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The Council for Sustainable Development (SDC) will hold an Air Summit on December 17 to involve stakeholders from various sectors of the community in wrapping up the public engagement process on air quality and consolidating views. From these the SDC will draw conclusions and make recommendations to the Government in early 2008.
Stakeholders from the academic, business, professional, social, NGO and environmental sectors, the district communities as well as interested members of the public will be invited to attend the Air Summit which will be officiated by the Chief Executive, Mr Donald Tsang.
"We feel very excited about the encouraging feedback from stakeholders on the engagement process on air quality, during which around 80,000 responses have been received," SDC Chairman, Dr Edgar Cheng, said after today's (November 22) SDC meeting.
"SDC needs their support again in reviewing and consolidating the views gathered to ensure that our report and the recommendations to be submitted to the Government reflect stakeholders' aspirations," he said.
SDC launched the engagement process on air quality on June 2, inviting the community to give their views on three issues in particular:
(a) appropriate action on high air pollution days;
(b) energy saving or demand side management; and
(c) congestion charging mechanisms such as electronic road pricing.
To ensure the fairness and transparency of the process, the public views gathered during the engagement process are now being studied and analysed by the Social Sciences Research Centre, University of Hong Kong, which has been commissioned to be the independent reporting agency for this engagement process.
At today's meeting, SDC also considered the programmes and initiatives undertaken by the SDC's Education and Publicity Sub-committee. There were 32 submissions to the fifth round of Sustainable Development Fund applications. The sub-committee will review the applications shortly, with a view to announcing the results early next year.
The SDC will visit 46 schools in the 2007-08 school year through the School Outreach Programme, and will recognise schools' efforts in promoting sustainable development in their own sector as well as the general community through the newly launched Sustainable Development School Award Scheme. In 2008, SDC will also hold a graffiti competition and a conference to promote sustainable development in various sectors of society.
The agenda and discussion papers for today's meeting will be posted on the website www.susdev.gov.hk. A digest of the discussions during the meeting will be posted shortly afterwards.
Ends/Thursday, November 22, 2007
Issued at HKT 18:15
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