulting massive environmental destruction. Promoting sustainable development in Hong Kong may be of particular importance given the historical role that Hong Kong has played in bringing new ideas to China. If Hong Kong were to adopt cutting-edge policies and technologies to achieve sustainability, it could lead the way for the rest of China. In so doing it could also provide lessons for implementing sustainable development in other cities and regions. Paradoxically, however, other parts of China are often ahead of Hong Kong with respect to sustainability, meaning that Hong Kong may have as much to learn from China as China has to learn from Hong Kong. Chapter Three describes the origins of sustainable development and explore some of the critiques of the concept.While the concept of sustainable development is often dated to the Brundtland Commission’s 1987 report, Our common future (WCED 1987), it is actually a response to older debates. For example, in the late eighteenth century Thomas Malthus warned that unchecked population growth would eventually threaten human survival. Much more recently, fears of overpopulation and unsustainable consumption patterns escalated in the 1960s, resulting in a number of books that criticised modern industrial society. The subsequent ‘limits to growth’ debate questioned whether Western levels of prosperity could ever become universal without depleting the earth’s resources. Scientists predicted that developmental trends would lead to serious and irreversible degradation of ecosystems and natural resources. Unsurprisingly, many developing countries reacted with hostility to such claims. They argued that environmental concerns were less important than the goal of reducing poverty through economic development, and that poverty itself was a major cause of environmental problems because it pushes people to overuse local resources. Our common future responded to these debates by tying together concern for the limited carrying capacity of the planet with the social challenges facing humanity. It suggested that developing countries needed to increase their economic activity in order to promote human development, whereas the rich countries needed to focus more on environmental protection and improving social equity. In contrast, critics argued that economic growth and environmental protection are not complementary in the way that the Brundtland Commission’s report suggested. They argued instead that ‘de-growth’, or at least a ‘steady-state economy’, is required to protect the natural environment. Others, especially some libertarian economists, have taken yet another view, arguing that further economic growth in the developed world is the best response to scarcity. These tensions have not been fully resolved, and they have resurfaced in recent years in relation to the growing threat of climate change. Meanwhile, economic globalisation has brought new challenges for sustainability because it has become increasingly possible for rich countries to externalise environmental costs. Additionally, on a scholarly level much debate has focused on the moral standing of the natural world, the potential for ecological modernisation and the substitutability of natural 7

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

and human capital, as expressed in the tension between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ forms of sustainability. Implementing sustainable development, the subject of Chapter Four, requires cooperation among a range of actors. In some cases this cooperation must constrain some of those actors from overusing a particular resource, while at other times mechanisms must be found to ensure that each member of a community makes a fair contribution toward a public good. Moreover, different policy responses may be appropriate in different communities and in response to different kinds of challenges. To simplify, there are three sets of ideas for the implementation of sustainable development: (1) that governments should adopt laws and regulations to ensure that people preserve environmental goods; (2) that environmental resources should be privatised so that markets will create incentives for their protection; and (3) that community management offers the most reliable path to sustainable management of environmental resources. Sustainable development also involves non-environmental factors; policy makers must simultaneously address the social, economic and environmental dimensions of meeting the needs of present and future generations. In order to achieve this goal, new ways to measure, preserve and enhance human development and environmental resources have been developed. These include the use of a ‘human development index’, which measures levels of health, education and material wellbeing; the development of forms of accounting that recognise both natural and human capital (such as natural resource accounting and triple-bottom-line accounting); adoption of new decision-making rules, such as the precautionary principle (which requires that cost-effective measures to prevent environmental harm should be considered if such harm is anticipated, even if there is a lack of full scientific evidence to that effect) and the polluter-pays principle (which prescribes that polluters, often producers of harmful products, should be required to pay the costs of any damage caused by that pollution); and the development of new standards for governing labour and environmental conditions, often put in place and monitored by nongovernmental organisations (for example, the Forest Stewardship Council to monitor logging practices).

Contexts for sustainable development in China’s world city Part Two of the book (Chapters Five–Eight) examines the Hong Kong context for sustainable development, describing the territory’s geography, history, governmental institutions and very high ‘ecological footprint’. In many ways Hong Kong is unique, but in others some of its attributes and experiences overlap those of other places in both developed and developing countries. As such, it provides a fascinating case study of the prospects and challenges for sustainable development, especially in Asia. This is revealed in the description of Hong Kong’s geography and population in Chapter Five. Physical and urban geography influence the prospects for sustainable development. For example, one quarter of Hong Kong territory is urbanised. Hills, lowlands and coastal geography contribute 8

Introduction

to development patterns: urban development mostly takes place in lowlands and coastal areas, while hills and country parks remain relatively free from intensive development. However, over time these geographical features have been heavily modified, with ecosystems destroyed as mountains have been levelled and the sea ‘reclaimed’ in the name of economic progress. High-density development and the large number of high-rise buildings now make up a ‘concrete jungle’, although some urban green spaces and some parts of the urban waterfront offer residents occasional relief from city life. Hong Kong’s population density, at 6,500 persons per square kilometre, is high by international standards. What is more, the population is growing, with migration from Mainland China being the primary source of new residents. Hong Kong’s population has become decentralised, with population rising the fastest in outlying ‘new towns’ built in former rural farming areas. The upshot is that Hong Kong’s compact urban form is both an environmental blessing and a source of many ecological challenges. While density allows for efficient delivery of services, particularly in highly efficient public transport, it also contributes to problems, notably traffic congestion and roadside air pollution. Just like in other major cities, in Hong Kong climate change, landscapes, built environment and population changes influence environmental quality and sustainable development. Chapter Six introduces and describes Hong Kong’s social, economic and environmental history to help provide further context for understanding sustainable development in the territory. As with other localities, this context is often a key factor in encouraging policies that exacerbate pollution or restrain more environmentally sustainable development. One common narrative of Hong Kong suggests that its history began in the mid-nineteenth century with the British occupation, which turned a ‘barren rock’ into a thriving commercial entrepôt. However, pre-colonial Hong Kong was not just a barren rock when the British arrived; it was already an established and complex agricultural and fishing community. Its economic and social history began 6,000–7,000 years earlier, when the first settlers probably arrived by sea from somewhere around present-day Vietnam. The Hong Kong region became part of China after being conquered by Han Chinese during the Qin and Han Dynasties (221 BC–AD 220). It remained in Chinese hands until Hong Kong Island was occupied by Britain during the first Opium War of 1840–42.The 1860 Convention of Peking, which concluded the second Opium War, saw Britain secure the Kowloon Peninsula adjacent to Hong Kong Island.A second expansion of the British colony followed in 1898 with a 99-year lease of the so-called New Territories (territory north of Kowloon) and a number of outlying islands. It was the expiry of the New Territories lease in 1997 that prompted the return or ‘handover’ of all of Hong Kong from Britain to China.The handover ended a century and a half of British colonial administration, which had been interrupted for only five years during Japan’s occupation of the territory during World War II. Colonisation, Japanese occupation, the subsequent post-war immigration of millions of refugees fleeing Communist China, China’s economic opening in the 9

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

late 1970s and the handover in 1997, alongside escalating pollution and rapid development, have all been key factors contributing to Hong Kong’s current social, economic and environmental circumstances.They serve as the unavoidable foundation for potential sustainable development in the future. Sustainable development is almost always a function, at least in part, of the type and quality of government. As described in Chapter Seven, one important consequence of Hong Kong’s history is its form of government and the resulting policy institutions. Since the handover in 1997, Hong Kong’s government has been based on its local ‘constitution’, the Basic Law. Negotiated between the British and the Chinese government before the handover, the Basic Law is premised on a ‘one country, two systems’ principle whereby Hong Kong is to remain a liberal capitalist society—that is, to retain its local form of government and economy— for 50 years, even though it has become part of Communist-ruled China. While Hong Kong enjoys extensive civil liberties, notably a nominally free press, it is not a true democracy. For example, it lacks universal suffrage.The territory’s chief executive and senior civil servants must be approved by Beijing. Furthermore, while half of the legislature is elected from geographical constituencies, the other half is controlled by special interest groups and corporations—the so-called ‘functional constituencies’. Because the passage of laws requires approval of a majority of geographic and functional constituency legislators, passing laws to underpin environmental regulations is impossible without the support of at least some of the industries and interests likely to be regulated.The result is very weak regulation compared with many developed-world cities.This sets the backdrop for efforts to implement sustainable development in Hong Kong.The difficult challenge is that progress toward sustainable development requires policy makers to put broad community interests—a healthy environment, social justice and balanced economic policy—above narrow special interests. Undemocratic political institutions diminish the ability to do this. Part Two of the book concludes with Chapter Eight, which examines Hong Kong’s consumption and its environmental footprint. Consumption has a very important role in the social lives and identities of most Hong Kong people, much as in other developed societies. A consumerist culture is so pervasive in the city that most people do not stop to consider the environmental impact of their behaviours or to question whether material consumption makes for a satisfying life. Like most cities, but to an even greater degree, Hong Kong’s ecological footprint is much larger than the global average and far exceeds the territory’s biological carrying capacity.Vast amounts of energy, food, forestry products and consumer goods are imported from China and overseas to satisfy the appetites of Hong Kong consumers. A major consequence of this consumption is the generation of enormous amounts of waste, which has more than doubled over the last two decades. On a per capita basis, Hong Kong’s waste is more than twice that of Japan and South Korea. The explanation for this high-consumption lifestyle may be found partly in Hong Kong’s cultural understandings of the relationship between humanity and 10

Introduction

nature: the anthropocentric orientation of Confucian traditions, which place human welfare above that of the environment, may contribute to contemporary environmental problems. Sociological theory suggests that as communities get richer they tend to experience a shift away from materialist values toward ‘postmaterial’ concerns, such as quality of life and interest in environmental protection. However, despite years of economic and physical stability, it is questionable whether Hong Kong has witnessed such a shift to post-materialist values. Consumer culture is such a fundamental part of contemporary life that it is hard to imagine that it could change without stronger regulation by the government. If sustainability is to be achieved, it will be necessary to challenge the values and economic model that sustain the prevailing consumerist paradigm.

Challenges of sustainable development Part Three (Chapters Nine–Thirteen) looks at a series of specific environmentrelated policy areas, including air, water, energy, climate change, transportation and environmental space. Perhaps no other environmental problem signifies the challenge of implementing sustainable development in Hong Kong more than that of air pollution, which is the subject of Chapter Nine. Hong Kong’s high levels of air pollution harm human health and lower the quality of life of every person who is exposed to it—meaning every person living in the territory. During recent years levels of respirable (breathable) suspended particles, which reduce lung function and increase the risk of suffering from asthma and cardiovascular illnesses, measured at Hong Kong’s roadsides have been so high that, on most days, air pollution exceeds World Health Organisation standards, and even the Hong Kong government, which tends to downplay the problem, admits that outdoor exercise involves health risks. Hong Kong’s air pollution problem is something of a puzzle for observers of sustainable development around the world. Air quality is generally much better in the cities of affluent countries and regions compared to cities in poor countries.As their economies have grown richer, most governments have responded to public demands to address air pollution. Hong Kong is an exception, with air quality remaining persistently low. Although average incomes are high, in 2010 Hong Kong people expressed the highest level of dissatisfaction with air quality anywhere in the world (Duce 2010). Part of this puzzle can be explained by the fact that 60–70% of Hong Kong’s overall ambient air pollution (although not its roadside air pollution) originates in Mainland China, so the local government has relatively little control over it. However, local shipping and road transportation are together the dominant source of Hong Kong’s air pollution on one day in every three. Urban density and limited airflow among congested buildings—the ‘street canyon effect’—means that pollution disperses slowly. This suggests that the intense roadside pollution affecting people the most is in large part a consequence of poor urban planning. And, like roadside pollution, ship pollution is emitted quite close to population centres, making its impact on

11

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

public health proportionately greater than pollution generated by, for instance, local power stations. Chapter Ten looks at water supply, water pollution and marine resources in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is faced with a variety of water resource issues. Per capita daily water consumption is higher than in other cities with similar living standards. Most of Hong Kong’s domestic water comes from neighbouring Guangdong Province. Dependency on non-local sources and the potential adverse impacts from climate change on water availability bring the long-term sustainability of water supply into question. In addition, Hong Kong’s wetlands and marine environment are in jeopardy due to increasing urbanisation. Sewage pollution of the sea remains a problem, despite large and very costly treatment projects.The marine environment is threatened by coastline modifications, and shorelines are heavily modified by reclamation (filling in the sea with earth and rubble) to supply extra land for development. Reclamation work also affects the marine biodiversity of Hong Kong through habitat destruction. Marine biodiversity has been further severely damaged by overfishing and a nearly complete lack of historical regulation of local fisheries. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is one of the world’s major seafood consumers and importers. The price people pay for the exploitation of fresh water and the marine environment is much lower than the value of these natural assets to society, suggesting that increasing the cost of water and fish may be one avenue for implementing more sustainable development in this issue area. Chapter Eleven focuses on energy and climate change. Historically, the energy policy of Hong Kong has been directed at providing reliable access to low-cost power to promote and ensure economic competitiveness. Today, as the social and environmental costs of energy production are becoming more apparent, and as the problem of climate change becomes a more pressing issue, a rethink of energy policy is underway. This is important because Hong Kong makes a disproportionate contribution to climate change both through local greenhouse gas emissions (primarily from electricity generation and combustion of fossil fuels for transportation) and through its population’s consumption of imported products, whose manufacture causes pollution elsewhere. While Hong Kong is responsible for a tiny proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions, its per capita contribution to climate change from consumption is among the highest in the world.The future direction of climate change policy in Hong Kong is significant because the territory is one of the richest, most technologically sophisticated and commercially influential parts of China. This is especially important given that China is now the world’s largest national source of greenhouse gas emissions, and its territory and people are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. To mitigate climate change, there is a need to rethink current energy policies radically and to focus on both supply-side measures, such as increased use of renewable energy, and demand-side instruments, such as improving energy efficiency and reducing material consumption. If Hong Kong were to take a leading role in this transition, it could potentially be instrumental in the

12

Introduction

transformation of China’s energy systems. At present, however, the rest of China is ahead of Hong Kong in adopting renewable, less polluting forms of energy. Transportation, the subject of Chapter Twelve, is an integral part of contemporary life. Yet, transport activities often have negative consequences for human health and the environment.As noted above, in Hong Kong roadside pollution threatens human health. Increasing vehicle numbers and weak fuel standards for the territory’s large fleet of buses contribute to harmful emissions. Franchised bus operations are subsidised through an exemption from fuel tax, and bus companies do not pay for road building or maintenance. This puts more environmentally friendly modes of transport, such as rail, at a comparative disadvantage. Despite these problems, the transportation situation in Hong Kong is far better than in many other places thanks to the very high level of patronage of public transport. The city’s rail system is a comparatively sustainable transportation mode because of the efficiencies achieved through mass transit (carrying a large number of passengers at the same time) and zero local emissions (emissions are generated at electricity power plants rather than in built-up urban areas, thereby reducing the health impacts). However, construction of rail networks involves environmental tradeoffs. Other forms of transportation, such as aviation, shipping and cross-border road networks, maintain Hong Kong’s connections with the rest of the world, yet they are also major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation. Finding ways to keep people and freight moving, while preserving environmental quality, human health and social welfare, are among the key challenges of sustainable transportation development in Hong Kong and indeed other cities in China and elsewhere. Chapter Thirteen looks at another sustainability challenge in Hong Kong: environmental spaces. Hong Kong contains some exceptionally dense urban environments, but often these have been poorly planned, resulting in conflicting land uses. Continuous development has meant that many homes suffer from sound and light pollution, and many people have limited access to green space. On the other hand, Hong Kong’s extensive country park system is a valuable natural resource that contains significant biodiversity. While development is constantly encroaching on green spaces and threatening the habitat of many species, areas of natural beauty and biodiversity that have been protected by Hong Kong’s generally rugged topography do remain. However, there are many environmental threats in Hong Kong’s rural areas: incompatible activities that produce soil contamination, water pollution and land degradation; pressure on rural land from demands by indigenous inhabitants of the New Territories to construct houses; and the pressures of waste disposal (legal and illegal), not least the result of waste producers and haulers avoiding waste charges at official landfill sites. Moreover, the government’s efforts to minimise rural land administration have often allowed various kinds of illegal development to go unpunished. Meanwhile, pressures from civil society for reform of urban planning rules, and rising public concern about conflicting development in rural areas have prompted some protection of vulnerable environmental spaces. 13

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

Conclusion Hong Kong may provide some useful lessons for realising sustainable development throughout China and globally. To be sure, this Asian ‘world city’ is still far from achieving the goal of sustainability. What seems beyond doubt is that the global context is vital to what happens: the idea of sustainability, even as conceived in Hong Kong, is imported. It began elsewhere, and just as Hong Kong has long been a conduit for the trade of goods and services, it also trades in ideas from other parts of the world. Sustainability and related policies for environmental protection are no exception. However, this particular import is far from all-powerful.While there have been significant improvements in some areas, many aspects of Hong Kong’s local environment are seriously degraded, and local consumption and waste production far exceed levels that can be considered sustainable.Yet, even though Hong Kong’s progress toward sustainable development has been disappointing, the concept has still had a significant influence on policy making and debate. One question is, who can participate in that debate, and who has influence over environmental policies? As in other parts of China, in Hong Kong the public has a role even as its preferences are often overwhelmed by the priorities of government departments and special interests determined to promote economic growth at the expense of the environment. Hong Kong can have a significant influence over China’s development. Some aspects of Hong Kong’s urban design—such as its density and heavily patronised train services—offer potentially positive models for sustainability. But Hong Kong would probably play a greater role in assisting China’s society and economy to implement environmentally sustainable development if it were to do a better job of implementing it locally. For this reason, actualising sustainable development in Hong Kong would not just improve the environment and the health of Hong Kong’s people: it would also align Hong Kong with a gathering global trend.The question is whether and how such opportunities might be grasped, and what this tells us about implementing sustainable development in other cities and regions in China and beyond.

Appendix:Thinking about sustainability Chapter objectives 1. To describe the most common conception of ‘sustainable development’. 2. To begin exploring the links between economic, social and environmental sustainability. 3. To begin identifying factors that can promote sustainability in Hong Kong. 4. To begin identifying obstacles to sustainability in Hong Kong.

14

Introduction

Key points 1. The concept of sustainable development is commonly defined as development meeting the needs of present generations without undermining the ability of people in the future to meet their needs. 2. Hong Kong as a global megacity offers a fascinating context in which to study sustainable development, especially when considering it as a potential role model for China. 3. The case of Hong Kong illustrates both the possibilities (such as the ability to develop effective mass transit networks) and the problems (such as import dependence and high consumption levels) that dense urban environments create. 4. Sustainability is necessary for broader progress towards protecting the natural environment.

Key terms • • • •

Sustainable development Economic sustainability Social sustainability Environmental sustainability

Discussion questions 1. What does ‘sustainable development’ mean to you? Can you see examples of it around you? 2. How are economic, social and environmental sustainability linked? 3. What barriers to sustainable development exist in cities such as Hong Kong? What are the potential resources for promoting it? 4. How might the global context matter for sustainable development in China generally and Hong Kong in particular?

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Part One Conceptions of sustainable development

Two

Conceptualising sustainable development Introduction As noted in the previous chapter, sustainable development is often understood in terms of the Brundtland Commission’s definition of “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED 1987, 43).A sceptic might respond to Brundtland’s argument for sustainable development by observing that human welfare in Hong Kong and China has improved rapidly in recent decades despite environmentally unsustainable practices. One widely accepted idea, articulated by the eighteenthcentury Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, attributes this apparent progress to market forces that act as an ‘invisible hand’ to allocate resources efficiently (Smith 2000). According to this liberal economic idea, a community will achieve ideal collective outcomes if people pursue their individual economic interests, even if they do so without thinking about the greater good. Armed with the theory that self-interest benefits everyone, the sceptic might ask why we need to become ‘sustainable’ if old-fashioned (unsustainable) development appears to be working. In contrast, advocates of sustainable development point out that the most threatened resources are those that are not connected to markets. Natural services provided by the atmosphere, oceans, forests and biological diversity are prominent examples (Pearce 1993, 5). According to this view, the natural environment needs better protection than an unregulated market can provide, and adopting sustainable development as a goal will help us to achieve a society that is more secure, healthy and just. The advocates of sustainable development point to environmental hazards—such as the health impacts of Hong Kong’s polluted air and the greater long-term threat posed by climate change—and argue that economic development should be guided by principles other than short-term economic self-interest. Indeed, human history has witnessed societies that have collapsed as a result of overexploitation of natural resources. The community that built the giant stone statues on Easter Island is a possible example (Diamond 2005). In the past, ecological crises occurred on local rather than global scales. However, many scientists predict that existing patterns of resource use may threaten human society with a global ecological crisis (Hansen 2009; Rockström et al 2009). While such a crisis is unlikely to involve the complete collapse of human society, it is likely that many millions of people will face famine as a result of even modest changes in global food supplies. Sustainable development has thus 19

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

become important because present-day consumption is outstripping the earth’s capacity to support us.

Sustainable development and the global ecological crisis A major study described in the scientific journal Nature identified the boundaries for nine indicators of environmental change: climate, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, aerosol loading and chemical pollution, freshwater use, biodiversity, the global cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus and land-use change (Rockström et al 2009). If the planetary boundaries on any of these indicators are exceeded, there is a high risk of an ecological crisis with profound implications for human welfare (Rockström et al 2009). Human activity has already exceeded safe levels in three areas: the nitrogen cycle, the rate of species loss and anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change.We are fast approaching the maximum safe levels of freshwater use, utilisation of forests and other natural ecosystems and ocean acidification (which results from the oceans absorbing atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide that come from the burning of coal and other fossil fuels) (Rockström et al 2009).While this analysis is alarming, the study also showed that humanity does have the capacity to identify environmental problems and to correct them. A case in point is the stratospheric ozone layer. Until quite recently human activity was threatening to destroy the thin layer of ozone that protects people and other species from harmful ultraviolet radiation. However, this destruction has started to reverse following the implementation of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which was negotiated by the world’s diplomats and signed in 1987 (Speth and Haas 2006, 88–94). Climate change poses what is probably the most profound global environmental threat (see Chapter Eleven).The consensus among climate scientists is that during this century (and beyond) the world will witness rising sea levels, increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, substantial loss of biodiversity, net reduction in crop yields, expanding distributions of diseases and a general increase in climate-related human suffering (IPCC 2007b).Although Hong Kong is geographically vulnerable to many of these changes—for example, malaria and dengue fever will probably become a greater threat (Fung 2004)—it seems likely that it will have the resources and wealth to adapt to incremental environmental changes. In addition to these predicted changes there is a small possibility of catastrophic change that would threaten most human life on the planet. One study has predicted that there is a 5% probability of changes occurring during this century that would have catastrophic impacts on human society (Weitzman 2009). Recent reports have documented the impressive advances that China has made toward poverty reduction, food security and meeting the basic food needs of its people (Xiao and Nie 2009). For example, whereas before 2005 China was a recipient of World Food Programme aid, it is now a donor to that programme (Xiao and Nie 2009). These impressive achievements are threatened by likely reductions in agricultural productivity that will result from climate change (Lin 20

Conceptualising sustainable development

2008). Even if the threat of climate change were somehow resolved, deteriorating environmental conditions, such as the depletion of fishing grounds, water shortages and desertification, will threaten the wellbeing of hundreds of millions of people in China and other parts of the developing world. Without careful stewardship of the environment, food security is far from assured. Someone walking among the abundant fresh vegetables and fish in Hong Kong’s markets might find such predictions to be fanciful; Hong Kong might appear capable of escaping local environmental conditions by importing food from all around the world. That is what it does today. However, human communities have overshot and crashed on many occasions in the past (Diamond 2005); there is no reason to assume that this will never happen again. New technologies might enable affluent communities to survive ecological crises relatively unscathed, but the capacity to innovate fast enough to avoid ecological limits is not guaranteed. For this reason, a move toward sustainable development might be viewed as insurance against the risk of potentially extreme ecological hardship or even collapse.

Justifications for sustainable development Self-interest is one justification for promoting sustainable development. As in many other places, particularly in the rapidly developing countries, problems of severe air, sound and light pollution confront people in Hong Kong on a daily basis, diminishing the quality of life. Sustainable urban planning would help to address these problems and improve urban life, for example by limiting sources of air pollution and allowing better airflow between buildings so that pollutants can move away more easily. This same pattern, whereby efforts to achieve sustainability help the environment and simultaneously improve people’s lives, also applies at the personal level. For example, if a typical Hong Kong person wanted to adopt a truly sustainable diet, he or she would need to consumer fewer meat and animal products because production of these foods is more resource intensive and environmentally harmful than is production of plant-based food. Nutritionists tell us that substituting most meats with vegetables, fruits and grains would also make us healthier, and would provide protection against many serious diseases, including some cancers and heart disease (Pollan 2008). Other sustainable personal choices—such as using public transport and walking—also tend to bring health benefits. Widespread use of public transport in Hong Kong is not only environmentally positive, but also makes travel more efficient and healthy than in car-dependent cities. Sustainable development will also allow the conservation of resources that would otherwise be lost. For example, anybody who hopes to enjoy the pleasure of eating wild ocean fish in the future has good reasons to advocate the sustainable use of ocean fish stocks (Pauly et al 2002).The upshot is that living sustainably has benefits for both the environment and human wellbeing. In addition to self-interested reasons for supporting sustainable development, we might embrace sustainability out of concern for the fair and just treatment of the world’s poor.There is much debate over the meaning of the term ‘justice’, but 21

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

in general it refers to the idea that people should receive treatment that is proper for them (Sachs and Santarius 2007, 129). Three principles can be identified as central to justice: “everyone is to be taken into account in accordance with their rights, their needs, or their performance. The conflict among these principles . . . is in large part the substance of struggles over justice” (Sachs and Santarius 2007, 129). The widespread hardship faced by many millions of poor people in China, and many in Hong Kong itself, suggests that not everyone’s needs are being met. Despite the recent economic successes of Hong Kong and China, income inequality is among the highest in the world (UNDP 2009, 195; see Chapter Seven). If we are concerned about the wellbeing of disadvantaged people, we should seek ways of living that create opportunities for marginalised people and avoid harming our shared environment. After all, it is poor people that are often most directly reliant on a healthy and stable environment. If we have concern for the wellbeing of future generations, we will also want to ensure that we leave them a healthy planet. In addition to the emergence of new and threatening environmental problems, there is another reason for contemporary interest in the idea of sustainable development. In recent decades we have witnessed a fundamental change in the way that people think about the environment. The environment only emerged as a prominent concept in modern politics and policy making in the 1960s (Dryzek 2005, 4). Unquestioned dominance and exploitation of nature may still lie at the heart of both Confucian and Western cultures, but these drives have been tempered by new voices advocating concepts of sustainable development, wilderness preservation and ecological justice. ‘Anthropocentricism’—the idea that human life has primary moral importance—has been challenged by ideas suggesting that animals, plants and the natural world have intrinsic value apart from their utility to people. These ideas may have a longer and deeper history in Asia, for example through the Taoist concern for the natural environment and Buddhism’s consideration for the suffering of animals, than they do in the West. However, the long history of ecological destruction in Asia, going back millennia, suggests that Asian traditions do not necessarily offer clear solutions to environmental problems today (see Harris 2004). The environmental consciousness that emerged in the West in the 1960s and 1970s was a response to growing environmental problems and a product of increased affluence and political activism (Speth 2002).As communities have become more affluent and educated, people have begun to see greater value in protecting and preserving the natural world, adopting what are sometimes described as ‘postmaterialist’ values (Inglehart 1997; see Chapter Eight). Environmental degradation has therefore become an important issue for governments and the international community because environmental problems have become more serious and because more people now see managing environmental problems as an important function of government.

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Conceptualising sustainable development

Defining sustainable development Many definitions of sustainable development have been proposed.The Brundtland Commission’s definition was something of a compromise that can be interpreted in multiple ways. This is a common response to efforts to define the concept. Tammy Lewis and Craig Humphrey capture much of the ambiguity in the idea of sustainable development when they ask the following questions: What should be sustained in [sustainable development]: the economy, the environment, human welfare? Whose needs and whose development should be promoted? What should be developed? Is development the same as growth? Does development refer to production growth, as is typically indicated by growth of gross national product; does it refer to environmental growth, such as an improvement of environmental resources; or does development refer to growth in human welfare, including health, working conditions and income distribution? (Lewis and Humphrey 2005, 1) Some common themes dominate almost all definitions of sustainable development: (1) increased emphasis on the value of natural, built and cultural environments because the contribution of the environment to quality of life has been given insufficient attention in the past; (2) extending the time horizon of policy making so that future generations are taken into account; and (3) equity, in the sense that greater provision should be made for the needs of the least advantaged, both now and in the future (Pearce, Markandya and Barbier 1989, 3–4). Sustainable development is not synonymous with ‘sustained economic growth’. Although economic growth may be required to lift poor countries out of poverty, what sustainable development fundamentally refers to is a society that is continually improving and allowing greater human flourishing.This may be possible without economic growth; it will not be possible if the environment is destroyed and people are suffering (see Pearce, Markandya and Barbier 1989, 29–30). It is also important to consider what is innovative about the idea of sustainable development.Whereas in earlier times developing-world governments commonly thought of ‘development’ as referring to industrial capacity, by the 1980s it was widely accepted that national development needed to encompass human development as well (Finnemore 1996). What ‘sustainability’ adds to previous understandings of development is the recognition that economic development and human development occur within an environmental context. Policies for sustainable development should not aim simply to balance environmental, social and economic goals; they should seek to bring these objectives into harmony. By recognising the role of government in protecting environmental capital, the notion of sustainable development created a paradigm shift in both the perceived role of government and the relationship between economic and ecological systems.

23

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

This shift was confirmed at the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, where more than 100 heads of government agreed that sustainable development should be a shared goal of the international community. The idea of sustainable development is commonly understood to encompass social, economic and environmental sustainability, but it is important to emphasise that these three elements are not of equal importance. Many people have an anthropocentric worldview—they believe that the wellbeing of people is more important than the wellbeing of animals and the natural world. For this reason, measures that enhance human wellbeing in a sustainable way are normally considered central to sustainable development. However, even a concern for human wellbeing is likely to lead us to view conservation of environmental capital as the fundamentally important element of sustainable development. For example, if runaway global climate change causes global famine, social and economic development would come to an end for those affected. Measures that preserve a habitable environment are essential to protect human wellbeing.Thus environmental wellbeing is fundamental to sustainable development. Box 2.1 portrays some of the uncertainties about how sustainable development is officially understood in Hong Kong. Box 2.1: How is sustainable development understood in Hong Kong? The Hong Kong Government commissioned a Study on sustainable development in the 21st Century (Planning Department 2001a, 21). That study proposed the following definition of sustainable development: Sustainable Development in Hong Kong balances social, economic, environmental and resource needs, both for present and future generations, simultaneously achieving a vibrant economy, social progress and a high quality environment, locally, nationally and internationally, through the efforts of the community and the Government. Alternatively, the government office that is dedicated to sustainable development has quoted the Chief Secretary’s 1999 policy address, proposing that, for Hong Kong, sustainable development means: • finding ways to increase prosperity and improve the quality of life while reducing overall pollution and waste; • meeting our own needs and aspirations without doing damage to the prospects of future generations; and • reducing the environmental burden we put on our neighbours and helping to preserve common resources. (Sustainable Development Division 2008a) The Hong Kong government created a Sustainable Development Fund to finance local projects that “help to develop a strong public awareness of the principles of sustainable development and to encourage sustainable practices in Hong Kong”. It reportedly supports research that

24

Conceptualising sustainable development integrates at least two of the three aspects of sustainable development—economic, social, and environmental (Sustainable Development Division 2008b). However, it is highly debatable, even doubtful, whether sustainable development can, by definition, be promoted if one of these aspects, least of all environmental protection, is excluded.

Sustainability and economic growth While sustainable development cannot be divorced from environmental protection, it is about more than sustaining the environment. It also points toward finding economic models that will support sustained human development. There is ongoing debate over whether this goal requires continued economic growth or an end to it. As Tim Jackson argues,“the idea of a non-growing economy may be an anathema to an economist. But the idea of a continually growing economy is an anathema to an ecologist” (Jackson 2009, 14). Many economists acknowledge the reality of ecological limits and seek ways to decouple economic growth from resource use. Environmental economists have sought to develop economic models that value natural capital—the stock of natural ecosystems, such as forests and the oceans—so as to preserve a sustainable flow of ecological goods or services such as fish or the protection of coastlines by mangroves, and to find ways to address negative externalities associated with economic production. (Externalities are costs or consequences of an economic activity that are borne by other parties, such as pollution from a coal-fired power plant that harms health and environment. See Chapter Four.) For example, if the production of electricity produces pollution that imposes costs on the entire community, this externality might be internalised by charging the power company for its pollution. However, these measures have not succeeded in ‘decoupling’ economic growth and resource use. Henry Shue describes the promised “harmony of environmental protection and economic development” as one of the worst pieces of “fudge” around (Shue 1995, 460). He argues that it may not be possible, given the current state of technology, to achieve continued economic growth without further environmental destruction. The recognition that environmentally sustainable economic growth has been hard to achieve has prompted many people to argue for forms of prosperity that are based on human flourishing rather than on economic growth and material consumption (Jackson 2009). Economic, social and environmental sustainability are of differing importance in different parts of the world.Within the least developed countries—the poorest countries with very low levels of human development—such as Myanmar (Burma), where per capita gross national income is only about US$220 (UNICEF Statistics 2010), a sustainable development strategy that achieves a progressive improvement in human wellbeing may need to focus on human development and pro-poor economic growth, that is, economic growth that brings benefits to poor people rather than growth that enriches only the most affluent members of the community. However, in an affluent country such as Australia, where gross national 25

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income is in excess of US$40,000 per capita, achieving human development is less dependent on continued economic growth. Unlike in the least (economically) developed countries, in affluent communities like Hong Kong and other major Chinese cities, human development and conservation of environmental capital can probably be achieved without further economic growth. The practical challenge of sustainable growth can be illustrated by considering those industries that are most dependent on natural capital. For example, imagine that the world’s fishing industry experiences continued economic growth over the next five years, only to reach a point where global fish stocks crash and the industry is no longer viable. In this case, the economic growth model would be proved to be unsustainable due to a failure to preserve natural capital. Indeed, if present trends in global fisheries continue, this is a scenario that will most likely become a reality. The size of the global fish catch peaked in the late 1980s, and historical examples, such as the Atlantic cod fishery off Canada’s Newfoundland coast, have demonstrated that, once fish stocks are depleted, it can take a long time for them to recover, if they recover at all (Pauly et al 2002).These factors suggest that the marine fishing industry is currently pursuing a strategy of overexploitation that is potentially suicidal economically.

Poverty, affluence and sustainability Poverty can be a cause of environmental degradation. If poor people have no choice but to deplete natural capital, poverty and environmental destruction may become mutually reinforcing. For example, the Brundtland Report describes how subsistence farmers “who once cut forests, grew crops and then gave the forest time to recover, now have neither land enough nor time to let forests reestablish. So forests are being destroyed, often only to create poor farmland that cannot support those who till it” (WCED 1987, 41). Because poor people have limited access to resources, their environmental impact is generally less than that of affluent people. However, because very poor people typically lack access to sanitation and use dirty cooking fuels, their contribution to some environmental problems, such as the spread of infectious disease and creation of black soot (an air pollutant) from charcoal stoves, is significant. Lifestyles associated with both poverty and affluence can have very harmful environmental consequences. For this reason, it may be necessary to preserve a ‘sustaining middle’ in the global community, defined as: the large but fragile stratum of the Earth’s population that lives, works and consumes in ways most closely approximating genuine sustainability. Although we tend to view the world in dichotomous North/South terms, perhaps the greatest challenge of global environmental protection is to stem the corrosive effects of globalisation on both ends of this middle stratum. (Conca 2001, 53)

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The relationship between affluent lifestyles and sustainability is debated.There is a paradox in that although affluent people are responsible for much higher levels of resource use and pollution, environmental health is generally much better in the developed world than in developing countries. For example, the consumption levels of the average North American requires more than 12 times as much land to support as that required to support the average Bangladeshi: 7.9 hectares versus 0.62 hectares per person (Ewing et al 2010).This paradox might be partially explained because highly polluting manufactured goods are increasingly manufactured in the developing world and exported to affluent countries (Davis and Caldira 2010). Additionally, as people become richer they are able to pay for stronger environmental standards. In most cases it has been affluent communities in Europe or North America that have led the way in tightening vehicle emission standards and pollution control within manufacturing industries. This might be explained by the simple fact that affluent communities can afford to do this. One debate over the relationship between affluence and the environment concerns the idea of an environmental ‘Kuznets curve’.The notion of a Kuznets curve derives from the work of developmental economist Simon Kuznets. Kuznets argued that, although the early stages of economic growth in developing countries correlate with increasing income inequality, over time this relationship reverses (Kuznets 1955). According to Kuznets, sustained growth normally leads to less income inequality (Kuznets 1955). A Kuznets curve is the inverted U-shape that is described when income inequality is graphed against national wealth.While the Kuznets curve does not seem to explain growing disparities in wealth in many developed societies (including Hong Kong), the general idea serves as the basis for the eponymous environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). Put simply, the EKC depicts a scenario in which growing wealth leads to decreased pollution. This is the idea that a particular measure of environmental quality, such as atmospheric concentrations of sulphur dioxide, will at first deteriorate as income increases. However, at a certain point this relationship might reverse, with increasing wealth resulting in declining pollution (Stern 2004). Since the EKC concept was first examined in the early 1990s, there has been much academic debate over whether, when and why such a relationship between pollution and income might hold true (Grossman and Krueger 1991; Shafik and Bandyopadhyay 1992). The debate over the EKC has been particularly intense because the question is so political.The basic question at stake is the same as that prompted by the Club of Rome’s Limits to growth report (see Chapter Three): does economic growth need to be stopped in order to prevent harm to the environment? The environmental Kuznets curve challenges the idea that there might be natural limits to growth because it suggests that more economic growth might be the answer to environmental problems. Not surprisingly, therefore, opponents of environmental regulation often promote the EKC. According to their logic, more wealth and more economic growth provide the best solution to environmental problems. In developing countries such as China, this argument

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can seem particularly attractive because it might justify a ‘grow now, clean up later’ philosophy. Environmentalists counter this by pointing out that there is no evidence for the EKC in the cases of many environmental problems, such as emissions of greenhouse gases causing global warming and climate change, and major declines in global biological biodiversity (Holtz-Eaken and Selden 1995); that although EKCs are easy to substantiate in respect of pollutants that have direct local health impacts (e.g. lead pollution), the same is not true in respect of EKCs for pollutants with global consequences, such as greenhouse gases (Holtz-Eaken and Selden 1995); that often where pollution reduction does occur it is through displacement as dirty industries relocate to the developing world; that no causal relationship between wealth and environmental health has been established; and that where environmental indicators improve it is because of government regulation rather than the natural operation of market forces (Grossman and Krueger 1995). While right-wing columnists and some economists have concluded from the EKC debate that growth, not environmental regulation, is the answer to environmental problems, most economic literature on the subject has made much more limited and careful claims (Grossman and Krueger 1995). The economic EKC literature tends to reject the view that neither economic growth nor limits to growth are the answers to environmental problems. Environmental policy, including carefully targeted environmental regulations, seems to be the key factor influencing when and whether environmental indicators improve (Grossman and Krueger 1995).

Inequality, rights and sustainable development It is implicit in most definitions of sustainable development that human development is a vital objective. Social sustainability is connected to economic and environmental sustainability because human development, such as good health and education, support economic productivity, and because extreme social inequality is a source of political instability, and environmental damage frequently impacts most harshly on those people who are already disadvantaged. The consequences of environmental degradation often do not fall on those responsible for it.There are various kinds of injustice or inequality, such as economic inequality, geographic and international injustices, intergenerational injustice and even interspecies injustice. The dictum that being ‘richer is safer’ (Wildavsky 1988, 7) is amply illustrated by the disparity between those whose lifestyles cause the majority of environmental degradation—the world’s affluent people—and those who are its primary victims—the world’s poor. The rich are often better able to protect themselves from ecological harm.Whether it is through superior building standards that are more able to withstand extreme weather events, access to air-conditioning in hot climates, a capacity to implement expensive water-management schemes or to purchase unpolluted food and water, wealth often (although not always) insulates people and communities against environmental harm. 28

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By contrast, poor communities are usually the most vulnerable to environmental degradation. For them, straightforward environmental problems may be insoluble. An illustration can be found in inaction over the poisoning of Bangladesh’s water supply with arsenic (Pearce 2006, 51-4). In the 1970s the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Bank and a host of private charities responded to the pollution of Bangladesh’s surface water supplies by funding the drilling of tube wells that would provide access to ‘safe’ underground water (Pearce 2006, 51-4). These overseas donors failed to conduct tests of water quality and thus failed to detect very high concentrations of arsenic in underground water sources. This problem was exposed in 1993, but millions of people continue to drink dangerous water because they have no alternative (Pearce 2006, 51–4). Few communities can even afford to have their wells tested to assess the danger (Pearce 2006, 51–4). Wealth is also a major factor in explaining geographic inequality. For a variety of reasons relating to political influence, proximity to labour and regulatory standards, dirty industries are overwhelmingly concentrated in poor communities. This division occurs on both global and regional scales. One consequence of the increase in international trade and lengthened commodity chains (the growing number of factories in different countries that contribute to the production of a single manufactured product) over the last half century is that the ecological consequences of production are increasingly distant from the benefits of consumption (Conca 2002, 144). What is more, while wealth may be the major determinant of geographic environmental inequality, the consequences of global warming are likely to discriminate in a more random manner. The impacts will be felt nearly everywhere, although, again, the poorest and most vulnerable communities and people will suffer the most. Intergenerational inequality emerges because environmental impacts are often delayed and cumulative. For instance, much of the carbon dioxide that we emit today as a result of burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) will remain in the atmosphere for a hundred years and more, causing harm to the earth’s climate far into the future.The complexity of the earth’s climate system is such that there can be a lag of decades from the time that carbon is emitted until its impact is felt.This means that the full costs of today’s carbon-based global economy will be borne mostly by future generations. The injustices go even further. Anthropocentrism is brought into question by much environmental thought. If we place intrinsic value in nonhuman species, we see another form of injustice: due to pollution, destruction of natural habitats and climate change, other species overwhelmingly bear the costs of human-caused environmental degradation. Much as future generations cannot protest their suffering, neither can other species. If maximising human wellbeing is a central purpose of sustainable development, the promotion of basic social and economic rights must be fundamental objectives.The Brundtland Commission endorsed democratic values:“sustainable development requires a political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision making” (WCED 1987, 65). This argument followed from a claim that many environmental problems arise when decisions are made by those with 29

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narrow interests in mind, such as a company or government agency that is only concerned about promoting its own objectives (WCED 1987, 63).The commission argued that decision makers should consider the wider common interest, and that only public engagement and participation in decision-making processes through “decentralising the management of resources” and “strengthening local democracy” could achieve these goals (WCED 1987, 63). Some liberal thinkers also argue that if environmental rights were treated as a special kind of human right, there might be more progress toward sustainability. For example, Michael Mason (2005) argues that a globalised economy is creating environmental harms that threaten human rights and autonomy. His solution is to hold the producers of environmental harm to account by creating a set of environmental rights that are protected in law as human rights. From this kind of thinking come calls for the human right to sustainable development (see Sachs 2003).

Conclusion From this introduction to concepts and definitions of sustainable development it may be more apparent that environmental policy and sustainability in China, and Hong Kong specifically, are being devised and implemented in a global context. Notions of sustainability and its connections to environmental protection are largely imported from abroad and combined with local circumstances.To be sure, sustainable development is critical for Hong Kong due to its large population and small geographic area, which arguably require environmental protection if economic development (or growth, if that remains the long-term objective) is to continue. The territory is, put simply, running out of land, and conflicts over local resources will likely intensify if development is not achieve in an environmentally sustainable way. More broadly, sustainable development in Hong Kong is very important because of the territory’s special role in China. China is rapidly climbing the global ranks of economic wealth. Hundreds of millions of people in China are now aspiring to Western lifestyles—or at the very least to Hong Kong lifestyles—and many millions have already achieved this. However, the earth has already been pushed to the brink of ecological collapse by Western overconsumption, meaning that the planet will be hard pressed to sustain the demands of another billion consumers. A question is whether Hong Kong will be on the forefront of sustainable development, or just a follower of what happens in other parts of China and other parts of the world. In some ways it is unfair to expect that China should develop in a way that differs greatly from development in the West.Yet, as we will see in the following chapters, the future of the global environment probably depends on the choices that China and the Chinese people make. Sustainable development matters in Hong Kong not simply because of the environmental, social and economic sustainability of the territory, but also because Hong Kong often serves as an example to the rest of China. If Hong Kong were to adopt cutting-edge policies and technologies to achieve sustainability, it would be positioned once again to 30

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lead the way in assisting China to transform. That would be a very important step toward achieving sustainable development globally.

Appendix:Thinking about sustainable development concepts Chapter objectives 1. To describe the concept of ‘planetary boundaries’ and its implications for human development. 2. To explore key features of sustainable development, including valuing the natural environment, thinking for the long term and promoting equity and justice. 3. To examine the complex relationship between poverty, affluence and environmental impact. 4. To start reflecting on the role of China and whether Hong Kong might play a part in promoting sustainability throughout the country.

Key points 1. By pointing to the ‘externalities’ caused by economic activities, the concept of sustainable development challenges the idea that the market economy alone is capable of achieving ideal collective outcomes. 2. There are historical examples of societies collapsing as a result of overexploitation of natural resources. To avoid a similar fate, modern societies will have to live within critical planetary boundaries. 3. There are quite clear relationships between environmental pollution and poverty. Poor people tend to suffer most from pollution because they are less able to protect themselves from it than are affluent people and communities. 4. Unsustainable development can result in many kinds of injustice, including economic, geographic, international and intergenerational.

Key terms • • • •

Planetary boundaries Consumption Environmental Kuznets curve Injustice

Discussion questions 1. Why are traditional modes of development thought to be increasingly inadequate? 2. What are the fundamental features of most definitions of sustainable development? 31

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3. What role do inequality and justice play in sustainable development? 4. How should the Hong Kong government, or any local or national government, define sustainable development?

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Three

Origins and critiques of sustainable development Introduction In the 1960s and 1970s increasing numbers of scientists and environmentalists began to argue that economic growth was imposing an unacceptable cost on the natural environment. They suggested that Western consumption habits, the rise in global population and economic growth should be constrained. At the same time, developing-world leaders were arguing that their countries should receive a better deal from international society.They argued that environmental concerns were less important than the goal of addressing poverty through economic development (UN 1997, 2). The Brundtland Commission and its report, Our common future (WCED 1987; see Chapter One) responded to these debates by arguing that sustainable development requires increased economic activity in order to promote human development that is not environmentally destructive. For those who held that industrial society was the cause of environmental problems, this argument was surprising and counterintuitive.This chapter looks back at these debates in order to understand why the concept of sustainable development seemed to be a breakthrough and why the goal—if not always the practice—of sustainable development was accepted by many governments. Debates over ‘limits to growth’ that were prompted by the early environmental movement are examined in this chapter, as are arguments between the developed and developing worlds about the appropriate balance between environmental protection and economic development.The chapter helps to expose the broader global context and shift toward sustainability and related environmental policies that have affected Hong Kong and China more generally. The ambivalence with which sustainable development is embraced in these places is, put simply, a reflection of a broader ambivalence revealed by the emergence of the concept over the last half century.

The limits-to-growth debate According to classical liberal economic theory, free markets maximise social welfare and ensure that natural resources are not completely depleted.Advocates of liberal theory believe that if market forces are allowed to operate freely, a scarcity of essential environmental resource will lead to price rises. These price rises will resolve scarcity by triggering either substitution or technological innovation to increase the supply of any given resource. For example, a rise in the price of oil 33

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might result in substitution as motorists switch from petrol (gasoline) to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), or from car use to public transport. Alternatively, as oil reserves dwindle, innovation may lead to new technologies that extract oil from previously nonviable sources, such as Canada’s oil sands and reserves deep below the seabed, thereby alleviating the scarcity. For a long time confidence in the capacity of markets to resolve problems and to allocate resources rationally led most governments to assume that the environment could, more or less, take care of itself. However, this theory is generally restricted to natural resources that have an economic value to people. For example, if timber from rainforests becomes scarce, substitution by plantation timber may occur. In this situation, market forces may keep the price of timber low, but they will not protect the rich and complex biological diversity that is lost as rainforests are cleared and replaced by monoculture tree plantations. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a series of influential books and reports began to challenge the view that economic development could proceed without serious environmental consequences (see Box 3.1; Chasek, Downie and Brown 2010, 30–1). For example,‘limits to growth’ texts introduced the idea that the earth has a limited carrying capacity that will impose limits on both economic growth and population (Meadows et al 1972).These texts generated a debate over global limits to growth and the long-term sustainability of capitalist patterns of production and consumption. The environmental perspectives developed at this time were sometimes called ‘Malthusian’ because they echoed the eighteenth-century ideas of Thomas Malthus. Malthus believed that human populations inevitably expand until they exceed the available supply of resources (Malthus 1985). In his view, humanity’s expansionary tendency condemns our species to recurring periods of overpopulation followed by periods of hardship and famine. Box 3.1: Some key texts in the limits-to-growth debate Silent spring (Carson 1962), a book by Rachel Carson exploring the impact of synthetic pesticides (especially DDT) on the environment and human health.The book’s title refers to the phenomenon of widespread use of pesticides causing the eggs of birds to have shells so thin that the birds became unable to reproduce.The death of many songbird species created the ‘silent spring’ to which the book’s title refers. The population bomb (Ehrlich 1968), Paul Ehrlich’s book warning that increasing world population would result in the starvation of hundreds of millions of people. The book proposed the IPAT formula to assess the environmental impact of a society: Environmental Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology.According to this formula, affluent communities have a greater environmental impact than poor ones, but this impact can be moderated by technological improvements. ‘The tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin 1968), a seminal essay by Garrett Hardin that was first published in the journal Science. Hardin described a medieval English village where

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Origins and critiques of sustainable development common land that is shared by all is despoiled by overgrazing. He argued that it was ‘rational’ for each villager to use the common land to the maximum extent possible, but by acting in this self-interested way each villager contributes to destruction of the commons through overgrazing. This is the ‘tragedy of the commons’: that rational actors will not cooperate to protect a shared resource even though each has a long-term interest in protecting it. Hardin uses this idea to reject the view that an ‘invisible hand’ of the market will automatically allocate environmental resources in an ideal way. Instead, shared resources need to be managed through regulation, privatisation or other means. The limits to growth (Meadows et al 1972), a report by Donella Meadows and others that was commissioned by the Club of Rome international think-tank. The report utilised globalsystems computer modelling to predict that (then) current trends in population, economic growth and natural resource use were unsustainable.The study was the subject of considerable international debate and criticism, some of it hostile. Developing countries argued that they should not be asked to abandon their aspirations for economic growth for the benefit of the industrial world’s concerns about the environment. Looking back at some of the arguments by limits-to-growth advocates, this hostile response is understandable. For example, in 1974 Garrett Hardin published an article entitled ‘Living on a lifeboat’ in which he argued against giving aid to victims of famine in Ethiopia. Hardin argued that overpopulation was at the cause of famine and global environmental problems, and that famine relief would therefore be counterproductive.

Warnings of environmental catastrophe drew strong responses. For example, Julian Simon, a libertarian economist, wrote a book—The ultimate resource (1981)—arguing that human ingenuity is the ‘ultimate resource’. He said that a larger human population would provide the world with more creativity and ingenuity for addressing problems.Thus more people would be good for human welfare and the environment. Whereas environmentalists were arguing that the global population was confronting ecological limits, Simon countered that most indicators suggested a gradual overall improvement in human wellbeing. Defending traditional views concerning the efficiency of markets, he argued that over time the price of resources would decline because new resources and technologies would be discovered faster than demand would increase (Simon 1981). Simon entered a famous wager with the biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of The population bomb, on whether the price of five metals would rise or fall between 1980 and 1990. Simon won the bet; indeed, in inflation-adjusted terms the same basket of metals remains cheaper than it was in 1980 (see Simon 1981). However, Ehrlich retorted that the price of goods under capitalism fails to reflect their true ecological costs (Ehrlich 1968). The argument that the prices of most resources decline over time is hard to refute, as is the evidence that per capita food production has increased over time (Lomborg 2001, 94). However, it is doubtful whether this growth is environmentally sustainable. Most resources may become cheaper over time, and economic expansion may be continuing, but this does not mean that these trends can continue forever. By way of illustration, one 35

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analogy compares economic growth to a cancer growing in a human body: a cancer grows in size right up until the moment it kills its host—and thus destroys itself (McMurtry 1999). Consequently, while Simon’s argument that ingenuity would overcome scarcity, at least for some resources, proved accurate in the short term, his victory did not settle the debate, not least because it failed to account for growing levels of global pollution.

Critiques of classical economics In his 1973 book, Small is Beautiful, Fritz Schumacher criticised the discipline of economics for its focus on maximising consumption and economic growth (Schumacher 1989). He argued that economics should instead focus on maximising human wellbeing. Economists have traditionally measured a country’s economic performance in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), which equates to the total monetary value of all goods and services produced. This measure does not consider the consequences of producing and consuming these goods and services. The costs and benefits of many activities, such as the production of nuclear bombs and the provision of education, cannot be accurately assessed by looking only at their economic valuations. Thus GDP is a flawed measure of development because it tells us little about human wellbeing and does not take account of stocks of natural capital. The flaws of GDP and its predecessor, GNP, or gross national product (a measure of both onshore and offshore production) is exposed when we consider that “a country could systematically deplete its natural resources, erode its soils, and pollute its waters without that loss of real wealth ever showing up in its income accounts. Moreover the economic expense of trying to fix these problems would actually add to GNP” (Chasek, Downie and Brown 2010, 34, emphasis added). In addition to this critique of the ‘growth dynamic’ of capitalist economic systems, there are criticisms of market rationality. One points to the problem of ‘negative ecological externalities’—the fact that prices in free markets often do not reflect the social costs of production (Eckersley 1992, 141–2). For example, the price of electricity in Hong Kong does not reflect the ecological costs of burning fossil fuels, notably local air pollution and global warming. These costs are borne by the community at large, now and in the future, rather than by the power company that sells the power, and thus the price of electricity could be considered to be artificially low. An important Australian study, The economics of climate change, referred to as ‘the Stern Review’ after the name of its chief author, calculated that present-day social costs of future harms caused by the emissions of one additional tonne of carbon dioxide are US$85 (Stern 2007, 322). If energy prices fail to reflect the full cost of energy generation, Stern argued, people could be expected to consume more energy than is socially ideal. Careful regulation of free markets has the potential to address the problem of the negative externalities (see Chapter Four). Market mechanisms have the potential to achieve an environmentally optimal allocation of resources if 36

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environmentally harmful financial subsidies, such as those supporting polluting forms of transportation and electricity production, are removed, and if taxation or permit schemes are used to ensure that the price of goods reflects their full social and ecological costs. For example, the social and environmental costs of pollution from power stations can be calculated and power companies can be taxed accordingly.These price increases can make renewable energy more competitive and thereby create incentives for power companies to switch to cleaner generation methods. At the same time, increased costs would prompt many consumers to reduce their power consumption. Environmental regulation of free markets might then produce social and environmental benefits in an economically efficient manner. However, some environmentalists might argue that these measures are insufficient. Most economic analysis of environmental costs measure only the effect on people. Economic models would also need to build in the intrinsic value of nature and the impacts on other species if they were to enable regulators to implement policies that help to preserve the natural environment. Another critique of economic analysis is that it typically discounts the value of the future (Eckersley 1992, 122). This ‘time discount rate’ supposedly describes how much that future welfare matters to people living today. This discount is calculated, much like an interest rate, as a percentage per unit of time (for example, future wealth might be discounted by 3% per year). It refers to the discount in future welfare that is adopted in economic modelling (Nordhaus 2007, 11). A zero time discount rate means that the welfare of future generations is treated as equivalent to that of present generations, while a positive rate means that present-day welfare is treated as being more valuable than the welfare of future generations (Nordhaus 2007, 11). Besides the tendency of people to prioritise present welfare over future welfare, there are questions of uncertainty about the future that undermine the accuracy of the time discount rate. For example, the Stern Review was criticised by some economists for using a discount rate near zero (see Stern 2007, 90). While some people agree with Stern’s view that it is unethical to attribute less importance to the wellbeing of future generations than to that of people alive today, others argue that uncertainty about the future justifies a discount of some kind (Nordhaus 2007). For example, problems may be easier to address in the future, or humanity may have become extinct due to some unrelated factor. Importantly, because many of the most serious environmental problems, such as those associated with climate change, will not be felt for some decades, applying a discount rate to future wellbeing weakens the justification for taking action now.

North–South debates Conflict between developed countries of the global ‘North’ and developing countries of the global ‘South’ was important for the Brundtland Commission. At the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm, the developed countries pushed for protection of the global 37

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environment, but most developing countries actively resisted this agenda (Najam 2005, 110). Not only did the countries of the South see the environmental agenda as a threat to economic development; they also thought it would divert attention from remedying injustices in the international economic order (Najam 2005, 110).With these concerns in mind, Maurice Strong, the secretary-general of the Stockholm Conference, commissioned a group of experts to prepare a report for a meeting on the relationship between the environment and development. The resulting Founex report on environment and development (Strong 1971) directly addressed the concerns of developing countries, possibly persuading their governments to participate in the conference. The report summarised the developing world’s agenda in this context: The developing countries would clearly wish to avoid, as far as feasible, the mistakes and distortions that have characterized the patterns of development of the industrialized societies. However, the major environmental problems of the developing countries are essentially of a different kind. They are predominantly problems that reflect the poverty and very lack of development in their societies . . . These are problems, no less than those of industrial pollution, that clamour for attention in the context of the concern with [the] human environment. They are problems which affect the greater mass of mankind . . . In [industrialised] countries, it is appropriate to view development as a cause of environmental problems . . . [In the South], development becomes essentially a cure for their major problems. (Strong 1971, 5–6) The position on environment and development adopted by countries of the South has been broadly consistent since 1972, reflected in four recurring themes (Williams 1993, 20–1): (1) responsibility for addressing global environmental problems lies with affluent developed countries; (2) efforts to protect the global environment must not be allowed to limit development in the South; (3) developed countries should assist development and environmental protection by transferring technology for use by the South; and (4) developed countries should provide financial resources to assist developing countries to achieve environmental protection. Four decades later these same themes provide a fairly accurate summary of many developing-country positions in international environmental negotiations, for example those related to climate change.These same ideas were at the heart of the South’s demands in the 1970s for a ‘new international economic order’ (NIEO) (UN 1974). The NIEO was an attempt by developing countries to improve the terms of global trade and to give them more control over their natural resources. Although the NIEO demands were largely unsuccessful, they were reflected in some international negotiations, most notably those for the Law of the Sea and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Hudec 1987; Harris 2010).

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Thus the South’s concerns were at the centre of international debate around the time of the Stockholm Conference in 1972. Developing countries were anxious that environmental measures should not limit their development.They demanded sovereignty over their biological resources as well as assistance from the developed world (Harris 2010, 61–3).The resulting Stockholm Declaration accommodated these concerns by noting that environmental problems in the South were caused by underdevelopment, and by promoting “accelerated development through the transfer of substantial quantities of financial and technological assistance” (UN 1972, Principle 9). It is indicative of the influence of the developing world’s agenda that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which was created at the Stockholm Conference, was headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.The location implied that UNEP should not be dominated by developed-world concerns.

The World Commission on Environment and Development In 1983 the United Nations General Assembly authorised the creation of the Brundtland Commission, which was formally known as the World Commission on Environment and Development. In many ways the resulting report, Our common future (WCED 1987), offered a practical response to the limits-togrowth debate by trying to reconcile the goals of environmental protection and economic growth. It also responded to North–South tensions over environmental protection. According to the report, economic development in the South should be seen as a goal of sustainable development rather than an obstacle to it (WCED, 1987). The basic argument developed by the Brundtland Commission was that sustainable development requires a decoupling of national economic growth from environmental degradation by pursuing development (economic or human) that uses material and energy resources more efficiently. The report highlighted mutual dependencies between economic and environmental wellbeing, and it emphasised that environmental degradation restricts economic growth.The report urged policy makers to seek ways to harmonise rather than balance economic and environmental policy goals. It recognised that there are real limits to economic growth, but it argued that these limits are not absolute: the concept of sustainable development does imply limits—not absolute limits but limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social organization on environmental resources and by the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities. But technology and social organization can be both managed and improved to make way for a new era of economic growth. (WCED 1987, 8) Importantly, the Brundtland Report links ecologically sound development with the alleviation of poverty through a focus on intra- and intergenerational equity. The report defines intragenerational equity as “meeting the basic needs of all and extending to all the opportunity to fulfil their aspirations for a better life” (WCED 39

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1987, 8). While intragenerational equity is a goal for present-day development, intergenerational equity can only be achieved if this development is sustainable. Intergenerational equity is described in terms of meeting the needs of the present in a way that does not undermine (or eliminate) the capacity of future generations to satisfy their needs (WCED 1987, 8).The Brundtland Commission argued that continued economic growth is necessary in order to meet these goals because “the reduction of poverty itself is a precondition for environmentally sound development” (WCED 1987, 69). Within a few years the idea of sustainable development was receiving global recognition, and by 1992 the Brundtland Report’s principles had become mainstream, as reflected in their adoption at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development—the so-called Earth Summit—in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (see below). A cynic might suggest that the success of ‘sustainable development’ results from the appealing ambiguity of the Brundtland Commission’s formulation of the concept, and its associated principles and recommendations.The report contained something for everyone. By linking sustainability with poverty eradication, the report articulated a vision that was attractive to the South as well as the North. Brundtland also acknowledged the reality of limits to growth. Its argument that “sustainable global development requires that those who are more affluent adopt life-styles within the planet’s ecological means” legitimated environmentalists’ arguments (WCED 1987, 29). The report also gave partial support for the idea of a NIEO while gently suggesting that there was a need for political reform in the developing world: Meeting essential needs requires not only a new era of economic growth for nations in which the majority are poor, but an assurance that those poor get their fair share of the resources required to sustain that growth. Such equity would be aided by political systems that secure effective citizen participation in decision making and by greater democracy in international decision making. (WCED 1987, 28) The Brundtland Commission’s vision is optimistic and endorses the need for ongoing economic growth and technical innovation. It offers an apparent resolution of the limits-to-growth debate: “in the end, sustainable development is not a fixed state of harmony, but rather a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as present needs” (WCED 1987, 30). In the years since its release the Brundtland Report has influenced domestic politics in many ways. Nearly all governments aspire to fulfil its vision, some quite seriously. One of the central mechanisms through which the idea of sustainable development has spread around the world has been through a series of international environmental summits and agreements that have followed on from the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. 40

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International summits Governments have come together in major diplomatic summits on a number of occasions over the last several decades to address sustainable development and underlying objectives of environmental protection, human and social wellbeing, and economic advancement.Among these summits were the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit), the 2000 Millennium Summit, the 2002 Conference on Financing for Development and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development.

The Rio Earth Summit The Earth Summit focused on environmental and poverty problems, with a heavy emphasis on North–South inequities (Chasek, Downie and Brown 2010, 35).The summit was attended by 110 heads of state and nearly 10,000 official delegates from 150 countries (Chasek, Downie and Brown 2010, 36), making it one of the largest gatherings of world leaders in history. Negotiations at Rio sought to implement the Brundtland Commission’s vision by integrating environmental and developmental priorities.The summit’s major outcomes were a nonbinding plan of action, known as Agenda 21, and two sets of principles: the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and the Statement of Forest Principles (Chasek, Downie and Brown 2010, 36–7). Agenda 21’s description of policies to achieve more sustainable societies was arguably the most significant outcome of the summit (UN 1993a). Agenda 21 reflects both Northern and Southern agendas in that it contains chapters on social and economic issues and chapters on environmental issues. It called for the removal of subsidies inconsistent with sustainable development, such as those for fossil fuel use, mining and deforestation of public land; the improvement of statistical reporting of environmental indicators and unpaid work; and the negotiation of stronger international agreements to address the use and transportation of toxic chemicals, protection of global fish stocks, marine pollution, desertification and problems faced by small-island developing countries (Chasek, Downie and Brown 2010, 36–7). The final agreement saw developing countries promise to try to implement sustainable development in exchange for new financial and technological support from the developed world (Chasek, Downie and Brown 2010, 37). The Earth Summit’s Rio Declaration (UN 1993b) constituted another official endorsement of many aspects of sustainable development. One significant innovation was the adoption of the ‘precautionary principle’, with Principle 15 stating that “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation” (UN 1993b). This idea—that preventive measures should be taken before there is full scientific certainty about environmental threats—is one of the more controversial aspects of sustainable development. Critics point out that the principle is imprecise in that it does not 41

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specify what level of risk warrants preventive action. Taken to its extreme, the precautionary principle might rule out most economic activity because every action involves risk. However, a number of important global environmental agreements have been premised on the precautionary principle. Both the1979 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution and the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer were adopted before there was full scientific certainty about the impact of the pollutants these agreements were intended to regulate. In both cases the scientific hypotheses that prompted action were subsequently substantiated. More recently, the 2000 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety allows countries to ban imports of genetically modified organisms even if there is a “lack of scientific certainty due to insufficient relevant scientific information and knowledge” concerning health or environmental impacts (SCBD 2001,Articles 10–11; Chasek, Downie and Brown 2010, 47).The Rio Earth Summit also created a Commission on Sustainable Development, an international body responsible for reviewing progress toward implementation of Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.

The Millennium Development Goals and the Conference on Financing for Development The United Nations Millennium Summit of world leaders, held in New York in September 2000, was initiated to develop a plan for promoting sustainable development and eradicating poverty.The summit’s key outcome was the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which promised that governments would “spare no effort to free our fellow men, women, and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected” (UN 2000). Toward this end, the United Nations laid out a number of millennium development goals that quickly became central benchmarks for addressing global poverty.These included halving extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education and gender equity, reducing child mortality by two thirds and maternal mortality by three quarters, reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS and halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water, all by 2015.The goals included a pledge that all countries would integrate the principles of sustainable development into national policies and programmes. Regrettably, the international community quickly fell short of achieving these goals. A June 2007 United Nations update on Africa and the millennium development goals begins this way: At the midway point between their adoption in 2000 and the 2015 target date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, subSaharan Africa is not on track to achieve any of the Goals. Although there have been major gains in several areas and the goals remain achievable in most African nations, even the best governed countries

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on the continent have not been able to make sufficient progress in reducing extreme poverty in its many forms. (UN-Habitat 2008) What is more, since that update was issued in 2008, the global financial crisis has resulted in further backsliding on some development indicators. For example, higher food prices, combined with falling employment, have pushed some people back into poverty. Another significant summit meeting was the March 2002 International Conference on Financing for Development, held in Monterrey, Mexico. This meeting was intended as a major step toward implementing the millennium development goals. The conference adopted the ‘Monterrey Consensus’ (UN 2002), which emphasised the need for trade, debt and international financing to be managed in ways that promote development.A Financing for Development Office was created to organise development assistance and promote poverty reduction. In 2009 a UN report noted that “Net disbursements of official development assistance (ODA) in 2008 increased 10.2 per cent to $119.8 billion, the highest dollar figure ever recorded.That is equivalent to 0.30 per cent of developed countries’ combined national income” (UN 2009, 48).Although the increases in development assistance prior to the global financial crisis were noteworthy, there was a setback when the crisis hit both official aid programmes and private aid. Thus it looked quite unlikely that the millennium development goals would be achieved by 2015. As such, those goals, and efforts like the Monterrey Conference, demonstrate the desire of governments to adhere to and move toward implementing the principles of sustainable development around the world, while also showing that aspirations and implementation remain quite far apart.

The World Summit on Sustainable Development A decade after the Rio Earth Summit, another major international conference was convened in Johannesburg, South Africa, to review progress toward implementation of Agenda 21. Although 100 world leaders attended the summit, it was a low-key event in comparison with the Earth Summit. For example, the United States did not even send a high-level delegation (Chasek, Downie and Brown 2010, 40). The Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development reaffirmed the principles of the 1992 Rio Declaration and the millennium development goals. Additionally, the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation set out a programme of action for sustainable development that included quantifiable goals and targets with fixed deadlines (Chasek, Downie and Brown 2010, 337).The Johannesburg Summit focused substantially on public–private partnerships between industry and governments. During the conference 300 voluntary partnerships and initiatives to support sustainable development were announced (Chasek, Downie and Brown 2010, 337). The summit echoed the millennium development goals and their focus on improving indicators of human development in the South. Prior to the Earth Summit, most diplomatic discussions about sustainable development saw 43

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environmental concerns addressed alongside social and economic issues (Chasek, Downie and Brown 2010, 331). By Johannesburg, the emphasis had changed so that economic and social development received greater attention than environmental concerns. This change may be attributable to the increased globalisation of the world economy in the period between the Earth Summit and the Johannesburg Summit (Chasek, Downie and Brown 2010, 333).

Critical perspectives on sustainable development Given the ambiguity in interpretations of sustainable development, there have been many attempts to define its different forms (Carter 2001, 2000). One common distinction is between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ forms of sustainability. Susan Baker and others have portrayed this distinction in terms of a ‘ladder’ stretching from very weak forms of pollution control to very strong forms of sustainability (see Table 3.1; Baker et al 1997; Carter 2001, 213–15; Baker 2006, 28–35). Although the conception of sustainable development as expressed in the Brundtland Report is focused on the relationship between environmental health and human welfare, models of sustainability differ in how much intrinsic value they attach to the natural world (Baker 2006, 28–32). For example, whereas an anthropocentric (human-centred) model might value biodiversity because valuable products that benefit humanity can be derived from plant and animal species, an eco-centric (environment-centred) approach might value the natural world for its own sake.Very weak forms of sustainability that primarily emphasise pollution control accept a view of development that approximates economic growth. Stronger forms of sustainable development focus on aspects of human welfare and environmental preservation that are measurable in noneconomic terms. While weak sustainability generally allows substitution between different forms of capital (so, for example, deterioration of agricultural land is acceptable if new technologies mean crop yield can be maintained), stronger forms of sustainability focus on protecting natural resources and conserving a stable level of natural capital (Carter 2001, 200). The idea of sustainable development is related to another approach that seeks to reconcile capitalism and environmental protection: ecological modernisation. According to this view, environmental protection can motivate technological improvements that increase economic growth by decoupling economic activity from material consumption (Eckersley 2004, 72). Some key texts promoting ecological modernisation include Factor four: Doubling wealth, halving resource use (Von Weizsäcker, Lovins and Lovins 1997) and Natural capitalism (Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins 1999). Factor four promotes a global efficiency revolution in which energy use can be cut by 75%. Its authors argue that the power of innovation should be harnessed through market mechanisms that create price incentives for promoting energy efficiency. Some breakthrough technologies—such as compact fluorescent light bulbs, which use a fraction of the energy of traditional light bulbs and reportedly last ten times longer—may meet these requirements (although 44

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they present new problems due to their use of toxic chemicals, which are more difficult to dispose of safely than traditional light bulbs). However, to date there is no evidence that ecological modernisation alone is capable of reducing energy consumption to the point necessary to avoid dangerous global warming and climate change.This is largely because more efficient devices are used more often, leading to an overall increase in pollution. Ecological modernisation also offers few solutions to inequality and social sustainability: market-based environmentalism usually offers ‘modernisation’ only to those who can afford it. Table 3.1:Types of sustainable development Model of sustainable development

Normative principles

Type of development

The role of nature

Spatial focus

Ideal model

Principles take precedence over pragmatic considerations; focus on participation, equity, gender equality, justice, common but differentiated responsibilities

Livelihood should meet needs not wants; biophysical limits guide development

Nature has intrinsic value; strict limits on resource use aided by population reductions

Bioregionalism; extensive local self-sufficiency

Strong sustainable development

Principles enter into international law and into governance arrangements

Changes in patterns and levels of consumption; shift from growth to nonmaterial aspects of development; necessary development in the South

Maintenance of critical natural capital and biodiversity

Heightened local economic self-sufficiency, promoted in the context of global markets; ‘green’ trade and fair trade

Weak sustainable development

Declared commitment to principles is stronger than practice

Decoupling of economic growth from resource use; reduced consumption; product lifecycle management

Substitution of natural capital with human capital; harvesting of biodiversity resources

Initial moves to local economic self-sufficiency; minor initiatives to alleviate the power of global markets

Pollution control

Pragmatic, not principled approach

Exponential market-led growth

Resource exploitation; marketisation and closure of commons areas; nature has use value

Globalisation; shift of production to less regulated locations

Source: Baker 2006, 30

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Environmental ethics are important for critically understanding sustainability. Questions about whom we should regard as important, in what ways we should do so, and why, underpin different perspectives of environmental ethics. Most Asian (including Chinese) and Western philosophical traditions are anthropocentric: they privilege human life over nature, and justify the domination and exploitation of nature for human purposes. For this reason, the most common and successful efforts to frame environmental protection as an ethical issue have focused on the environment’s utility for people—that is, the environment’s ability to meet human needs and wants. Environmental goals have primarily been achieved by expanding the kinds of human interests accorded moral consideration.The general respect for human rights and acceptance of human moral equality means that environmental campaigns commonly highlight the impacts of environmental harm on marginal human communities (see Light and Rolston 2003). Some in the ‘green’ (environmental) movement want to go beyond the focus on human welfare by recognising moral obligations toward nonhuman species. This break with anthropocentrism is often characterised as the green movement’s distinctive ethical contribution. Several streams of modern environmentalism attempt to address questions of moral obligation toward other species (see Box 3.2; Eckersley 1992, 35–48). Box 3.2: Streams of modern environmentalism Resource conservation: early twentieth-century environmental movements in Englishspeaking countries are often characterised as having been split between conservationists and preservationists (Hutton and Connors 1997). The conservationists took a utilitarian and unambiguously anthropocentric ‘wise use’ perspective, sometimes labelled a ‘gospel of efficiency’ (Hays 1959). This perspective is utilitarian in the sense that it advocates managing nature for development; it argues that it is wrong to use resources inefficiently and also wrong to not use them at all. Preservationism: by contrast, preservationism recognises a greater intrinsic value in the environment and is characterised by a desire to ‘tread lightly’ in wild places and to protect them from development. While the preservationist project holds an attitude of reverence toward the natural world and an impulse to respect nature ‘for its own sake’, its early advocates were generally utilitarian in a weak sense because they argued that nature should be preserved for scientific purposes and for the aesthetic appreciation by humans. Human welfare ecology: this is a brand of environmentalism with roots in socialism. It seeks a cleaner, safer and more pleasing human environment. While its exclusive concern with human wellbeing echoes resource conservationism’s anthropocentricism, human welfare ecology differs from this earlier approach in its general scepticism toward unbridled economic growth and its preference for democratic rather than purely scientific management of environmental risk.

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Origins and critiques of sustainable development Environmental justice: the environmental justice movement is primarily concerned with the unfair distribution of environmental hazards and with empowering cultural minorities and developing countries to participate in environmental decision making.While giving a voice to marginalised communities may unlock valuable ecological knowledge, environmental justice remains an anthropocentric perspective. Animal liberation: the animal liberation movement finds its contemporary genesis in the publication of Peter Singer’s seminal book, Animal liberation, in 1975. Singer extended Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian concern with maximisation of human satisfaction to animals, arguing that “the ethical principle on which human equality rests requires us to extend equal consideration to animals too” (Singer 1975, 1). Singer argues that there is no reason why a society that wishes to minimise suffering, cruelty and domination within human communities should not also be concerned with animal welfare. Singer labels the exclusive concern with human welfare a form of ‘speciesism’: a prejudice against nonhuman species that is analogous to racism or sexism. Singer’s approach makes sentience—the capacity to feel pain, to suffer and to think—a key yardstick of moral contemplation. Sentience makes animals worthy of moral contemplation. Eco-centrism: Eco-centric approaches reject the tradition of human domination of nature, instead proposing a new moral perspective that embraces nonhuman species within the realm of actors that warrant moral consideration. Eco-centric approaches are typically holistic and are concerned with protecting species and ecosystems for their own sake rather than because they are valuable to humanity, or, in contrast to Singer, because they are similar to humanity. Quasi-spiritual philosophical movements such as ‘deep ecology’ and the radical activism of ‘Earth First!’ (an organisation that pioneered environmental direct action, such as the sabotage of logging equipment) are important examples of eco-centric philosophy. Deep ecologists such as Arne Naess argue for an expanded sense of self such that we should come to identify nature as part of our expanded identity (Naess 1989). Deep ecology also recognises a fundamental equality of all life forms and argues for policies that seek to minimise interference in natural systems (Baker 2006, 35). Source: Eckersley 1992, 35–48

Conclusion Is ‘sustainable development’ a useful concept? Is it really helpful for formulating and implementing environmental policy in Hong Kong or other parts of China? Certainly the concept has been critiqued from many angles. Feminists have suggested that it fails to recognise the role of patriarchy in environmental destruction and the important role that the empowerment of women (and other social reforms) could play in achieving environmental outcomes (Lewis and Humphrey 2005). Many environmentalists treat the term as a comforting foil that allows governments to pursue the same old forms of development with only minor changes. Michael Redclift argues that “development must be subjected 47

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to redefinition since it is impossible for accumulation to take place within the global economic system we have inherited without unacceptable environmental costs. Sustainable development, if it is to be an alternative to unsustainable development, should imply a break with the linear model of growth . . .” (Redclift 1987, 199). For some observers, sustainable development is a distraction from the more important task of alleviating poverty (Lomborg 2001). Thus it seems that sustainable development is both an appealing idea that has helped to mobilise support for more environmental protection and a potentially misleading slogan that has the potential to create a false sense of ecological security. Sustainable development may also mean different things on local and global scales. For example, indicators of sustainability that have been proposed in reports prepared for the Hong Kong government do not include global atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases as a measure of sustainability. This is perhaps understandable because global pollution is mostly out of the hands of Hong Kong officials. However, it means that it might be possible for Hong Kong to record continuous improvements in almost all local measures of sustainability while its population contributes to global environmental destruction (see Chapter Eleven). While this may not have great practical importance globally given Hong Kong’s small size, if the same behaviour applies to people throughout China the global environment, and all those humans and nonhumans who depend upon it, will be in trouble. Thus the global context once again becomes apparent. Indeed, one of the greatest challenges is attaining sustainability in an era of economic globalisation. By creating ever-longer commodity chains—the physical separation of primary resource extraction, manufacturing, marketing, consumption and the like— globalisation externalises environmental costs and destroys feedbacks between resource use and consumption (Conca 2002, 144). For example, in the past, if Hong Kong fishermen had overfished in coastal waters everyone would have been aware of this because fish would become scarce in local markets.Today, however, fresh fish are flown to Hong Kong from all around Asia and beyond, and diners are none the wiser about the health of fisheries and the marine environment. Consequently, as a result of increasing globalisation, sustainability now means much more than simply managing local environments; it requires global cooperation. Through regulation or consumer awareness the feedback mechanisms linking consumption with social and ecological impacts must be reconstructed. As the following chapters make clear, the question of whether sustainable development is a useful concept for environmental policy making and economic management is really a question of how—and whether—it is used.

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Appendix:Thinking about origins and critiques of sustainable development Chapter objectives 1. To examine how the concept of sustainable development is related to the ‘limits to growth’ debate. 2. To reflect on some of the merits of sustainable development and to identify some of the main critiques directed against it. 3. To describe some of the ways in which sustainable development, as interpreted from the perspectives of both North and South, has been debated and codified at international summits. 4. To distinguish between anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric perspectives, and between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ forms of sustainability.

Key points 1. Sustainable development addresses the tension between environmental protection and economic growth, both of which may be necessary for poverty alleviation. 2. Some critics of the Brundtland Report have argued that it was too optimistic about the complementary nature of economic growth and environmental protection. Others have taken the opposite view and suggested that more economic growth is needed to pay for environmental protection. 3. The millennium development goals seek to eradicate extreme poverty and integrate the principles of sustainable development into countries’ policies and programmes. They are an example of how governments can come together internationally to promote sustainability goals. 4. Despite the vast improvements in human welfare that have taken place in recent decades, particularly in Asia, much uncertainty remains about the sustainability of current trends in human development. Economic globalisation in particular poses new challenges because it blocks feedback signals on resource scarcity and allows countries to externalise environmental costs.

Key terms • • • •

Limits to growth Tragedy of the commons Weak and strong sustainability Environmental justice

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Discussion questions 1. What does classic liberal economic theory say about resource scarcity? 2. Why might the Brundtland Commission’s formulation of sustainable development be considered ambiguous? 3. Which arguments are frequently used by developing countries when discussing the responsibility for addressing environmental problems? 4. What are the differences between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ forms of sustainability?

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Four

Implementing sustainable development Introduction As we saw in the previous chapter, Garrett Hardin’s 1968 essay, ‘The tragedy of the commons’, describes how a village’s shared common land might be ruined because each villager has an individual incentive to overuse the commons for grazing his own animals (Hardin 1968). Hardin’s ‘tragedy’, which is the failure of a community to protect shared environmental resources, describes one common type of environmental problem that sustainable development policies are intended to avert. One important question is how to implement rules that protect and sustain shared resources. Even among those who agree that sustainable development is a desirable goal, there is considerable uncertainty and disagreement as to how this goal might be achieved. Different policy responses will be appropriate for different challenges.This chapter introduces some key policy measures that are commonly utilised for implementing sustainable development. It explores arguments for government regulation to monitor shared resources and to ensure that people preserve environmental goods, describes arguments in favour of using market mechanisms and private ownership to motivate environmental protection, and looks at the argument that sustainable development can best be achieved through community management. Sustainable development is not just a matter of environmental protection; its implementation also involves addressing the social and economic dimensions of meeting the needs of present and future generations. To this end, policy makers have sought new ways to measure and enhance human development. Efforts to move beyond a narrow focus on gross domestic product and toward wider measurements of ‘human development’ are considered in this chapter, as are efforts to construct indicators of environmental wellbeing and to build social and environmental factors into development policies. Efforts to implement sustainable development can involve a wide range of social and other changes, such as improving workers’ rights, enhancing opportunities for women, better economic planning and implementing international environmental agreements. While this chapter touches on some of these themes, it focuses especially on the policy tools that governments might use to realise environmentally sustainable development.

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Approaches to implementing sustainable development Oran Young identifies three classical thinkers whose ideas point to different strategies for achieving sustainable development (Young 2009, 12). Thomas Hobbes, writing amid the political turmoil of seventeenth-century England, argued that a “nasty, brutish” struggle of one person against another is the natural human condition. To ensure general welfare, therefore, Hobbes argued that this condition makes it necessary for individuals to enter into a social contract giving wide powers of enforcement to a strong central government. A century later, economist Adam Smith countered with the argument that the ‘invisible hand of the market’ could regulate self-interested individuals, with each person’s pursuit of his own welfare resulting in optimal outcomes overall. In this view, the role of government is to enable the efficient operation of markets through enforcement of property rights and rules of fair trade (Young 2009, 12). Another classical thinker, Peter Kropotkin, who lived in nineteenth-century Europe, reacted against an oppressive Russian state, pointing to the harms that powerful governments can inflict on their own citizens. Kropotkin did not deny the necessity of governance, but he argued that it could be supplied by civil society through mutual aid rather than by the market or a strong central government (Young 2009, 12). The three positions outlined by these classical thinkers, urging government regulation (Hobbes), market-based solutions (Smith) and voluntary action (Kropotkin), correspond to contemporary proposals for implementing sustainable development.

Managing common and public goods Different types of regulatory responses are likely to be effective for different types of environmental problems. One important distinction can be made on the basis of whether an environmental good can be exhausted.This is a distinction between a ‘public good’—one that everyone can enjoy without detriment to others, and from which it is not possible to exclude anyone—and a ‘common good’—a shared resource that can be exhausted (Young 2009, 15). In the case of common goods, any benefits enjoyed by one individual are subtracted from the benefits available to others. For example, fish in Hong Kong’s waters are a common good. If a large fleet of fishing vessels owned by one person were allowed to catch all of the fish, this would prevent others from catching any fish at all. One particular type of common good, which is termed a ‘common-pool resource’ (CPR), has the characteristic of being difficult, but not impossible, to exclude from use by outsiders (Ostrom and Ostrom 1977). Hong Kong’s fisheries, and the capacity of its nearby waters to absorb a certain amount of pollution safely from sewage, are examples of CPRs. In both cases, it is possible to regulate use of the common resources by patrolling the sea in search of unauthorised fishing vessels and by monitoring homes and businesses adjacent to waterways to prevent unregulated discharge of sewage. However, such monitoring can be costly and difficult.

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Any community that wishes to protect a CPR must find a way to limit overconsumption. This commonly involves monitoring use of the resource, sanctioning those who overexploit it and organising investment in the resource (Ostrom 2000, 337–8). Governments might pass laws that regulate and monitor each actor’s consumption, the CPR or resources flowing from it (such as a right to harvest a certain number of trees) may be privatised in order to create economic incentives to protect the CPR, or a community may work together to protect the resource voluntarily. As discussed below, questions of scale are important for selecting appropriate regulatory responses. For example, community responses are often effective at treating CPRs at a small scale, but they may be less effective at larger scales. Whereas common goods are exhaustible resources, some other goods—‘public goods’—have benefits that are limited. Economists use the term ‘non-rival’ to describe goods that cannot be exhausted. Elimination of an infectious disease is an example of a public good. For example, in Hong Kong the last reported case of rabies was in 1997. Hong Kong has since been free of this fatal illness, which continues to cause many deaths each year in the rest of China (AFCD 2010a). Elimination of rabies from Hong Kong is an example of a public good because, once eliminated, one person’s freedom from rabies does not reduce the benefits enjoyed by others. Clean air can also be conceptualised as a public good: each person can breathe clean air without subtracting from anyone else’s enjoyment. This distinction between public goods and common goods is important because different strategies may be required to preserve them. Whereas protecting CPRs often requires that each member of a community be prevented from overconsuming, the provision of public goods involves a different challenge. Each person would like to receive the public good, such as a rabies-free community and clean air, but each person would also prefer that other people take the necessary steps, and pay the potential costs, for securing the good. Thus a problem of ‘free riding’ arises. Whereas protecting CPRs primarily requires preventing overconsumption, provision of a public good often requires that actors be motivated to contribute to the provision of the good. Public goods are sometimes supplied by citizenorganised action, most commonly on a small scale, such as when a school community contributes to the construction of a new hall, or through government action—for example the Hong Kong government’s investment in rabies prevention. Although market measures can be used to provide a public good, this may be challenging and typically involves quite sophisticated forms of regulation by government. (The discussion below of tradable emissions permits describes an attempt to use market mechanisms to allocate the costs of providing a public good.) Generally speaking, governments commonly provide public goods, ranging from weather forecasting services to disease control.

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The scale of environmental problems The scale of an environmental problem will influence the type of solution that is appropriate or possible. For example, small-scale problems might be solved through voluntary community-based measures, but as the scale of the problems and the number of actors required for resolving them increase, the feasibility of community-based solutions may be reduced. For example, if a village or small district in a city has a shared garden, it seems likely that residents might find ways to maintain it communally. Each person might make a small financial contribution and a roster system might ensure that everyone shares the work of maintaining the garden.Within larger communities, however, it is harder to achieve such forms of communal organisation. For example, it might be possible for Hong Kong’s people to improve the territory’s air quality by voluntarily limiting their use of polluting diesel vehicles. It seems unlikely, though, that a community of over 7 million people would be able to self-regulate in this way. It is more likely that some form of government intervention is needed to address this problem, for example by banning the use of heavily polluting diesel engines, imposing heavy duties on dirty fuels or subsidising the purchase of cleaner vehicles. Responding to international and global environmental problems creates particular challenges. Because there is no world government for enforcing compliance at the international level, resolution of problems on this scale requires the cooperation of countries, often many of them. Regulation to limit polluting forms of consumption or to motivate contributions toward the provision of global public goods, such as a healthy climate system, is very difficult because there is nothing capable of compelling all actors to do what is necessary to achieve sustainability. Agreement among countries or voluntary measures among groups of key polluters might solve problems, but such an agreement can be very difficult to achieve and to implement. Public goods are more likely to be provided on the global scale if there is a favourable cost–benefit ratio—if the near-term benefits of addressing a problem are much larger than the costs—and if powerful actors are willing to take on extra burdens, such as providing financial assistance, to provide the good (Barrett 2007). An example can be found in the world’s response to stratospheric ozone depletion. In the 1970s scientist began to suspect that chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons, which were used in aerosol spray cans and air-conditioners, were responsible for the partial destruction of the ozone layer that protects people and other species from harmful radiation from the sun. In response to this threat, and following some years of diplomatic negotiations, in 1987 many governments signed an international treaty to address the problem: the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (Speth and Haas 2006, 94). This protocol is one of the most successful responses to a global environmental challenge. By gaining commitments from all major countries, it ended much of the anthropogenic (human-caused) destruction of the ozone layer. Importantly, the United States government made preserving the ozone layer a high priority, and 54

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it lobbied other governments intensively. Dupont, the US-based manufacturer of chlorofluorocarbons, agreed to support their elimination on a global basis (Speth and Haas 2006, 94), in large part because it also manufactured alternative, more lucrative chemicals.The present-day value of benefits that will arise as a result of adopting the Montreal Protocol for the world as a whole are estimated to be 11 times the costs, while for the United States (which drove the change) the benefits have been estimated to be approximately 170 times the costs (Barrett 2007, 79). As a result of this favourable distribution of costs and benefits, the United States had a strong incentive to drive the development of an international agreement addressing this global problem (see Benedick 1998).

Scientific knowledge and the precautionary principle Another distinction among environmental problems is in the level of scientific knowledge about them.There are some resource and environmental issues around which people have very good knowledge. For example, a community managing a forest or a lake is likely to have a good idea of the flow of resources, in this case timber or fish, that can be taken sustainably (Ostrom 2000, 338). They will also have some understanding of the decline in productivity to be expected if a sustainable harvest is exceeded—if, for example, too many fish are taken or too many trees are cut. However, around many environmental problems there is less scientific certainty. For example, there is scientific agreement concerning the basic processes by which carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases cause global warming, resulting in global climate change (IPCC 2007b). In spite of this, there is still some uncertainty about the degree of ‘climate sensitivity’, the rate at which the earth’s atmosphere will warm for any given increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and about the precise nature of impacts in specific locations at different points in time in the future (IPCC 2007b). This scientific uncertainty in turn presents uncertainties for governments and other actors. Urgent action on climate change is required, but there remains much debate about which actors should take action, to what degree they should do so, and when—and who will pay for it all. Policy making for sustainable development becomes more complex in situations where the implications of decisions are unknown. Even if risks can be quantified, the appropriate level of risk-tolerance is an inherently political question. One response to the problem of uncertainty is the ‘precautionary principle’. The precautionary principle states that “where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental harm” (Speth and Haas 2006, 90–1).This principle has been incorporated into various international environmental agreements, including the Rio Declaration (discussed in Chapter Three) and the United Nations Framework Agreement on Climate Change. It served as a basis for the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which was agreed before there was full scientific certainty about 55

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the chemical processes causing ozone depletion. The scientific hypothesis that prompted action on the problem was subsequently demonstrated to be accurate, so the decision to act early was vindicated. The Montreal Protocol is thus an example of the valuable contribution that the precautionary principle can make to environmental decision making.

Measures for government regulation While some environmentalists are sceptical of the capacity of governments to understand and respond to local environmental problems or to address global ones, it remains the case that governments are indispensible political institutions with an unrivalled capacity to shape environmental outcomes (Eckersley 2004, 4–6). The modern environmental movement that emerged in the early 1960s sought to shape the actions of individuals and corporations, but it arguably had its greatest influence through winning changes in government policies. Moreover, responsibility for implementing the international sustainable development agenda through initiatives such as Agenda 21 has largely fallen to national governments. The methods through which governments have regulated for the environment have changed over time. For example, while early environmental regulation often took the form of ‘command and control’ measures that directly controlled behaviour, regulations that give industries more flexibility in the way they achieve environmental goals have become more common. Examples include self-regulation and emissions trading schemes (discussed below).

Monitoring Some of the earliest state responses to the emergence of the environmental movement included improvements in national monitoring capacity through the collection, handling and dissemination of environment-related information. Initially, there were three types of measures for nationwide environmental monitoring (Mol 2008, 108): (1) measures of environmental quality in surface water, ground water, drinking water, air quality and soil pollution in agricultural, industrial sites, residential areas and nature reserves; (2) collection of information on emissions to the air, water and soil from industry, agriculture, road transportation and other pollution sources; and (3), especially since the 1970s, monitoring by national authorities of the quality and potential toxicity of products (although food monitoring began much earlier). For example, monitoring of air quality began in earnest in most developed countries in the 1970s (Mol 2008, 108). Collection of this information has provided a focal point for environmental decision making and has enabled policy makers to assess claims made by environmentalists and industry. It has also allowed governments to adopt a scientific approach to environmental policy making. As the global scale of environmental problems has become apparent, so has recognition of the need for investment in global environmental monitoring. 56

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Organisations such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the United States have used their capabilities to take global measurements, such as those for global temperature and atmospheric pollution. NASA converts and publishes data from a number of American, European, Japanese and Russian satellites (NASA 2011). However, satellite analysis does not provide detailed local information, and the quality of data varies greatly between different countries (and sometimes within countries). For example, in China the Environmental Monitoring Centre in Beijing collects and processes environmental data from around 23,000 local monitoring stations in 350 cities (Mol 2008, 244). These local monitoring stations are much more common in China’s wealthy eastern provinces and cities than in poorer western regions, so collection and release of environmental information is much more common in more affluent areas (Mol 2008, 247). China thus provides an example of a global pattern wherein environmental monitoring is generally stronger in affluent regions. For this reason, more affluent countries seeking to address regional pollution issues often provide scientific assistance to improve their neighbours’ monitoring capacity in the hope that this will lead to lower pollution levels. Japan’s extensive scientific assistance to help China monitor air pollution is a case in point (Kim 2007, 3–4).

Human development indicators Improvements in environmental indicators have been mirrored by efforts to collect, analyse and disseminate measures of ‘human development.’ The most influential of these is the Human Development Index (HDI), first developed by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq. Since 1990 global measurements of HDI have been reported annually in the United Nations Development Programme’s human development reports (see, for example, UNDP 2010).The HDI contributes to the implementation of a sustainable development agenda by providing a rough measure of human development that is distinct from measures of economic growth (Haq 1995). Individual components of the HDI have been refined over time, with the current index measuring health, education and material wellbeing by assessing life expectancy at birth, years of formal education, and income (measured in terms of purchasing power). The HDI helps development economists and planners to target health and education in addition to their more traditional aims of increasing gross domestic product and eliminating economic poverty. The periodic human development reports demonstrate that wide variations in health and education levels occur among countries that have similar income levels. However, the HDI has been criticised for obscuring the complexity of human development, and in particular for ignoring the importance of political freedom and dignity in its assessment of human development (Fukudu-Parr 2003, 117–19).

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Environmental impact assessment Governments seeking to assess the merits of new policies and projects often utilise cost–benefit analysis. An economist conducting a cost–benefit analysis usually assesses the economic costs and benefits associated with particular courses of action. When doing this, a discount is applied to future costs and benefits to take account of people’s preference for present-day benefits over future ones. The economist identifies the appropriate decision that needs to be taken to achieve the greatest benefits at the lowest cost (Soderbaum 2008, 100). The goal of cost–benefit analysis is to make the economic implications of different courses of action clear to policy makers and to identify actions that will maximise the aggregate economic wellbeing of a community.The belief that a society’s concept of value is adequately captured by the present market value of different outcomes is implicit within the idea of a cost–benefit analysis (Soderbaum 2008, 100). An approach emphasising economic efficiency fits well with a growth-based ideology. However, it is less well suited to achieving sustainable development because it gives no regard to noneconomic forms of capital or to noneconomic values. At minimum, implementing sustainable development requires that the environmental and social costs of a decision should be considered alongside the economic costs. More radical conceptions of sustainability would go further and question the simple treatment of risk and the reliance on expert decision making that is implicit in cost–benefit analysis. For example, Peter Soderbaum argues that for decision-making processes to be compatible with a democratic conception of sustainable development, they must involve: disaggregation of the different types of impacts as well as the potential impacts on different social groups; participation of all stakeholders in the decision-making process; and explicitly democratic consideration of risks and uncertainty so as to enable a community to implement the precautionary principle in accordance with its own values (Soderbaum 2008, 101). Traditional cost–benefit analysis that does not reflect social or environmental values is unlikely to produce policies that lead to sustainable development. Consequently, a new approach to assessing costs and benefits, known as ‘environmental impact assessment’ (EIA), emerged in the early 1970s in the United States with adoption of the National Environmental Policy Act (Soderbaum 2008, 110–11). Governments around the world subsequently adopted different kinds of EIA, with the European Union using what it calls ‘strategic environmental assessment’. The purpose of EIA is to complement the technical and financial analyses conducted in traditional decision-making processes with additional environment-focused analyses. For example, under the National Environmental Policy Act a government department or corporation commencing a project is required to conduct an EIA if the proposed investment is likely to have significant environmental impacts. The EIA process is supposed to identify environmental impacts, especially irreversible ones, to evaluate practicable alternatives to the proposed project from an environmental perspective and to assess possible ways 58

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to modify the project in order to minimise (or mitigate) negative environmental impacts (Soderbaum 2008, 110–11). Environmental impact assessment has facilitated environmentally beneficial modification of development projects. However, some have criticised it for failing to address the social and economic aspects of development. For example, the Hong Kong government has at times been highly critical of EIA advocates, claiming that detailed EIA procedures delay major infrastructure development and make it more expensive. Environmental impact assessments also do not necessarily open up, let alone democratise, processes for assessing development projects. For these and other reasons, a variety of alternative approaches such as ‘positional analysis’ and ‘multi-criteria’ approaches have been developed around the world. These approaches aim to make the ideological aspects of decision making more obvious, and to involve stakeholders and affected communities in an open and more democratic assessment of development (Soderbaum 2008, 110–11). Hong Kong’s Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance came into effect in 1998 (see Chapter Thirteen). It requires most major infrastructure and development projects to obtain environmental permits or go through an environmental assessment process, although it potentially allows the government to exempt particular projects (Corlett 2004, 431). The ordinance allows for EIA recommendations to be made legally binding through an environmental permit system, and creates some possibility for public input into the formulation of the EIA study. Some environmentalists believe that the lack of adequate policies for sustainable development in Hong Kong results in an over-reliance on the EIA ordinance to achieve sustainable outcomes, particularly with regard to infrastructure projects. The assumption, particularly among businesses and government officials, may be that EIA will be enough to ensure environmental protection during infrastructure development. However, in a 2011 case that challenged the EIA process for a major bridge project, a Hong Kong court found the prevailing EIA process to be inadequate because it failed adequately to consider the environmental conditions brought on by development projects (Kwok 2011). This decision delayed construction, but the court ruling was overruled following an appeal by the government, and work on the bridge began in 2011. Nevertheless, some inadequacies of the local EIA process were revealed, showing at least that it is no substitute for robust government policies for sustainable development.

Market-based measures Some people suggest that the tendency for capitalism to destroy alternative systems of value, and its failure to give equal emphasis to environmental capital (such as wilderness), material assets, financial capital and cultural assets, are key factors contributing to the global ecological crisis (Guattari 2000, 29). They argue that pursuing environmental goals through free-market mechanisms is a contradiction in terms. However, since the early days of the modern environmental movement there have been efforts to utilise economic principles to protect environmental 59

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goods. Importantly, free-market environmentalism does not reject a role for the state in environmental regulation. Instead, it suggests that the state’s function is to create and protect markets and systems of property rights (Anderson and Leal 1998, 209). Free-market environmentalists believe that well-designed markets will optimally allocate environmental resources so as to maximise human welfare. Clearly specified property rights to natural resources are key objectives of free-market environmentalists (Anderson and Leal 1998, 208). The rationale for this emphasis on property rights arises from the incentives that ownership creates. If an individual person, corporation or nonprofit group has ownership of a particular environmental resource, there is a strong incentive to protect it. Owners of resources will be disciplined by the knowledge that they may suffer economically if harm is done to their property. Free-market environmentalists typically claim that, under collective ownership, individuals do not gain sufficient benefit from protecting a resource, for example by preventing erosion of farmland. Consequently, they are not sufficiently disciplined by a profit incentive to protect the environment (Anderson and Leal 1998, 208). Some advocates of environmental privatisation have gone so far as to call for the privatisation of national parks and the protection of endangered species by creating new property rights in wildlife, the idea being that if someone is able to secure profits from a particular species he or she will invest sufficient resources to protect it (Starr 1988, 6). While such extreme positions have not been widely accepted, the role of market instruments in environmental regulation has been increasing rapidly. For example, experimentation with tradable emissions permits, under which the right to pollute is turned into a tradable property right, stretches back to the 1960s in some Western countries, and these instruments have become common in environmental policy making throughout the world, especially since the 1990s (Lemos and Agrawal 2009, 76).

The polluter-pays principle The potential for the ‘externalities’ to impose costs on society and the natural environment, thereby producing economically inefficient outcomes, is an idea that has great relevance for sustainable development (Barron 2004, 177). An ‘externality’ is the cost of an activity that is borne by parties other than the one causing it. For example, Hong Kong’s heavily polluting fleet of older diesel buses and trucks imposes high costs on the community at large by releasing pollutants that cause respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses. The costs of air pollution can be understood as an externality because the bus companies are not required to pay for the harm their buses cause (see Chapter Nine). If the producer that causes them does not meet the environmental costs of production, a market failure may occur alongside overexploitation of the environment (Barron 2004, 177). For example, it may be economically efficient for the community as a whole for the bus companies to minimise the harm they cause.They could do this by replacing heavily polluting vehicles with more ‘environmentally friendly’ (less-polluting) 60

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models. However, there is currently little economic incentive for Hong Kong’s bus companies to do this because the costs of their pollution continue to be borne by the entire community. Ronald Coase analysed this concept of environmental externalities half a century ago. He noted that there is a loss of social welfare when an actor that imposes an externality on a community—such as a power plant creating air pollution— cannot negotiate with those who suffer from the externality in order to agree to an efficient outcome (Coase 1960; see Barron 2004, 177). Coase’s key insight was to show that equal negotiations between a polluter and those suffering from pollution could result in the parties agreeing on a socially optimum level of pollution. This level would stay the same regardless of where the initial burden fell and irrespective of who paid whom (Barron 2004, 178). However, Coase argued that inefficiencies arising from communication costs could prevent parties from negotiating. In this case, there is a need for government intervention to overcome market failure. Laws limiting pollution caused by particular emitters can achieve a similar outcome to that which would be negotiated if parties were able to communicate freely. Coase’s analysis of environmental externalities suggests that if transaction and communication costs are zero then externalities will be addressed, so there is no need for government to regulate pollution. However, in the real world, transaction and communication costs are generally significant. Consider the bus example above. The Hong Kong government estimates that highly polluting older diesel vehicles have a current value of approximately HK$3.9 billion, but the economic cost of the pollution they cause each year is estimated to be HK$24.3 billion—6.3 times the vehicles’ total value (EPD 2009a, 21). On the basis of these figures, we might assume that, if each person in Hong Kong were to negotiate with the bus companies (and other polluters), they might reach an agreement in which everyone paid several hundred dollars to take heavily polluting vehicles off the road. Such a deal could benefit all parties. There is no mechanism by which a community of over 7 million people can undertake such a negotiation; it would be extraordinarily costly to implement such mechanism were it an option. As a result, there is a role for government to step in to achieve an outcome that would be possible if transaction costs were lower. It can do that by banning polluting vehicles, paying owners of polluting vehicles to take them off the road, or taxing polluters (the bus companies, for example) for the full cost of their emissions (see Chapter Nine). Market failures mean that pollution levels are often higher than is socially or economically optimal. Many environmentalists have consequently promoted the ‘polluter-pays principle’ whereby producers are required to pay the costs of damage caused by their pollution.This principle can be understood as an attempt to internalise externalities by ensuring that the prices of goods and services come to reflect their full environmental costs.The polluter-pays principle can be justified in terms of fairness: the beneficiary of pollution should pay for its associated costs, and according to an efficiency principle—that collective wellbeing is optimised if 61

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full costs of production are internalised rather than imposed on the community as a whole (Shue 1999, 534, 537; Gardiner 2004, 579). The polluter-pays principle was introduced internationally in 1973 by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and recommended as a norm for international pricing in 1982 (Mirovitskaya and Ascher 2001, 194). Likewise, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development urges governments to use “economic instruments” to ensure that costs of pollution are internalised and that polluters “bear the cost of pollution” (UN 1992a, Principle 16).While the principle provides a useful starting point for environmental policy making, it offers no guidance about the methods through which pollution should be controlled. Further, if a community chooses pollution control methods that are not the lowest cost, the principle does not indicate who should pay for the additional costs. The principle is also not particularly helpful when polluters are numerous and hard to identify. For example, if some beachgoers litter a beach, should every beachgoer be asked to pay, or only those caught littering (Mirovitskaya and Ascher 2001, 195)?

Emissions trading One problem with the ‘command and control’ method of reducing pollution is that governments generally lack information on the most efficient way to bring about the reductions. In general, owners of polluting facilities are likely to have more detailed knowledge than a government regulator does of how pollution can be efficiently reduced (Tietenberg 2006, 15). There is a mismatch between information and responsibility: while government has the responsibility (and often the authority) to reduce emissions, it lacks information concerning how this should be done most efficiently. Emissions trading schemes have the potential to correct this mismatch between information and responsibility by utilising market mechanisms to identify the least costly methods for cutting pollution. Under an emissions trading scheme, the government regulator’s key roles are to set a cap (upper limit) on the amount of pollution allowed and to monitor polluters to ensure that they stay below that amount. The cap should ideally be determined on the basis of a scientific assessment of environmental conditions. The regulator creates tradable emissions permits and distributes them through an auction or by allocating them among existing polluters. Because these rights to emit pollution can be traded, a market in emissions permits is created. The market will theoretically allocate the allowed emissions in the most efficient way. For instance, if a factory can reduce pollution very cheaply it may reduce its pollution as much as possible and then sell its surplus emissions permits to another business that lacks its own inexpensive emissions-reduction options. In most schemes the government reduces the total pollution allowed each year so as to create an incentive for innovation and further cuts in pollution. The first large and successful scheme to use emissions trading was the US Environmental Protection Agency’s scheme to control sulphur dioxide (SO2) 62

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pollution. Amendments to the Clean Air Act were passed in 1990 that were intended to address the problem of acid rain caused by emissions of SO2. Under the law, a cap was imposed on total SO2 emissions from electric power plants, and the agency installed monitoring equipment at every plant.The utilities were allocated emissions permits, which they were then allowed to trade. In the first year of the scheme’s operation (1995), SO2 emissions dropped well ahead of the schedule required by law, and this reduction was achieved at much a lower cost than had been anticipated (Conniff 2009). For a cost to the economy of approximately US$3 billion annually, the scheme halved the levels of acid rain in the United States, and it has been estimated that is has resulted in benefits, including improvements in human health, less pollution in lakes and forests, and improved air quality, valued at US$122 billion per year (Conniff 2009). One interesting element of the Clean Air Act is that it was achieved by the Republican administration of George H.W. Bush—a president who did not always enjoy good relations with the environmental movement. Emissions trading has been very effective in addressing SO2 emissions in the United States. However, it is not clear that it will work as well for all pollutants. One key problem relates to the complexity of emissions trading, which creates opportunities for special interests (usually industries) to lobby government for weaker trading schemes, for example by giving away too many pollution permits at the outset of a new scheme. In addition, given the complexity of emissions trading it can be difficult for the public to understand whether the scheme’s rules are fair. Existing emissions trading schemes have been criticised for setting too high a cap (over-allocating permits) and thus allowing too much pollution (as happened in the initial stages of the European Union’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme; see below); allowing businesses to sell credits that are not backed up by genuine emissions reductions (which has occurred with Chinese projects funded by the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism established under the Kyoto Protocol); and for creating windfall profits for industries that receive generous pollution entitlements (the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme is again a case in point) (see Ellerman and Joskow 2008). In the case of the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme, which was designed to help its member countries meet their pledges under the Kyoto Protocol to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, some of these early criticisms were probably unfair. The first few years of the scheme (2005–7) were intended as a trial period for developing the “necessary data, information dissemination, compliance and market institutions” that would be required for the second trading period (2008–12), which was expected to produce real reductions in carbon dioxide (Ellerman and Joskow 2008, iii). The European scheme is a multicountry, multisector greenhouse gas trading arrangement that covers over 11,000 energy-intensive installations across the European Union, encompassing about half of Europe’s emissions of carbon dioxide (Ellerman and Joskow 2008). The establishment of voluntary and compulsory emissions trading markets around the world, including in North America, has not yet halted global increases in 63

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greenhouse gases, not least because the greatest increases in emissions are coming from developing countries, especially China. Nevertheless, the general acceptance of emissions trading, which is demonstrated in the various global trading mechanisms negotiated as part of the Kyoto Protocol, reflects a significant change in the approach taken to environmental regulation. Indeed, China is planning to implement its own scheme in 2013. Hong Kong may have a role to play in that.

Natural capital and environmental accounting Classical economics greatly influences policy making. This is because it deals with units that are easily measured, and so the success or failure of policies can be simply assessed. For example, a government presiding over a growing economy can be quite easily distinguished from one where the economy declines. There is no equivalent measure of environmental performance. However, advocates of sustainable development and environmental protection have worked to create measures of human and environmental goals that can be pursued with tools similar to those utilised in economic analysis.Toward this end, five types of ‘capital’, which together make up a society’s total wealth, have been identified (Strange and Bayley 2008, 105–6): (1) financial capital, which includes savings in the form of currency deposits, shares, bonds and the like; (2) produced capital, such as machinery, buildings, roads, telecommunications equipment and infrastructure; (3) natural capital, which consists of ecological resources such as forests, agricultural land, oceans, waterways, biological diversity and ecosystems providing services such as food and waste removal; (4) human capital, which refers to the productivity of a workforce that is derived from training, health and so forth; and (5) social capital, consisting of social networks, relationships of trust and social institutions. Together, these different forms of capital provide a framework through which progress toward sustainable development can be assessed. Arguably, sustainability requires conservation of all five forms of capital (Strange and Bayley 2008, 105–6). To some degree the different forms of capital may be able to substitute for one another. For example, if new packaging technology (produced capital) allows a higher percentage of agricultural commodities to be packaged for human use, it may compensate for the loss of some fertile agricultural land (natural capital). However, if the needs of the future are to be met, total stocks of capital must be conserved and allowed to keep pace with changes in population because more people will require aggregate increases in capital (at least until we can all learn to live much more sustainably) (Strange and Bayley 2008, 105–6). Various accounting systems have been developed to make the idea of natural capital more relevant to policy makers. For example,‘natural resource accounting’ is a system of national economic measurement that includes the depletion (or development) of natural resources and the costs of pollution, along with the traditional economic measures.The idea behind this concept is that environmental costs should be measured and included in national accounts on the same basis as all other indicators of national economic wealth (Mirovitskaya and Ascher 2001, 64

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162). Similarly, ‘environmental accounting’ has been promoted by the World Resources Institute (a Washington-based nongovernmental organisation) and the World Bank (OECD 1994, 6–7). The associated concept of ‘triple-bottomline’ accounting involves the preparation of environmental and human accounts detailing the utilisation of and investment in natural and human resources, alongside typical economic accounts. Many corporations have adopted triplebottom-line accounting as part of their apparent commitment to ‘corporate social responsibility’ (see below). Agenda 21 proposes that all countries should develop statistical measures of sustainable development and include them in national accounts (UN 1993a, Chapter 40). Many countries have prepared national environmental accounts. However, these new kinds of environmentally relevant measurement have not achieved the status or public prominence of traditional accounting of gross domestic product.

Self-regulation and voluntary initiatives Another type of response to environmental problems involves voluntary selfregulation, or what might be called self-help. This response describes traditional community management of resources or contemporary movements promoting ‘corporate social responsibility’ and ‘environmental citizenship’ (see Box 4.1). While advocates of voluntary approaches generally do not foresee a large role for governments in generating these responses, they nevertheless have clear expectations concerning the role of government. For example, advocates of environmental citizenship typically see a role for governments in providing environmental education. Some of the voluntary environmental initiatives discussed below, notably environmental management systems, might be interpreted as attempts to forestall government regulation, so self-regulation is sometimes a response that occurs in the shadow of government. Box 4.1: Environmental citizenship Individual attitudes and behaviours are fundamental drivers of pollution and other environmental problems. With this in mind, one voluntary approach to achieving sustainable development focuses on ‘environmental citizenship’ as a necessary prerequisite for environmental protection (Dobson 2003). Advocates of environmental citizenship typically argue that individuals must adjust their lifestyles so as to occupy only their fair share of the planet’s ‘ecological space’. Environmental citizens act on behalf of the ‘public environmental good’ (Dobson and Bell 2005). In contrast, free-market environmentalists are often sceptical of the capacity of environmental citizenship or environmental ethics-based approaches to achieve environmental protection. While it is valuable to develop environmental ethics, they argue that ethical appeals are unlikely to alter the basic self-interested elements of human nature that drive overconsumption and environmental harm if markets are not utilised to allocate resources efficiently (Anderson and Leal 1998, 209).

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Environmental policy and sustainable development in China Importantly, most advocates of environmental citizenship acknowledge that a necessary environmental ethic of sufficient strength to address environmental challenges is unlikely to emerge spontaneously. As a result, they often emphasise the necessity of environmental education. Much as education is used to promote national citizenship, which motivates people alongside self-interest, education can also help to foster a strong sense of environmental citizenship that can motivate people to live and consume in ways that are environmentally sustainable.

Corporate social responsibility Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a voluntary initiative whereby businesses monitor, self-regulate and improve on their compliance with the law or widely accepted ethical standards (Carroll 1999).The origins of, and motivation for, CSR lie in public relations strategies “to deflect criticism, engage critics and potentially capitalise on emerging business opportunities associated with doing, and being seen to be doing, good” (Newell and Frynas 2007, 670). Efforts by businesses to achieve CSR do seem to have some impact on working conditions and environmental outcomes in the developing world, even as the impact of CSR on corporate performance has been measured much more carefully than the impact of CSR on social and environmental outcomes (Blowfield 2007). One outcome of the trend toward CSR has been the development of a variety of standards and guidelines according to which companies report their social and environmental performance (Blowfield 2007, 684). Nongovernmental organisations, drawing on advice from their constituencies, have formulated many of these standards and guidelines. Examples include the ‘SA8000’ code for improving labour and working practices, crafted by Social Accountability International, and the sustainability reporting guidelines managed by the Global Reporting Initiative. Both are intended to allow companies to measure and compare their social and environmental performance. In some industries nongovernmental regulating bodies now have a significant influence. A prominent example is the Forest Stewardship Council in the timber industry (Abbott and Snidal 2000; Pattberg 2005). These developments in sustainability reporting are still relatively new, and there is still a lack of strong evidence as to how effective they are. It appears likely that in many cases meeting external environmental and social standards requires companies to improve their performance. However, critics point to a number of flaws. For example, if social and environmental reporting remains voluntary and free of stringent external auditing, it is possible for results to be falsified. Indeed, some studies have found very high levels of data falsification in reporting on labour standards in China (Hurst, Murdoch and Gould 2005). Furthermore, in places where corrupt or incompetent governments undermine social and environmental progress, there may be limited value in companies initiating positive social and environmental programmes (Gulbrandsen and Moe, 2007).

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Environmental management systems Environmental management systems (EMS) are voluntary regulatory structures developed within organisations.An EMS can be defined as “a collection of internal efforts at policymaking, planning and implementation that yields benefits for the organisation as well as potential benefits for society at large” (Coglianese and Nash 2001, 1). These systems are often developed to assist corporations in complying with environmental regulations. Because people with an intimate knowledge of their workplace develop these systems, they may be less costly, more innovative and more effective than externally imposed regulations (Coglianese and Nash 2001, 2). In many cases, environmental management standards and guidelines for particular industries have been produced by trade associations (such as the so-called ‘Responsible Care’ programme of the American Chemistry Council), standards organisations (for example, the International Organization for Standardization’s ISO 14001 principles) and governmental authorities (as evidenced by the European Union’s Eco-Management and Audit Scheme) (Coglianese and Nash 2001, 4). Corporations adopt EMS for a variety of reasons: sometimes they wish to ensure compliance with regulation; sometimes industry bodies promise to self-regulate in order to avoid mandatory government regulation that might be more costly; sometimes environmental goals are pursued in order to safeguard a corporation’s reputation; and sometimes corporations may adopt environmental standards simply because corporate decision makers believe that is the right thing to do.

Community-based environmental governance Nobel Prize laureate Elinor Ostrom has investigated many traditional systems of managing common-pool resources (the CPRs discussed above), such as shared pastures and irrigation systems in Nepal, Switzerland and African countries. Her analyses show that successful community management is most often effective among smaller groups that are able to maintain complete control over shared resources (Ostrom 1990, 65). This has important implications for governments that wish to implement sustainable development. For example, Ostrom writes that “All of the Swiss institutions that used to govern commonly owned alpine meadows have one obvious similarity—the appropriators themselves make all major decisions about the use of the common property resource” (Ostrom 1990, 65). Ostrom argues that in many cases government appropriation of CPRs has undermined established systems of community management, resulting in environmental degradation. One conclusion of her work is that allowing local communities to manage CPRs can potentially produce effective environmental protection because self-organisation can provide a surprising range of local services (Ostrom 2009, 89). Ostrom has found examples of community management being effective on a large scale, but in those cases smaller subgroups formed “multiple

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layers of nested enterprises” to negotiate and coordinate management CPRs (Ostrom 1990, 90). Based on her observations of institutions that have sustainably governed CPRs over long periods, Ostrom identified eight prerequisites for effective selfgovernance:

1. Clearly defined boundaries of the group that is managing and appropriating the resource; 2. Proportional equivalence between benefits and costs so that members of the group are rewarded for their contributions; 3. Collective choice arrangements to allow most group members a say in decision making; 4. Monitoring of biophysical conditions by people who are accountable to the group; 5. Use of graduated sanctions to ensure that those who violate the group’s rules are sanctioned; 6. Conflict resolution mechanisms that are perceived to be fair by group members; 7. At least minimal recognition of rights to organise, with external authorities leaving users of CPRs to create their own rules; and 8. Groups that are part of larger social systems can maintain effective governance arrangements only if they are connected to society at large: instead of being subject to hierarchical authority, groups must interact with groups in multiple,‘nested’ ways. (Ostrom 2009, 89–91)

Ostrom’s work undermines arguments suggesting that all environmental resources should be privatised. She shows that communities have been able to manage shared resources in environmentally sensitive ways over long periods of time. However, the conditions that she identifies for effective self-management suggest that these institutions may struggle to survive in a world regulated by strong and intrusive national governments.

Conclusion This chapter has surveyed the use of government regulation, market-based instruments and voluntary initiatives as responses to environmental sustainability problems. Disagreements among experts and officials over which approach can best achieve sustainable development can be partly explained by ideology: beliefs about the appropriate role of government are likely to influence the kind of environmental responses that people support. Different views about the root cause of environmental problems are also significant. People who view individuals as the agents driving environmental pollution and overuse of natural resources may support voluntary and ethics-based initiatives, perhaps focusing on education rather 68

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than government regulation to change behaviour. In contrast, people who blame pollution on social structures and institutions, such as capitalism and the relentless promotion of material consumption through advertising, may support government action or market-based environmental measures. Ultimately, implementation of sustainable development requires support at every level of society, including from citizens, businesses and governments. Indeed, governments are far more likely to prioritise sustainable development if sustainability is what the community wants. Individuals are more likely to accept the idea of environmental citizenship, and to act accordingly, if the community in which they live values sustainable development. Consequently, different means for implementing sustainable development are linked. While significant progress toward sustainability has been made through the use of many of the techniques described in this chapter, achieving sustainable development in Hong Kong and in China more widely, and indeed globally, will require new forms of policy coordination and ecological awareness. In the wide scope of history, sustainable development is a relatively new idea. The mechanisms by it will be successfully and widely implemented are still being devised. This chapter has once again highlighted the global context in which Hong Kong, and arguably all of China, finds itself. Many of the instruments for developing environmental policies and implementing sustainable development, ranging from environmental impact assessment and emissions trading to corporate social responsibility, are derived from practices and experiments from abroad. In some instances these approaches are being adopted in China and modified to fit local circumstances. For example, Chinese scholars and the some parts of the Chinese government have advocated adoption of a national ‘green GDP’ that would finally account for the environmental consequences of China’s rapid economic growth in recent decades.While a ‘green’ measure of GDP has not been adopted—due to its complexity and strong opposition from vested interests that prefer traditional economic measures—the fact that such an idea has been discussed seriously at official levels reveals that the environmental sustainability of the economy is being taken more seriously. Hong Kong itself has not gone this far, but it has adopted many of the now-standard practices for implementing sustainable development in the West. For example, environmental impact assessment, flawed as it may be, is now routinely implemented for development projects, and corporate social responsibility is discussed widely among international businesses operating in Hong Kong—if less so by local businesses. In short, the global context has provided both techniques for implementing sustainable development locally and no small amount of peer pressure that is undoubtedly affecting how the government and other local actors respond to environmental concerns.

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Appendix:Thinking about implementing sustainable development Chapter objectives 1. To identify some of the differences between the goods and resources that are exhaustible versus those that are non-exhaustible, and those that are excludable versus those that are non-excludable. 2. To identify the purposes of environmental impact assessment and other forms of analysis that consider noneconomic values. 3. To examine some of the arguments for and against the use of government regulation and market-based mechanisms for implementing sustainable development. 4. To describe some of the factors that make voluntary or community-organised responses to environmental challenges more or less likely to succeed.

Key points 1. The ‘precautionary principle’ states that lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental harm when there are potential threats of serious or irreversible damage. 2. An ‘externality’ is that portion of the cost of an activity which is borne by other parties. The ‘polluter-pays principle’ describes the rule that polluters should be required to pay for the costs of damage caused by their pollution. 3. The ‘human development index’ seeks to contribute to the implementation of sustainable development by providing a measure of human development that reflects health, education and material wellbeing. 4. Environmental impact assessments are intended to identify the environmental impacts of a proposed development, identify and evaluate practicable alternatives from an environmental perspective, and assess possible ways to modify a project in order to minimise the negative environmental impacts.

Key terms • • • •

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Externality Environmental citizenship Common good versus public good Environmental impact assessment

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Discussion questions 1. How do environmental externalities lead to market failures and avoidable pollution? 2. When are communities most likely to self-regulate successfully to protect shared environmental resources? 3. What is the difference between a common good and a public good? 4. Would privatisation of resources lead to improved environmental and social outcomes?

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Part Two Contexts for sustainable development in China’s world city

Five

Geography and population Introduction Physical and human geography influence prospects for sustainable development almost everywhere. For example, in part due to varying geographic endowments and populations, there are dramatic differences between the levels of environmental quality in the developed North compared to the developing South. Rich countries are typically able to preserve a better local environment even as their consumption contributes to adverse environmental impacts in the developing world. Regionally, sustainability issues faced by communities in arid regions are different from those in mostly wet regions, with the former facing water shortages while the latter experience many more water-borne infectious diseases. Geographical location and climate, which are closely interlinked, also influence development. In places with favourable climatic conditions, settlements and populations typically keep expanding until they place stress on the local environment. Measures for increasing sustainability are additionally influenced by the opportunities afforded by local physical and urban environments. For example, the feasibility of using renewable wind power will likely differ between a coastal city and one located in an inland valley. This chapter begins a closer examination of Hong Kong as a case study of contemporary challenges to sustainable development, especially in China but also in other places, particularly in other global cities. Hong Kong’s physical and urban settings are described in order to provide a local context for subsequent chapters’ examinations of specific sustainability issues in the territory.

Location and climate Hong Kong is located on the South China Sea in the Pearl River (Zhujiang) delta region of China’s south (see Figure 5.1).The northern administrative border of the territory is adjacent to the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone of China’s Guangdong Province. The territory is in the subtropical zone, with its climate affected by annual monsoons, and it experiences four distinct seasons each year. In spring the weather is normally humid with fog, drizzle and many low-visibility days.The local summer, generally from May to August, is hot and humid, with an average temperature of about 32oC but sometimes reaching 36oC. Summer is also Hong Kong’s rainy season, with frequent showers and thunderstorms. Tropical cyclones are common from July to September. Autumn and especially winter are usually drier and sunnier. Northeast monsoon winds and cold fronts blow over 75

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

Hong Kong in winter, which normally lasts from November to February.Winter temperatures occasionally drop below 10oC, although with climate change and the ‘urban heat island effect’ (see Chapter Eleven) such cold temperatures are likely to be less common (Hong Kong Observatory 2009a; Lee, Wong and Lee 2010). Figure 5.1: Hong Kong’s location

HONG KONG

Source: Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hong_Kong_Location.svg

Extreme or unseasonal meteorological events occur from time to time, and they seem to be increasing in recent years, possibly due to global warming. Although tropical cyclones are more common during the summer, there have been several occasions when typhoon warnings have been issued in November and December, months that are outside the normal typhoon season. It is not possible to say with certainty that recent extreme meteorological events are directly related to climate change, but trends show that Hong Kong’s summers are getting hotter, the winters are less cool than in the past and seasonal weather characteristics appear to be diverging from those established over many decades (Hong Kong Observatory 2009a; Lee, Wong and Lee 2010).

Hong Kong’s natural landscape Hong Kong’s terrain has diverse characteristics, with both natural and urban landscapes mixed over a small territory of 1,104 km2, plus about 1,800 km2 of territorial sea. Over 80% of Hong Kong’s terrain is mountainous, with the remainder being mostly lowlands (floodplains, valley flats and coastal plains), with a few rivers, many small streams and scattered islands (Figure 5.2). Situated between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, world-famousVictoria Harbour (which probably typifies many outsiders’ conception of what Hong Kong might be like) adds further diversity to the landscape. 76

Geography and population Figure 5.2: Map of Hong Kong

Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hong_Kong_Base_Map.svg

Terrain Hong Kong’s highest peak, Tai Mo Shan, has an elevation of 957 m. There are numerous mountains and hills with lower elevations, notably Lantau Peak (Fung Wong Shan), Sunset Peak (Tai Tung Shan),Victoria Peak, Lion Rock Ridge and Kowloon Peak (Feng Ngo Shan).The territory’s mountainous areas are generally unoccupied due to their very steep terrain, but it is not uncommon to find lowdensity development on hills close to the urban areas, notably around Victoria Peak, which is near to the central business district, where some of the wealthiest people in the world have homes. Despite the increasing development of hillsides, most settlements are packed onto Hong Kong’s limited lowlands and on land ‘reclaimed’ from the sea. Due to the abundance of fertile soil for agriculture, early settlements of indigenous villagers were widely scattered over the alluvial plains (sedimentary land adjacent to rivers) in the northern parts of the traditionally rural New Territories (see Chapter Six). A walled Hakka village in Kam Tin in the Yuen Long Plain was one of the earliest settlements. Today, despite improved drainage and flood control, these areas are exposed to potential flooding during heavy rainstorms. Other lowlands in Hong Kong, including village flats, marshes, mangrove swamps and other wetland areas, are much smaller in size and scattered across the territory (So 1986). Mai Po Marsh and Inner Deep Bay in the northwest New Territories are important wetlands, not just for Hong Kong but also for the 77

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

world because they serve as a transit stop for migrating birds. Consequently, they have been recognised as ‘wetlands of international importance’ under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (see Chapter Ten). Many of these relatively natural sites are under threat due to pollution sources and housing developments on or near their boundaries. Mangrove swamps, which form important transitional lowlands along the coast, are another major type of terrain host to significant biodiversity (AFCD 2010a). These areas are declining due to development.

Forests Hong Kong’s natural forests were largely gone by the mid-1940s, and cutting of what remained after World War II continued as hundreds of thousands of Chinese refugees sought firewood, timber and land for cultivation. After the war the British government undertook major afforestation programmes, which served multiple purposes, including the provision of a sustained yield of wood, the protection of river catchment areas and eroded slopes near reservoirs, and to provide public amenities (Daley 1975). A tree plantation surrounding the Tai Lam Chung Reservoir in the western New Territories was a typical example.The area was severely eroded, but following afforestation what is now the Tai Lam Country Park is mostly covered by secondary forests that enhance the quality of the reservoir’s water (Jim 2008, 92). Most vegetative cover in Hong Kong consists of replanted, non-native secondary forests. ‘Feng shui’ woods, located near Punti and Hakka rural villages for traditional feng shui (literally meaning ‘wind and water’) harmony, date from before the 1940s (Zhuang and Corlett 1997, 858). The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department has identified 116 feng shui woods, mostly in northeastern parts of Hong Kong (Yip et al 2004). According to Chinese tradition, these feng shui woods should be preserved to maintain a prosperous future for nearby rural villages.The woodlands, which have significant ecological value, also provide shelter from strong winds in winter and from landslides during the rainy season.Thus traditional approaches to managing the local environment continue to have practical benefits. To preserve the territory’s watersheds and associated vegetation, in 1976 the Hong Kong government enacted the Country Park Ordinance, and within a few years 21 country parks, covering about 40% of Hong Kong’s land area, had been designated (Catt 1986, 141). The current percentage of the territory’s land area reserved as country parks remains at roughly this level. Most country parks were established during the 1970s; newer parks include an extension to Sai Kung West Country Park (1996), Lung Fu Shan Country Park (1998) and Lantau North Country Park Extension (2008). Country park conservation is an important instrument for balancing urban expansion and for maintaining access to green space for city dwellers, although these were not the primary purposes of setting up the country parks system (unlike in much of the West). Apart from country parks, some parts of Hong Kong with special fauna, flora and ecological or geographical features have been designated as ‘sites of special scientific interest’, 78

Geography and population

including bays, islands, peninsulas, woodlands, rivers, hills and bird nesting areas (WWF 1994). (See Chapter Thirteen for further discussion of country parks.)

Coastline Hong Kong has over 700 km of coastline (Central Intelligence Agency 2010). Bernie Owen and Raynor Shaw (2007, 42) list six types of coastline with different geological characteristics: (1) mudflats near Deep Bay and Mai Po; (2) coastlines with a mix of rocky features and small beaches, mainly along the eastern shores of Sai Kung and North District, the southeast shores of Lantau Island and the southern shores of Hong Kong Island; (3) larger sandy beaches scattered along Lantau Island,Tuen Mun, Sai Kung and Lamma Island; (4) rock platforms located at Double Haven near Mirs Bay; (5) steep rocky slopes and cliffs along the south shores of Hong Kong Island, Clear Water Bay and Tai Long Wan in Sai Kung; and (6) the artificial coastlines of Victoria Harbour,Tsing Yi,Tuen Mun,Tolo Harbour and the northeastern shores of Lantau Island. Additional coastal features include sea caves, sea arches, sea stacks and rugged cliffs. These diverse shorelines have environmental, amenity and economic value. For example, mud flats along Deep Bay provide habitats for migrating birds, and some other coastal areas provide habitats for mangroves and associated fauna. Waterfront and harbour views in urbanised areas boost nearby property values. Shorelines along the urbanised areas have been modified extensively. One of these artificial modifications is reclamation, which involves filling in the sea to create dry land areas. Most reclamation projects have been designed to create extra land for housing, transportation and other uses driven by urban development (reclamation is discussed further in Chapter Ten). The earliest reclamation, concentrated along the north shore of Hong Kong Island from Kennedy Town to Wan Chai, was carried out in the 1890s (Ho 2004a, 69–86). Later reclamation extended to Tsuen Wan,Tuen Mun, Sha Tin,Tseung Kwan O and West Kowloon. The construction of the new Hong Kong International Airport and its related road infrastructure along the northeastern coast of Lantau Island is a recent example of a vast reclamation project. While these reclamation works have provided land for new towns and infrastructure development, they have also dramatically changed Hong Kong’s natural shorelines and coastal environments. As a result, environmental and other consequences of reclamation—especially aroundVictoria Harbour—have received greater consideration in recent years. Hong Kong’s coastal areas include 262 islands, the largest being Lantau Island, which has an area of 146 km2, followed by Hong Kong Island (80 km2) and Lamma Island (14 km2) (Owen and Shaw 2007, 149, 189, 191, 207). Hong Kong Island has a long history of urban development. Lantau Island has experienced rapid urbanisation in recent decades, especially along the northeast coast where Hong Kong’s international airport is located. Some of the smaller islands, such as Tsing Yi, Ma Wan, Lamma, Cheung Chau and Peng Chau, are heavily urbanised, while the remaining smaller islands are either sparsely settled or uninhabited. 79

Environmental policy and sustainable development in China

After the enactment of the Marine Parks Ordinance in 1995, various marine parks and a national geopark were set up to enhance conservation of coastal areas. Hong Kong has four marine parks and one marine reserve, totalling an area of 2,430 hectares (Information Services Department 2010a). Marine parks include Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park, Yan Chau Tong Marine Park and Tung Ping Chau Marine Park in the east, and Sha Chau and Lung Kwu Chau Marine Parks in the west.The marine reserve is located at Cape D’Aguilar off the southern tip of Hong Kong Island. In marine parks, certain activities are controlled or prohibited, but recreational activities are encouraged.The marine reserve is largely protected for conservation and scientific study, with most activities prohibited. The Hong Kong National Geopark was established in 2009, joining 182 other geoparks in China. The Hong Kong geopark covers natural coastal areas, islands and seas along the east coast of Sai Kung and the northeast New Territories. It includes special geological features, such as hexagonal volcanic rock columns, columnar joints and precipitous cliffs (AFCD 2010b).

Hong Kong’s urban landscape The urban layout of Hong Kong has changed from a linear city structure along the shores of Victoria Harbour to a decentralised arrangement with concentrated new developments outside the metropolitan area (Figure 5.3). At the start of the colonial period under Great Britain (see Chapter Six), urban settlements were highly concentrated on the northern part of Hong Kong Island.To accommodate increasing population, urban areas spread to southern parts of Hong Kong Island, reclaimed land around Hong Kong Island, and later to the south of the Kowloon Peninsula (Ho 2004a, 69). Urban settlements were further decentralised to the urban fringe and semirural areas from the 1960s, reducing the land available for nonurban activities (see Table 5.1). Table 5.1: Land utilisation in Hong Kong, 1975 and 2008 Land use

Area (km2)

Percentage of land area

1975

2008

1975

Agricultural land

108

52

10

2008 5

Fish ponds

15

16

1

1

Swamps and mangroves

12

5

1