可持續發展, 普遍人認知的三環模型(平衡環境社會經濟), 其實不是太有效反映環實情況。
雖然我未睇份詳細報告, 但為何「Hong Kong ranked sixth in people, 19th in planet and third for profit」, 最後卻得到總括排第8呢?
環境社會經濟三者的比重是一樣? 建基於這三環模型的可持續發展又是否能使地區社會達到真正的可持續發展?

Hong Kong takes second in Asia on list of sustainable cities

Property prices and pollution holding city back, but it scores well for business and liveability

Shirley Zhao shirley.zhao@scmp.com
PUBLISHED : Monday, 09 February, 2015, 3:17am
UPDATED : Monday, 09 February, 2015, 8:37am

High property prices, long working hours and serious air pollution are the major factors threatening Hong Kong's rank as Asia's second-most sustainable city, after Seoul, according to a new ranking of the world's 50 leading cities.

Hong Kong ranks eighth overall on the Sustainable Cities Index, compiled by the global design, engineering and management consulting firm Arcadis, which is based in Amsterdam.

Frankfurt, London and Copenhagen are the world's top three cities on the index.

Among the 14 Asian cities, Hong Kong comes behind Seoul but ahead of Singapore.

The index, released today, is further divided into three subindexes: "people" measures a city's quality of life; "planet" covers environmental factors; and "profit" assesses the city's business environment and economic performance.

Hong Kong ranked sixth in people, 19th in planet and third for profit.

"The index gives us really useful pointers on how we can improve and what we can do better," said Graham Kean, Asia-Pacific head of client solutions at Arcadis.

Kean, who is based in Hong Kong, said skyrocketing property prices were "probably the biggest thing holding us back" in the people sub-ranking, as family-sized homes were more affordable in Europe and the United States.

The city also performed worse in income equality and work-life balance. Kean said a lack of work-life balance was a phenomenon across Asian cities, where people tend to work 20 per cent longer hours on average than the other cities in the survey.

He added that a lack of space at home and short commuting time - the shortest in the world - also caused people to stay at their workplaces longer.

In the planet sub-ranking, Hong Kong performed especially poorly with regards to its energy use. A low proportion of renewable energy sources, greater vulnerability to natural catastrophes, more air pollution, higher greenhouse gas emissions and poor solid waste management contributed to its low ranking.

"The greenhouse emissions here seem surprisingly high for a city that's got such a great public transport system," Kean said.

He said that buildings could be a big source of such emissions and Hong Kong needed to give landlords an incentive to upgrade the many ageing buildings in town to make them more energy-efficient.

With the city's landfills on the verge of overflowing, the government needed better waste management as well, Kean added.

But Kean said Hong Kong remained one of the world's major financial hubs for its transparency, good regulations and connections with many big corporations based here.

He said the index reflected the importance of creating a more liveable environment for a city's sustainability.

"You create a place where people want to live and educate their children, and they will want to stay and produce values to the society," he said.

The index's scoring is based on authoritative international sources such as the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, QS World University rankings, International Labour Organisation, UBS financial services and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Top 10 sustainable cities 2015:
Frankfurt
London
Copenhagen
Amsterdam
Rotterdam
Berlin
Seoul
Hong Kong
Madrid
Singapore

Source: Arcadis

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as HK ranked Asia's second-most sustainable city

Source: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-ko ... -sustainable-cities

A most sustainable city with one of the highest carbon footprints and one of the highest eco. footprints???  It is a joke.

Please find the full report here:
http://www.sustainablecitiesindex.com/

>"The greenhouse emissions here seem surprisingly high for a city that's got such a great public transport system," Kean said.

This study provides a quantitative review of the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), the two most significant greenhouse gases (GHGs) in Hong Kong. Study indicated that CO2 accounts for 90% of the local GHG emissions in Hong Kong. Among the different types of fuels coal is identified as the major source of CO2, which constitutes about 50% by fuel type. On the other hand, CH4, which mainly comes from waste decomposition, contributes to 5% of the total GHG emissions. Correlation study revealed that energy consumption and waste quantity were strongly correlated with population and gross domestic products (GDP), implying that not much has been done in Hong Kong to re-mediate GHG emissions. Regression analysis concluded that supply side management (fuel switch) was more effective than demand side management (energy conservation) in mitigating CO2 emissions in Hong Kong.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/sci ... i/S1352231000001151

However, too many Hong Kong people have a pleasure of waste electricity power, all the way from government, corporation, local business and down to their home.
The demand side has its contribution, you cant make the power plant reduce GHG emission to 5~7% overnight , but you can reduce power wastage by adjusting temperature setting (air-cond and heater) and "switch off" instead of stand-by, and many other "good practices" (dislike to word of best practices).

[ 本帖最後由 wazy 於 2015-2-10 09:42 編輯 ]

To be fair, one has to calculate it on a per capita basis.
There is certainly a lot of room for improvement. I hope this news could be on the newspaper (instead of those stupid "freest economy system" rankings). Then the government and the citizens will have more incentive to improve--oh, HK (or East Asians in general) are so obsessed with rankings provided by Western countries anyway. This is a good opportunity to "beat the Koreans up" in this ranking. I hope they adopt this mentality.

"In a comparison of about 150 countries, Hong Kong was found to have the 26th largest per capita Ecological Footprint."

"According to the report, Hong Kong has an average per person Ecological Footprint of 4.7 global hectares (gha), which is a staggering 150 times more than the 0.03 gha of Hong Kong’s available per capita biocapacity. The difference between the two figures means we are in “ecological deficit”. This deficit is the ninth largest in the world and the second-largest in Asia. The report predicts that if the situation remains unchanged in the future, by the middle of this century, we will need the equivalent resources of 3 Earths to satisfy our daily needs."

http://www.wwf.org.hk/en/?9980/W ... to-fulfil-our-needs