The planned Northern Metropolis mega-project, which will cover an area of 300 square kilometres – one third of Hong Kong’s total land area – is among the existential threats to rare species of otter, turtle, butterfly, fish, frog and snake that live in the territory’s rural northern region bordering the mainland.
WWF’s analysis reveals that 232 out of the 886 assessed species now face a moderate or high risk of local extinction, with species dependent on lowland habitats, such as wetland birds and freshwater fishes, particularly at risk.
While preserving dwindling wild animal populations may not be a top priority among many city-dwelling Hongkongers, Dr Bosco Chan, WWF Hong Kong’s conservation director, tells the EB Podcast that saving key species is critical to sustaining the function of delicate ecosystems such as freshwater wetlands, grasslands, and shrubby hillsides.
“Each species is like a bolt in an airplane. If we keep taking out the bolts, we don’t know when we will see the airplane fall out of the sky. It’s the same way of thinking with biodiversity. Many of these species provide ecosystem services,” he said.
If you ask Hong Kong or Singapore people if they support wildlife conservation, I’m sure most will say ‘yes’… unless they have to sacrifice something.
Dr Bosco Chan, head of conservation, WWF Hong Kong
The Northern Metropolis, which is being developed to address Hong Kong’s acute housing shortage and build stronger links with the mainland, will retain some areas of wetlands, marshes, reedbeds and mangroves as conservation areas, according to the government’s development plan. On completion, the development will comprise 905,000 to 926,000 units to house a population of 2.5 million.
WWF’s report found that nearly half of Hong Kong’s biodiversity hotspots are located in areas outside of nature reserves – with two-thirds of that area earmarked for development.
In a separate conservation on the EB Podcast, Dr Stephan Gale, head of flora conservation at Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden (KFBG), which works to preserve Hong Kong’s native flora, said that Hong Kong’s wild habitats should not be overlooked as critical climate defences.
Gale noted that the Northern Metropolis is planned for an area that is only a few metres above sea level. “The crazy thing is, I’ve heard government planners say they’re going to engineer flood mitigation systems. And you think, well, the fish ponds, wetlands, and natural slopes – that is our natural flood mitigation system.”
The ecologist warned that hyper-development through projects such as the controversial Kau Yi Chau artificial islands could come with significant risks for people as well as nature, as climate impacts such as heatwaves, flooding and typhoons intensify.
Hong Kong’s large-scale development plans are a “missed opportunity” to build the territory’s climate defences and restore nature, he said.
Dr Stephan Gale (left), head of flora conservation, Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, and Dr Bosco Chan, head of conservation, WWF Hong Kong
Tune as we discuss:
Conservation with Dr Bosco Chan
- The state of Hong Kong biodiversity: reasons for concern
- The Northern Metropolis development – what will it mean for Hong Kong’s wildlife?
- How can developers reduce the impact on wildlife?
- Do cityfolk living in Hong kong or Singapore care about species loss?
- Models to follow in biophilic city design
Conservation with Dr Stephan Gale
- The climate implications of Hong Kong’s mega-projects
- Why nature restoration matters
- Nature-sensitive building design
- The importance native plant species matter to Hong Kong and Singapore
- “Listen to ecologists”
The edited transcript:
What are the key findings from WWF Hong Kong’s state of biodiversity report?
Chan: It all started back in early 2023 when I looked around and couldn’t find any updated assessment of Hong Kong’s species.
Our government has announced aggressive development plans called the Northern Metropolis and Lantau Tomorrow Vision [to develop artificial islands] and those areas will cover over one third of Hong Kong’s land area.
All of Hong Kong’s at-risk species of mammal assessed by WWF, such as the Chinese pangolin and Eurasian otter, are threatened by habitat loss [click to enlarge]. Image: WWF Hong Kong
As an ecologist, I’m very aware that not all species live on the hills [which are largely protected in Hong Kong]. There are species that prefer lowlands, farmlands, or open country landscapes.
The study took us one and a half years to complete.
Some of the findings are alarming. We found that 25 per cent of Hong Kong’s local wildlife is at risk of local extinction. The most threatened groups are the water birds and freshwater fish, as Hong Kong has channelised most of our lowland streams and rivers so that the habitat has been completely destroyed.
But we also found that while most of the wildlife living in hillside forests are doing better, some groups like freshwater turtles are threatened because of specific threats like poaching. All freshwater turtles of Hong Kong are at risk of local extinction.
The report maps out key biodiversity hotspots that are at risk. What I found alarming is that nearly half of these biodiversity hotspots overlap with areas where there is planned development. Which species are at risk from the major infrastructure projects in the pipeline?
Chan: Two thirds of these areas are in areas zoned for the Northern Metropolis, which is a mega project. These habitats include mangroves, mud flats, reed beds and grasslands.
We identified 27 hotspots in Hong Kong outside the gazetted protected area systems. Quite a number of them are within committed development zones, such as the Northern Metropolis, and the northern part of Hong Kong, known as the New Territories. It has remained relatively untouched for a very long time, and has retained rural characteristics until now.
The Northern Metropolis is Hong Kong’s largest ever development project, spanning 300 square kilometres along the territory’s northern region. Upon completion, it will have over 900,000 of residential units inhabited by 2.5 million people. Image: LWK + Partners
There are many kinds of freshwater marsh, farmlands, and abandoned fields that have turned into good quality grassland or shrubby areas. Our study found that while most of our forest-dependent species are doing better than in previous decades, species in open country species are in a steep decline.
The Northern Metropolis project has claimed to deploy methods that will protect species from development. How effective do you think these conservation measures will be?
Chan: [The planned conservation area] is mainly concentrated in the Deep Bay wetland area surrounding Mai Po [a nature reserve which WWF Hong Kong manages], which is a good thing. We welcome the government’s plan to protect more of the privately-owned commercial fish ponds in the area. If they are planned well and managed well, they can actually enhance the conservation value of the whole area.
But the Northern Metropolis is a huge area of 300 square kilometers. Hong Kong has never seen a bigger development project. And within this 300 square kilometers, there are actually freshwater marshes, which is in real trouble in Hong Kong, farmlands and lots of privately-owned landlots that actually support quite rare species such as critically endangered yellow breasted bunting [a once-abundant bird species in Hong Kong that has declined locally since the 2000s], for example.
All of this area will be affected because our current measures to protect biodiversity within this [Northern Metropolis] development plan are very focused on the coastal wetlands, but largely ignores freshwater wetlands, farmlands, grasslands, and shrubby hillsides, which all support at rich species.
Mai Po wetland reserve, which was established by WWF, is recognised as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention. Image: WWF Hong Kong
What more could the government or project developers do as they develop the Northern Metropolis to make sure that these species don’t go extinct?
Chan: Many Hong Kong citizens think that as 40 percent of our land is regenerating in quite good quality forests now within the country park system, our wildlife and our biodiversity is doing well. We have wild pigs going into urban areas and into some of the busiest shopping areas.
But we want to make sure the government and the wider Hong Kong society is aware that we also have many species that are not living in this forest landscape and those will be lost if we don’t plan our new towns or commercial zones better.
We’re hoping the hotspot maps will provide information for city planners to realise they will have to avoid developing these hotspots if we are to protect the whole set of biodiversity in Hong Kong.
Why should Hongkongers care if these wildlife species go extinct?
Chan: This is a very frequently asked question. Ecologists use the example of an airplane. Each species is like a bolt in an airplane. If we keep taking out all these bolts, we don’t know when the airplane will fall out of the sky. It’s the same, way of thinking with biodiversity.
Many of these species provide ecosystem services, which are very important for our society. Unless there’s a healthy web of biodiversity living in a healthy ecosystem, we are going to suffer.
Singapore is facing a similar issues with the loss of secondary forests. Not everyone cares if we lose them. But if we lose pythons, we’d have more rats. If we lose bats, we’d have many more mosquitoes. Of the species mentioned in your report, what sort of ecosystem functions do they serve?
Chan: Some of the butterflies are important pollinators and the Eurasian otters are apex predators. If we lost them, there could be cascading effects on the whole freshwater ecosystem.
Do enough Hong Kongers care about the protection of these species?
Chan: It’s hard to judge. If you ask Hong Kong or Singapore people: Do you support wildlife conservation? I’m sure most of them will say “yes” – unless, they have to sacrifice something.
I think we as conservationists still have to do more in using layman language to tell the wider public why preserving biodiversity is important.
People want to have the choice to enjoy nature, but if nature is engulfing on them – for instance, with potentially dangerous animals or “nuisance” wildlife – we have to learn to give them space and respect each other, as we have been intruding into their home for too long.
Singaporeans must be quite proud about the return of smooth-coated otter families to waterways. But if they start entering your koi pond and take all your expensive koi, that’s another matter.
What did you make of WWF Hong Kong’s biodiversity report and its implications?
Gale: I don’t know exactly how they’ve come up with that figure of 25 per cent, but I trust it. I am well aware that a lot of our species and habitats are threatened here.
What we’re dealing with here in Hong Kong, as in Singapore, is a hugely modified environment. These are not natural systems that are being impacted, but nevertheless they’re really important – and they’re all we’ve got.
It’s really sad to see business-as-usual, development-led, growth-at-any-costs maxim winning out again and being told that Hong Kong has to continue developing [with projects such as Northern Metropolis and the Kau Yi Chau artificial islands].
I get that humans hold fast to that notion, but we should be doing a lot more to protect what little remains. And I think it could be done a lot better if we brought biodiversity into the development mix.
What does this mean for people? I take quite a pessimistic view. In Singapore, there have been a slew of meetings and conferences in recent months on the topic of “nature-based solutions”.
It’s not a phrase I like. It sounds fanciful to me, and it’s another euphemism for doing things which look good for companies, but which may not actually benefit nature at all.
At these conferences, there will be a great mix of people from different stakeholder groups, which is fantastic to see. We’re no longer as siloed as we were in the past, so the ecologists and the development people, the architects, the urban planners – they’re all now in the same room, which is fantastic.
But the gap is still massive. At a recent meeting, I was hearing about how flood risk is going to increase. Storm surge is unavoidable. Landslide risk is unavoidable. We’ve already crossed the 1.5 degrees Celsius heating threshold, and we’re almost certainly facing two degrees.
And the Northern Metropolis is planned for an area which is only a couple of metres above sea level!
The crazy thing is, I’ve heard government planners say that we are going to engineer flood mitigation systems. Well, the fish ponds, the wetlands, the natural slopes – that is our natural flood mitigation system! Why are you damaging that and then saying you’re going to build something else at the cost of billions of dollars?
I get that the government wants to develop to grow the Hong Kong population even more, but we’ve got to restore nature.
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The Northern Metropolis is planned for an area which is only a couple of metres above sea level!
Dr Stephan Gale, head of flora conservation, Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden
That’s why I always come back to the topic of ecosystem function and ecological processes, because they’re the key metric for saying how well nature is functioning. No property developer or landscape architect can bandy around the phrase “nature-based solutions” and pretend that they’re achieving that unless they focus on these metrics [of ecosystem functions].
We work closely with property developers and landscape architects and we are trying to coax them in the direction of using native species and ensuring that these species are arranged in communities that reflect how they would be in nature – and importantly, that they deliver some ecosystem function.
What does this mean for people? Well, I think it’s the difference between having a more measured risk plan that addresses these risks of flooding, of landslides and greater heat loads (and not).
For me, (not accounting for ecosystem services) is a missed opportunity. We could be restoring species of wetland plants, which are good for animals and other organisms. Then instead of just talking about the species loss, it could be a nature positive.
What did you mean by “building sensibly”? How can developers avoid doing too much damage?
I would put the emphasis not so much on what we stand to lose, but on what could be gained if we build sensibly or intelligently. Because already these environments [in the Northern territories] are heavily impacted, that they’re not natural systems as they stand, aside from the wetlands.
A masterplan for how the built environment can be integrated with green corridors, restored functioning communities that link and crisscross the built environment. I think we know enough to do this much better than what I’ve seen being developed. The bar is still so low when it comes to urban greening and landscape architecture.
Yes, there are some people who are ahead of the curve. They’re thinking more of native species and functioning communities, but even the government lists of what can be planted and at what size – all is contrary to what could be achieved.
What I mean by that is… a lot of the species lists the government stands by include exotic species still to today, and their compensation planting mandate – which requires property developers to offset trees that have been cut in their development sites by planting – stipulate that newly-planted trees have to be of a certain size and planted at a certain density. That forces the landscape architects to source trees which can be found in significant quantities, which invariably means they get exotics rather than plants that have native value.
So I think we need to look at the regulations as well as the masterplan. We have this standard in Hong Kong called BEAM Plus, which is a building standard, which is supposedly all about sustainability and green impact. But I’ve worked with this talking to architects and honestly, it’s terribly detrimental to the inclusion of native plants.
Why isn’t it beneficial to use exotic plants?
The standard planting mix mixes you see in Singapore or Hong Kong (which consist of native and exotic species) could be helping reduce the urban heat island effect. Open soil with plants on it is better than concrete. But my argument as an ecologist is always that if there were native species there, the benefit for the ecosystem would be greater.
So why not use native species? The answer to that question is that it is a whole lot easier to source exotics, because all the supply chains are in place for the mass production of these plants.
This is “plant blindness”. It’s just saying “green is good” without looking closely at the sort of plants that make the environment green.
A lot of the climbing plants that you see in Singapore that look lush and tropical come from South America. They’re not offering the resources that would normally be cycling through an ecosystem that had evolved over millions of years in Singapore.
But it’s worse than that, because the supply chains that bring those plants in, they’re mass propagating from a very narrow genetic base. A lot of those plants are just vegetative clones; there’s no genetic diversity. A plant at one end of Singapore of one species could be genetically identical to a plant of the same species at the other end of Singapore.
And when these plants are brought in, they bring in all kinds of pests and diseases with them. So they also impact other plants that are native to that region that don’t have resistance to those pests and diseases.
Again, I think this is a missed opportunity. You and I sit in biodiversity hotspots in Singapore and Hong Kong. And for every potential conceivable need for a plant in the local environment, I can bet you that there’s a native plant that does that job much better than any exotic one. It’s just that they haven’t been developed in a horticultural sense, so that they’re readily available on the market.
I think work needs to be done to develop local nurseries that mass produce these plants, ensuring genetic diversity and mainstreaming their use. And that’s really what we’re trying to do at KFPG.
Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden cultivates native plants to replenish stocks in the wild. Image: Robin Hicks / Eco-Business
By and large, landscape architects, urban planners and the government don’t focus on trying to raise production using native species. They just buy from mainland China or from Australia because it’s easier. But it’s doing a great disservice to native diversity.
Whenever I talk at a conference now to these different diverse stakeholders, I always push for more nurseries in Hong Kong growing in native species.
Anything else you can say about how to develop so that we don’t lose so much of nature so quickly?
If I were to give a soundbite to the urban planners who are responsible for this, it is: work with ecologists. We’re experts as much as they are.
If you want to fly a plane, you ask a pilot, right? You trust somebody with experience and knowledge in that field. So I think we need to come to the table as equal partners and we need to be listened to. Ecologists need to be brought on board and their knowledge and experience trusted in developing the plan.
I would also say think of soils. We need good, healthy soils. Don’t bury everything under cement. Think about natural processes, where water will naturally run to. Don’t channelise everything and restore using native species.
This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
