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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for the Environment, Mr Wong Kam-sing, after officiating at the launch ceremony of the Restored Landfill Revitalisation Funding Scheme today (November 27):
Reporter: Are there any specific types of amenities that you hope these sites will be converted to? And do you foresee any difficulties in handling the application process and execution?
Secretary for the Environment: I can give some response and Bernard (Chairman of the Steering Committee on Restored Landfill Revitalisation Funding Scheme, Mr Bernard Chan) can supplement. We are open-minded but the applications would be mostly related to recreational use, sports activities and some environment-related operations. These are our initial intention, but we would like to encourage creativity, so appropriate organisations with appropriate ideas that can fit the proposal's criteria can be considered.
Reporter: Mr Wong, I know that you will attend the climate change summit in Paris on behalf of the Hong Kong delegates. Some green groups have criticised that Hong Kong has not followed adequately to combat climate change ... and has been hiding behind ... What's your view on this?
Secretary for the Environment: I think the comment may not be fair. For instance, currently Hong Kong does have an aggressive target. By using 2005 as the base year, (we will) reduce our carbon intensity by 50 to 60 per cent by 2020. I have to reiterate that it is an aggressive target that has to be met within our time frame. Secondly, climate change is not only about mitigation, but also about adaptation that builds Hong Kong as a resilient city. That is why we have summarised the Government's efforts in our Hong Kong Climate Change Report 2015 to inform people what we have been doing. In the coming summit, we will also present our report to other stakeholders in the conference to showcase that we have been working on these in a reasonable way covering both mitigation and adaptation. Certainly after the conference, we would have the process to set a longer-term target as many other places. So, we do have an aggressive and proactive attitude to address this issue and would like to encourage everyone in Hong Kong to go for low-carbon living so that we can all together combat climate change.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Friday, November 27, 2015
Issued at HKT 20:10
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