Speech by FS at TNC’s Asia Pacific Council’s 25th Anniversary Dinner (English just) (with pictures)
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Following is the speech by the Financial Secretary, Mr Paul Chan, at the Nature Conservancy (TNC)’s Asia Pacific Council’s 25th Anniversary Dinner today (May 15):
Dr Fred Hu (Global Board Member and Asia Pacific Council’s Co-Chair of TNC) and Mrs Abby Hu, Mrs Jennifer Morris (Chief Executive Officer of TNC), Mr George Tahija (Asia Pacific Council’s Co-Chair of TNC), identified visitors, women and gentlemen,
Excellent night.
Let me start with an observation. Some individuals state that financing and nature make odd bedfellows. I have actually never ever rather comprehended why. Both penalize short-termism, both benefit diversity, and both can decipher stunningly when systemic dangers are disregarded.
And possibly that is specifically the point. The obstacles before us do not fall nicely into different sectors, simply as environments do not exist in seclusion. Environment, biodiversity, neighborhoods, commerce and capital are all linked. To safeguard nature, we need to unite individuals and organizations that might as soon as have actually appeared not likely partners.
Twenty-five years earlier, TNC’s Asia Pacific Council did precisely that. It combined a remarkable neighborhood of leaders from company, science, philanthropy and policy, joined by the conviction that nature is the structure of our future.
Ever since, you have actually assisted secure huge landscapes and seascapes throughout the area, advanced community-based preservation, and constructed a network of cross-sector and cross-boundary collaborations that have actually increased your effect.
Tonight, we commemorate that tradition – and the work that lies ahead.
Since the seriousness has actually just grown. Environment modification and severe weather condition occasions are heightening, and biodiversity loss is just intensifying the crisis even more.
Our job is to turn that vicious circle into a virtuous one: a design of sustainable advancement in which financial development, environmental health, and social wellness advance together and enhance one another.
For this vision to materialise, dedication to ecological objectives need to be the beginning point. Hong Kong stays unfaltering in our dedication to attaining carbon neutrality by 2050.
We are similarly devoted to securing biodiversity. At the end of in 2015, we launched an upgraded Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan 2035. Central to it is the concept of “mainstreaming”
That indicates dealing with biodiversity not as a standalone concern, however as a factor to consider developed into the decision-making procedure in facilities, metropolitan preparation, real estate, transportation and lots of other locations of public law.
We likewise securely think in the worth and chances that green shift develops. Business case is engaging. Federal governments are raising green requirements. Customers, particularly more youthful generations, are requiring greener services and products. Business that lead on sustainability will win markets, not simply goodwill.
This momentum is currently driving brand-new innovations, markets, and worth chains. Think about EVs (electrical lorries), wind turbines, and solar setups, which have actually ended up being flagship exports of our nation.
AI holds massive capacity, too. According to the International Energy Agency, existing AI tools might optimise commercial procedures to conserve more energy than Mexico consumes in a whole year.
Green shift is for that reason among the best financial investment chances of our time. Green financing and effect investing are acquiring momentum worldwide, as financiers progressively look for development with function.
Hong Kong is distinctively positioned to link the dots. As a global monetary centre, we surpass the volume of green funding. We are continuously innovating in how capital is mobilised for the green shift. Digital green bonds, insurance-linked securities such as disaster bonds, and taxonomy structures for shift funding are current examples of how we transport more capital into green tasks.
We are likewise a growing development and innovation center. By combining academic community, service, skill and capital, we are developing an environment that can support and scale green options – from AI-powered storm forecast to sustainable air travel fuel and reef repair.
Ladies and gentlemen, no single federal government, sector or organization can provide this green vision alone. It requires a really multi-stakeholder effort. It requires much deeper partnership throughout sectors and borders.
That is why the work of partners like TNC matters so deeply. We want to you to keep doing what you do finest: bringing leaders together, and turning shared obligation into shared action.
The finest policies and collaborations eventually rest on something deeper: the human heart, and the worths we pass from one generation to another. Those worths are not formed by words alone, however by marvel, memory, and a felt connection to the living world around us.
A kid who has actually admired a reef, spotted a black-faced spoonbill on a mudflat, or merely stood silently in a forest does not require to be informed that nature matters.
That sense of marvel is where stewardship starts. Our kids will take care of what they have actually concerned enjoy. Our job is to assist them form that bond.
Permit me to close with the words of Sir David Attenborough, the popular natural historian and broadcaster who commemorated his 100th birthday simply recently.
He stated, “…[N]o species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on Earth, living or dead, as we now have… In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the Earth.”
The message might not be clearer: our futures are bound together, therefore too is our obligation to act.
To TNC’s Asia Pacific Council: thank you for 25 years of turning that duty into action. Here’s to the next 25. Thank you quite.