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Following is a transcript of the Secretary for the Environment, Transport and Works, Dr Sarah Liao's meet-the-media session after the seventh meeting of Hong Kong/Guangdong Joint Working Group on Sustainable Development and Environmental Protection today (December 18):
Reporter : Did local electricity plants say they are joining the emission trading scheme?
Dr Liao : This is a very good theme that has proven to be very effective in developed countries to reduce pollution in an economical way beneficially. So I believed they are interested in joining this scheme.
Reporter : ....inaudible?
Dr Liao : I am very pleased that Mr Li Qing here today from the Environmental Protection Bureau of Guangdong Province, and we have conducted our seventh joint working group on Sustainable Development and Environmental Protection. We have reviewed what we have done in the past year and we also set targets for the coming year.
With respect to the emission trading pilot scheme, we have come to an agreement on the actual implementation plan and we have to go through the required procedures in Guangdong before it would be announced formally, and to encourage trading partners to come together and to set up their own contractual agreements.
As for the two bureaux from Guangdong and Hong Kong, we will set up the Emission Trading Management Team as soon as possible to promote as well as to manage because there is an enforcement element. In the past year, we have set up the PRD Regional Air Quality Monitoring Network since November, 2005. Since then, everyday we are able to assess the air pollution index for the region at the sixteen monitoring stations. In October this year, we have actually conducted a half-year review which was released and has statistically analysed some of the results. The work on this side will continue.
Next year we will have mid-year review of the cooperation on air management between the two places and the main purpose of this review is to assess all the reduction measures that we are now employing. We want to see how the emission inventory is heading, and where it is heading, we also want to have appropriate strategies to improve and strengthen the remediation measures on air pollution. We aim to reach the target of 2010 in this review.
Apart from that, we have many other cooperation angles such as plant diseases and investigation in plants, the protection of endangered species, the greening of the cities. The report on plant disease will be published soon, now that we have got all the data. And finally on artificial reefs, the protection of marine and mariculture, and also Chinese white dolphin and coral reefs, we have actually conducted satellite tracing of the sea tortoises. All these are important work that this committee is also doing. And also we are actively preventing illegal fishery and enhancing the red tide communication system.
With the industries, we have promoted and supported the "one-factory-one-year-one-environment" project. Both Guangdong and Hong Kong have participated in the judging of this project. This is a brief report of what we have done this year.
Reporter: How many power plants in Guangdong have expressed interest in joining the scheme?
Dr Liao: They haven't really committed before they complete the document.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Monday, December 18, 2006
Issued at HKT 19:27
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