Living Smart

II ENVIRONMENT & SUSTAINABILITY 052 053 health experts, academics, professionals, green groups, community leaders, and the business sector to deliberate on key aspects of the review. Many rounds of meetings were held, and experts were contracted to work on specific assessments. Public engagement sessions were also held in 2017. The government will have to decide in the foreseeable future whether and to what extent the AQOs could be tightened. Recommendations can be expected in due course. Having been the undersecretary for the environment at the time when the review process was put in place, and having chaired the working group up until June 30, 2017, there are several obvious issues the government will have to address. Hong Kong’ s ambition must be to develop the most robust review process over time – this was just the first time. The government will have to tighten the AQOs. Where air pollutant level has decreased, such as with sulfur dioxide and PM2.5, the public expects the relevant objectives to be tightened. This will have the effect of requiring infrastructure projects in Hong Kong to meet more stringent requirements, such as when a new highway is built. And this is quite right. The review process itself should be examined. Having gone through it once, the next time around, the process should be backed by more research so that working group members could know the magnitude of health improvements from various control measures. T h i s c an be done t h r ough ea r l y commissioning of relevant research. Lastly, Hong Kong should estimate the air quality improvements brought about by the mainland’ s control measures in Guangdong province, since their efforts have a tremendous beneficial impact on Hong Kong, and estimating their efforts makes every sense. Published on December 05, 2018