Dr. Alexis Lau Kai-hon, a veteran scientist, suggested the five-yearly review of Hong to air quality issue should be "public health-driven" and not just what is actually "feasible." He said that rather than making broad policies that can "pass the exams," the city should set health-based targets to motivate policymakers.
Dr. Lau, who is also a professor at the University of Science and Technology's Division of Environment and Sustainability, also noted the government should be prepared for the reviews since they lacked crucial data that's essential to the review phase to make more scientific policies. The latest objective was in 2014, wherein the concentration limits for seven key pollutants has been set and they were monitored how many time they exceeded.
They mandated a five-yearly review for the first time, as per the South China Morning Post, but the objective has not been changed since coming into effect in 1987.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said the review was now in the "final stage" and the policy proposals, as well as all the results, will be presented to the Advisory Council on the Environment before the year ends. And then, this will be followed by legislature discussion and a separate round of public consultation.
In Lam's policy address, the new proposals include tightening emission standards for motorcycles, money for bus operators to upgrade catalytic converters, and phasing out 40,000 old polluting commercial diesel vehicles by 2023. Furthermore, the government vowed to add volatile organic compounds as a regular parameter in a regional air quality monitoring network, with Macau and Guangdong.
According to a source from the government, sub-working groups on air science, power generation, road, and marine deliberated more than 70 recommendations and the sorted them to "20 something" - not including the proposal of Lam. The source said they will look for all feasible means to identify which areas of the Air Quality Objectives can be tightened.
However, Dr. Lau isn't favored with this approach, saying, "The problem is, once you've done everything that you planned to do, and still the target is not met, there is no motivation to be more creative or to come up with better solutions ... until the next review."
He suggested institutionalizing a more "health-driven" approach, first by setting a goal to one of the World Health Organisation's interim and then devise policies to achieve it. For instance, authorities in the mainland previously pledged to meet the second interim target of WHO for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) by the year 2020, then they decided to more vehicle electrification to meet the goal.
But In Hong Kong, Dr. Lau said policymakers look at the feasibility of widespread electric vehicles - but ruled it out later on. He added that as long as they don't meet the set target, policymakers should think new ideas.
