Evaluation of Public Participation in EIA in Hong Kong: A Comparison of Government Projects and Private Sector Projects

Abstract

Conducting public participation in an environmental impact assessment (EIA) study and assuring its effectiveness is very indispensable as it acts as a scrutiny role from a third party's point of view when comes to the decision-making process. Both governmental proponents and private proponents are required to do the EIA study if their proposed projects are subject to designated projects. It is discovered that a majority of public participation in EIA studies carried out in government-run projects prudently follows the provisions as well as principles and serves as a high-interactive medium for information dissemination and exchange. In contrast, there is no significant influence of public participation organized in EIA study of private-run projects. Therefore, this paper aims at revealing the implementation of public participation in EIA responsible by different types of proponents and digging out the reasons behind it through an investigation and comparison of two representative cases from government-run projects (Lok Ma Chau Rail Spur Line Project) and private proponent-run projects (Fung Lok Wai Wetland Project) respectively. The study indicates that the compliant operation of public participation in government-run projects originates from the intention of benefiting the public as most of the projects are designed to be public infrastructure while the purpose of private components to start up a project is to seek profit, consequently resulting in the one-way and dictatorial decision-making. By tapping these voids, this paper provides a critical understanding of the disparity between the actual practice and specified criteria and attempts to establish a reference model for engineering projects that need to conduct an EIA study. This paper advocates improving the relevant system and strengthening supervision of EIA.