Sustainability

While Hong Kong is accelerating its pace towards sustainability, there are still many environmental and climate challenges to be addressed. We must undertake the journey towards sustainable development for the sake of the present and future generations.

Sow the seeds of sustainability for a viable future

In an age where sustainability is a pressing global concern, Hong Kong has been stepping up efforts to recalibrate its trajectory towards a more sustainable future, and notable progress has been made. The local water quality has improved, while the city’s carbon emissions peaked in 2014, showing a downward trend since then. The government is now striving to achieve carbon neutrality before 2050. New green initiatives have been launched of late, and more citizens are embracing greener lifestyles.

Still, there is a long way to go for the highly urbanised metropolis. Among the many environmental challenges is mounting waste. Our landfills are overstretched, being dumped with about four million tonnes of municipal solid waste each year. In addition, our ecological footprint is the third-worst in Asia Pacific.

On the climate front, signs of global warming are palpable in Hong Kong. According to the Hong Kong Observatory, the city’s annual mean temperature has been going up by 0.14 degree Celsius per decade over the past 140 years, and the rate of the warming has become much faster in the past 30 years, at 0.30 degrees per decade. Extreme rainfalls are now more frequent, and the mean sea level of Victoria Harbour has been rising at a rate of 31 millimetres every 10 years.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club works closely with the not-for-profit sector and supports a host of community projects with different objectives. They include promoting decarbonisation, improving urban waste management, encouraging reuse and recycling, as well as conserving biodiversity. We hope these initiatives will help to shape Hong Kong into a climate-resilient, sustainable society.