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Sustainable cities: Hong Kong should look to nature-based green building solutions to hit carbon goals, conference hears
- ‘Hong Kong is not doing a lot [in terms of] adding greenery to urban spaces,’ says Rosewood Hotel Group’s global head of social impact
- The viable space for rooftop farming in Hong Kong is not far short of the 7 million sq m of farmland in the city, conference is told
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Hong Kong can do a lot more to enhance its long-term sustainability by adopting nature-based decarbonisation practices and tightening regulations, an environmental conference has heard.
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Rosewood Hotel Group, a Hong Kong-based multinational hotel management group, was cited as an example during a panel discussion.
It is exploring the use of natural insulation for its hotels in Asia. This entails growing creeping plants on the sides and rooftops of buildings to reduce energy use, especially in cities with huge air-conditioning needs.
“This is one single business doing it, why cannot cities do it at the municipal level?” Mehvesh Mumtaz Ahmed, the company’s global head of social impact said at the SCMP Asia Sustainability conference on Tuesday. “Hong Kong is not doing a lot [in terms of] adding greenery to urban spaces, Singapore is doing a better job on that.
“There is a lot of square footage on the roofs in Hong Kong that are not used and could be greened to provide insulation and be used for rooftop farming.”
The conference featured a keynote address by Lam Ching-choi, a non-official member of the Hong Kong government’s Executive Council and chairman of the Council for Sustainable Development.
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