Air Pollution in Hong Kong Essay

Executive Summary:

There are lots of environmental problems such as air pollution, water pollution, noise pollution, and waste disposal problems that Hong Kong faces. Of these environmental issues, air pollution is the one that affects most citizens of Hong Kong. In the Planetary Urbanization lecture, Professor Vitz mentioned that “80% of the world’s urban population breathes unhealthy air” (Vitz, Planetary Urbanization: slide 20). Like many other cities and countries mentioned in class and readings such as Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Britain, industrialization and urbanization led to serious air pollution in Hong Kong. Currently, Hong Kong’s particulate pollution is double the amount of any city in the United States (Stern, 782). The lower and working class are affected disproportionately by air pollution, and although the Hong Kong Government is trying to address the issue, the work is insufficient to eliminate the problem.

Origins of the Problem:

Starting in the 1950s until the 1970s, Hong Kong went through a period of industrialization in the garment, electronic, textile, plastic, and toy industries. Many factories moved to Hong Kong from China, and that led to the urbanization of Hong Kong. Looking at the number of factories, there is a sizable growth rate because “in 1947 there were 961 factories in Hong Kong employing 47,000 people,” but that number grew five-fold, and by “1959 4,541 factories were employing over 170,000 people” (Shuyong, 589). This relates to the Planetary Urbanization lecture because there are push and pull factors as to why people leave rural locations to go to urban locations, and the pull factor in this case is the job opportunities in Hong Kong that did not exist in other parts of China (Vitz, Planetary Urbanization: slide 8). With urbanization and industrialization comes the consequences of air pollution in Hong Kong similar to that of Chicago, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Britain.

In Chapter 3 of the McNeil reading, Something New Under the Sun, the author details how Los Angeles became a smog city in the 1940s and continued to be a problem throughout the twentieth century due to the exhausts from over four million cars (McNeil, 73). Similarly in Hong Kong today, “the overwhelming majority of Hong Kong’s cars, buses, trucks and motorcycles – more than 98 percent – are still powered by fossil fuels via their internal combustion engines” (Vetter). This contributes significantly to the air pollution problem of Hong Kong along with other sources of pollution such as Hong Kong being a shipping hub, electricity generation, construction machinery, aviation, and emissions from Mainland China. In the global context, Hong Kong is one of the world’s leading cargo transshipment hubs, and they have an “extensive network of connections to over 550 container ports around the world” (“The World's Leading”). Different countries in the world like to use Hong Kong as a hub due to the free port status that they have, and many countries are doing business with China through Hong Kong. This being the case, the majority of Hong Kong’s pollution comes from the vessels that produce harmful pollutants, and “in 2016, shipping in Hong Kong waters produced 8,540 [tons] of [sulfur] dioxide, 32,900 [tons] of nitrogen oxide and 1,480 [tons] of PM2.5 pollution” (Vetter). It is hard for Hong Kong to find the balance between health and economic growth because they rely heavily on the shipping hub as an economic resource.

Those affected most by the problem:

Although it can be argued that the air pollution problem affects all citizens of Hong Kong, it is safe to say that this environmental issue affects the lower class much more than the upper class. According to an academic journal written by Rachel E. Stern and published by the University of California Press, “preliminary data show that Hong Kong’s poor suffer increased exposure to air pollution. People in lower-class areas may be up to five times as likely to be hospitalized for respiratory illness as their counterparts in high-income areas” (Stern, 780). This can be attributed to the fact that policymakers ignore the health and needs of the lower class.

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Furthermore, microenvironments affect the poor negatively because they are in a different residential area and environment than the rich even though the macroenvironment affects everyone in Hong Kong. Those in the upper class can afford to live in areas that have a low population density while the lower class is living in high population density areas with more vehicles, and therefore, more pollutants. The lower class also lives in cramped areas where they have to cook in the same open space that their bedroom might be in. Therefore, the poor also suffer from higher indoor pollution (Stern, 784-786). This is an environmental justice issue as it disproportionately affects the poor, like the five examples from Ramachandra Guha’s, Environmentalism: A Global History reading. However, air pollution in Hong Kong is often seen as an environmental justice problem because of “the invisibility of Hong Kong’s poor, the nature of environmental activism surrounding air pollution, and the relative lack of class tensions in Hong Kong” (Stern 792).

Most certainly, a group of people who are most impacted amongst those who reside in Hong Kong are those who work outdoors. These people include street vendors and construction workers. This population is constantly breathing the polluted air while they are at work for more than eight hours a day. Stern states that “two-thirds of outdoor workers have symptoms related to air pollution including asthma, throat irritation, and eye/nasal allergies” (Stern, 789). There is not much that they can do to prevent these health conditions because they need to work for a living to be able to support their family. Additionally, when looking at the mortality data from the years 1995 to 1998, it was found that “during the 4 years, there were 128,229 deaths of which 58,347 (46%) were caused by respiratory and circulatory diseases” and those diseases are highly correlated to air pollutants (Wong, 31).

Efforts undertaken to address the problem:

The Hong Kong government has made efforts to address the issue of air pollution, but there is more work that needs to be done. Motor vehicle emissions are one of the major pollutants in Hong Kong, so the government initiated the usage of cleaner fuels and vehicles. They mandated that all diesel taxis had to switch to a less polluting gas called Liquefied Petroleum Gas by 2007. They paid each taxi USD 5,100 if they made the switch, and this was pretty effective as 80% of taxis were already running on LPG by 2001 (Stern, 783).

Companies that provide electricity to residents of Hong Kong are trying to use cleaner technology such as scrubbers and government intervention was successful in that after they instituted emission caps in 2008 “a notable reduction in [sulfur] dioxide has been seen: from about 50,000 [tons] in 2008 to 8,020 [tons] in 2016” (Vetter). This does not mean that there is no room for improvement because emissions from the burning of coal and oil still make up for a high percentage of pollutants in Hong Kong. The demand for electricity from the population makes it hard to decrease emissions. If the citizens of Hong Kong want to see further improvements in air quality, they are going to have to compromise in terms of energy usage.

Lastly, “after the April 2002 publication of a joint study on regional air pollution, [Hong Kong and Guangdong] agreed to cut sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions by 40%, nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions by 20%, respirable suspended particulates (RSPs) by 55%, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by 55% before 2010” (Stern, 784). The willingness of the Hong Kong government to voluntarily decrease pollutants and to actively work towards that goal is a big step forward from the government ignoring the problem and ignoring the needs of the lower class.

Works Cited

1. Guha, Ramachandra. Environmentalism: A Global History. Penguin Books Limited, 2014.
2. McNeill, John Robert. Something New under the Sun: an Environmental History of the World in the 20th Century. Penguin, 2001.
3. Shuyong, Liu. “Hong Kong: A Survey of Shuyong, Liu. “Hong Kong: A Survey of Its Political and Economic Development over the Past 150 Years.” The China Quarterly, no. 151,1997, pp. 583–592. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/655255.
4. Stern, Rachel E. “HONG KONG HAZE: Air Pollution as a Social Class Issue.” Asian Survey, vol. 43, no. 5, 2003, pp. 780–800. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/as.2003.43.5.780.
5. “The World's Leading Cargo Transshipment Hub.” Hong Kong Maritime Hub, www.hongkongmaritimehub.com/the-hub/the-worlds-leading-cargo-transshipment-hub/.
6. Vetter, David. “Biggest Source of Air Pollution in Hong Kong? It's Not Cars or Mainland.”
7. South China Morning Post, South China Morning Post, 3 Dec. 2018, www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/2175592/why-hong-kongs-air-so-polluted-and-what-can-we-do.
8. Vitz, Matthew. 'Planetary Urbanization since 1800.' 30 Jan. 2019. Global Environmental Problems, Environmentalism, and the Age of Climate Change, UCSD. Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.
9. Vitz, Matthew. 'Environmental Justice or Environmentalism of the Poor.' 20 Feb. 2019. Global Environmental Problems, Environmentalism, and the Age of Climate Change, UCSD. Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.
10. Wong, T. W., et al. “Associations between Daily Mortalities from Respiratory and Cardiovascular Diseases and Air Pollution in Hong Kong, China.” Occupational and Environmental Medicine, vol. 59, no. 1, 2002, pp. 30–35. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27731612.