Law, Embodiment, and the Case of ‘Harbourcide’

Hong Kong’s ever-worsening air pollution is now on everyone’s lips, and the general talk, once again, is about a threat to economic livelihood. For policymakers, the threat reveals the conflict between economics (specifically, an economic engine fueled by the transportation sector and the multi-billion real estate industry) and public health interests (which too have direct bearing on the economy and on Hong Kong’s overall strategic position in the region). For the environmentally minded, the threat is the high toll on our prime natural resource: the quality of air that we breathe in every day. As for the Hong Kong residents, air pollution is registered as a threatening problem at a much more visceral level, that of our senses: from the suffering of sore throat, itchy eyes, irritants to our noses, to the everyday experience of a dusty, choky way of urban living. Observers of Hong Kong’s air pollution problem have been raising alarm since the early 1980s, and the recent escalation of public worries continues to demonstrate that a pollution-centred understanding of the environment still frames the problem of urban degeneration in Hong Kong. Though this pollution-centred way of thinking does tend to be overly technocratic, it is not unreasonable to have such a vision of urban decay. The price tag on our health bills, especially for respiratory and heart diseases, the negative impact on investment growth and sustainability, especially for foreign investors more accustomed to, and demanding of, a clean air environment, and the political toll on a governance all too clearly biased toward the transportation and real estate markets, are only some of the things that are directly affected by the persistently hazy-skied society.