September, 2012:

Although the Airport Authority announced on Wednesday it would look into ways to evaluate the social and environmental impact of the planned third runway, this will do little to allay the suspicions of green groups. They believe the authority does not want to carry out a proper social return on investment study (SROI) out of concern that it could sink the runway project. The authority’s initial position was that it would obey the law and pursue the environmental impact assessment process.

After the Legislative Council’s environmental affairs panel unanimously called on the authority to conduct an SROI study in April, it responded that there was no accepted international methodology for conducting such a study. It was recently supported in this view by the Transport and Housing Bureau in an e-mail to the green groups: “As we have explained before, SROI is an evaluation tool rooted in the charity sector and is commonly used to evaluate the value of community projects competing for government or charity funding. We also understand that there is no commonly adopted methodology or standards for conducting SROI analysis and that no developed country adopts SROI analysis as general requirement for assessing infrastructure project proposals.”

Unfortunately there was one very significant SROI study, concluded in April 2010, that ironically concerned plans to build a third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport, which can hardly be described as a charity or community funding. The study concluded that the social and economic impact of the airport on Britain would be a loss of £5 billion (HK$62.6 billion), compared with the government’s estimates of a £5.5 billion gain. Unsurprisingly, the Hong Kong government and the Airport Authority aren’t keen to dwell on this report and particularly its outcome. The authority has been keen to play up the economic benefits, which it claims amount to HK$900 billion. A poll commissioned by WWF and Greenpeace found that 74 per cent of people were dissatisfied with the amount of information the authority had provided on the social and environmental aspect of the project.

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Airport Authority to develop an approach ‘meaningful to local context’ – and says door to dialogue with conservationists remains open

• ·        Thursday, 20 September, 2012, 12:00am
• ·        Cheung Chi-fai chifai.cheung@scmp.com
• ·

As the debate over a third runway at Chek Lap Kok airport rages, the Airport Authority has agreed to carry out a social impact study. Photo: SCMP

The Airport Authority has bowed to pressure from green groups and agreed to carry out a social impact study on the planned third runway at Chek Lap Kok, as activists continue to snub meetings on the

controversial project.

But the airport operator has yet to specify what will be covered by the study, saying only that it will develop an approach “meaningful to local context and specific to the runway project”.

“We will devise the most appropriate method, looking at air, health or traffic congestion issues. We’ll adopt the best world practice too,” the authority’s executive director of business development,

Wilson Fung Wing-yip, said.

Fung did not give a timetable but said he believed the voluntary study would be done in parallel with the statutory environmental impact assessment of the project, which involves 650 hectares of reclamation from the sea.

Speaking to media yesterday, Fung said the social return on investment study carried out by the New Economics Foundation for the third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport – to put a monetary value on such social costs as noise, air pollution and congestion – could not be directly copied. Instead, he said, approaches used by the World Bank or the European Union to assess transport projects might be more relevant.

Fung also said it was “unfortunate” that none of the green groups invited to a meeting yesterday had shown up.

“They wanted to know in advance the outcome of the meeting, though we have provided them with a large amount of information beforehand,” he said, adding that the door to dialogue was still open.

WWF Hong Kong director of conservation Dr Andy Cornish said, however, that the conservationists had very clear demands for the study and the authority knew them well.

“The ball is in the authority’s court. They have to close the gap and regain the trust of green groups,” he said.

Cornish said a genuine social return on investment study should put emphasis on engaging those affected by asking people what was important to them.

But he did welcome the authority’s decision to assess the carbon emission of aircraft in order to seek accreditation by the Airports Council International by early next year.

Melonie Chau Yuet-cheung, senior environmental affairs officer at Friends of the Earth, said the meeting was snubbed because the groups and the authority could not agree what to discuss.

“We don’t want the agenda set and dominated by the authority,” she said. “We wanted to discuss the details of what a social impact study should be.”

Chau also asked whether the authority was using a delaying tactic by not committing to a clear timetable to complete the study. She would not rule out launching an unofficial social impact

study with other groups.

Airport Authority to develop an approach ‘meaningful to local context’ – and says door to dialogue with conservationists remains open

• ·        Thursday, 20 September, 2012, 12:00am
  • ·        Cheung Chi-fai chifai.cheung@scmp.com
  • ·

As the debate over a third runway at Chek Lap Kok airport rages, the Airport Authority has agreed to carry out a social impact study. Photo: SCMP

The Airport Authority has bowed to pressure from green groups and agreed to carry out a social impact study on the planned third runway at Chek Lap Kok, as activists continue to snub meetings on the

controversial project.

But the airport operator has yet to specify what will be covered by the study, saying only that it will develop an approach “meaningful to local context and specific to the runway project”.

“We will devise the most appropriate method, looking at air, health or traffic congestion issues. We’ll adopt the best world practice too,” the authority’s executive director of business development,

Wilson Fung Wing-yip, said.

Fung did not give a timetable but said he believed the voluntary study would be done in parallel with the statutory environmental impact assessment of the project, which involves 650 hectares of reclamation from the sea.

Speaking to media yesterday, Fung said the social return on investment study carried out by the New Economics Foundation for the third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport – to put a monetary value on such social costs as noise, air pollution and congestion – could not be directly copied. Instead, he said, approaches used by the World Bank or the European Union to assess transport projects might be more relevant.

Fung also said it was “unfortunate” that none of the green groups invited to a meeting yesterday had shown up.

“They wanted to know in advance the outcome of the meeting, though we have provided them with a large amount of information beforehand,” he said, adding that the door to dialogue was still open.

WWF Hong Kong director of conservation Dr Andy Cornish said, however, that the conservationists had very clear demands for the study and the authority knew them well.

“The ball is in the authority’s court. They have to close the gap and regain the trust of green groups,” he said.

Cornish said a genuine social return on investment study should put emphasis on engaging those affected by asking people what was important to them.

But he did welcome the authority’s decision to assess the carbon emission of aircraft in order to seek accreditation by the Airports Council International by early next year.

Melonie Chau Yuet-cheung, senior environmental affairs officer at Friends of the Earth, said the meeting was snubbed because the groups and the authority could not agree what to discuss.

“We don’t want the agenda set and dominated by the authority,” she said. “We wanted to discuss the details of what a social impact study should be.”

Chau also asked whether the authority was using a delaying tactic by not committing to a clear timetable to complete the study. She would not rule out launching an unofficial social impact

study with other groups.

Sunday, May 13th, 2012   http://www.cleanbiz.asia/blogs/hks-3rd-runway-proposal-go-way-heathrows?page=show

By:

Mike Kilburn, Civic Exchange (now Senior Manager Environmen, HK Airport Authority)

On Monday 23 April 2012 the Environmental Affairs Panel of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LegCo) passed a motion requiring the Hong Kong Airport Authority (HKAA) to conduct a social return on investment (SROI) study, a carbon audit and a strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in addition to the statutory environmental impact assessment (EIA) which they must conduct in order to secure approval to build a proposed third runway at Hong Kong International Airport.

This decision is significant because plans to add a third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport were shelved largely because a SROI study showed that the impacts on residents living near the airport outweighed the economic benefits highlighted in the original proposals. HKAA officials, who are all too aware of the outcome in London, have consistently declined to conduct an SROI despite repeated calls to do so.

It is also significant because the Legislative Council had previously expressed support for the third runway during a meeting of the Panel on Economic Development in June 2011. In March 2012 the Executive Council gave its approval in principle, subject to the statutory requirements of the EIA process, for the third runway to go ahead.

So why did a legislature which has been broadly supportive of the third runway – and highly receptive to the proposed HK$136 billion (USD17.4 billion) in contracts and notional HK$900 billion (USD115.4 billion) stimulus to the Hong Kong economy – decide that it needed more information that might derail the project?

The short answer is that they were persuaded to do so by Hong Kong’s environmental NGOs (envNGOs).  During the summer of 2011 the HKAA conducted a consultation exercise to seek the public’s views on whether it should restrict its development plans to optimizing the current two runway system, or substantially expand its capacity by adding a third runway. In December 2011 it released the findings of a survey showing that over 70 percent of the 24,000 respondents supported the third runway.

The envNGOs have not rejected the third runway, but they have expressed considerable concern over the loss of habitat for the globally-threatened Chinese White Dolphin and the negative impacts on air quality and noise disturbance to residents living close to the airport and the flight path. They also stressed that the HKAA’s presentation of the 2030 Masterplan had focused on the economic benefits and underplayed the social and environmental concerns.

In February 2012 WWF (HK) and Greenpeace released their own public opinion survey, also prepared by Hong Kong University. The envNGO survey showed that about 73 percent of the public was dissatisfied with amount of information HKAA had provided on the social and environmental impacts of the project. Choosing the same pollsters was an astute move since HKAA cannot challenge the envNGO’s survey without undermining the credibility of their own.

Prior to the motion, which was raised by legislator Kam Nai Wai, an envNGO coalition – WWF (HK), Greenpeace, Clean Air Network, Hong Kong Dolphinwatch, Friends of the Earth, Green Sense, Conservancy Association and Greeners Action – submitted a written paper and made verbal submissions which were unified in calling for the SROI, carbon audit and SEA.

When questioned by legislators, both HKAA’s Chief Executive Stanley Hui and Transport and Housing Bureau’s Sharon Yip expressed their intention to follow the statutory process – in other words to do nothing beyond the statutory EIA.

And herein lies the problem. Since its establishment in 1997 Hong Kong’s EIA process has been widely recognized as one of the best in the world for assessing the environmental impact of individual projects. Elsewhere, however, impact assessment has expanded to encompass a broader range of considerations, including social and health impacts and the cumulative impacts of multiple projects. Hong Kong has correspondingly fallen behind global best practice.

To make matters worse the Hong Kong public is increasingly concerned about declining environmental quality. There is also growing doubt that the Government’s development plans are truly sustainable.

Most specifically given the persistently high health impacts of air pollution and the long delay in introducing new air quality objectives (they remain unchanged since 1987), the public’s confidence that the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) is an effective, or even committed, regulator of environmental standards is at an all-time low.

The most visible expression of this concern was the judicial review raised by a Tung Chung resident against the EPD’s approval of the EIA for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge in 2010.

This combination of rising public expectations for transparency and quality of life, declining environmental quality and growing distrust of regulators greatly increases the pressure on HKAA and the THB, whose “statutory compliance” response looks as out of touch as the EIA process they would like to rely upon.

That legislators of all parties, including Miriam Lau, who is also a board member of the HKAA, voted unanimously to support the motion requiring the additional studies to be conducted suggests that the envNGOs have got this one right and it is HKAA, THB and the EIA process which must move with the times.

• ·        Show paged

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SCMP

Submitted by admin on Sep 19th 2012, 12:00am

Business

LAI SEE

Howard Winn howard.winn@scmp.com

Twelve green groups will boycott a meeting with the Airport Authority today which was to discuss the social and environmental impact of the third runway project.

The green groups have pulled out over what they say is a lack of commitment by the authority to carry out a social-return-on-investment study. A meeting planned at the end of last month was postponed over concern that there was “a divergence of opinion” between the two sides over the study.

While the green groups are pushing for a social-return study and a carbon emission study, the authority, which was initially opposed to conducting a social-return study, has said it has looked at “other evaluation approaches that have been adopted internationally”, which it says “may address the nature of your concerns about social and environmental impact”.

Evidently, this does not go far enough for the green groups. A letter from them to the authority recently noted: ” … we will not meet with the AAHK again in the 19/9 roundtable meeting if we do not receive a commitment from AAHK regarding our requests stated clearly in our joint letter.” Their withdrawal from the meeting is a blow to the authority, which is keen to keep them onside. Earlier this year it committed to becoming the “greenest airport in the world”, but this may be difficult to achieve without support from the green groups.