Author: Clarion Chan (Parks and Trails)
 

In our last two articles, we looked at the roots of Hong Kong’s country park system and how environmental NGOs played a role during the colonial period. Today, nearly three decades after the handover, country parks remain a weekend escape for many of us. Meanwhile, environmental NGOs have grown in number and diversity. But has the way we govern these natural treasures truly evolved? Are we keeping pace with global trends in environmental governance, especially as the climate crisis escalates?

The answer is mixed. On one hand, Hong Kong has seen some progress. Governance today pays more attention to diversity of participation, moving beyond a rigid hierarchy to involve a broader range of organizations. There is also more emphasis on partnerships built on trust, mutual commitment, and opportunities to learn.

Yet, some parts of the system remain unchanged. Most notably, our country park management model is still a centralized and top-down command and control regime led by the Agricultures, Fisheries and Conservations Department (AFCD). Two big problems stand out:

1. Lack of transparency:：AFCD has never published a comprehensive management plan for the country parks. Aside from internal quarterly planning documents and general annual reports, there is no clear, public vision for how our parks should be managed in the long term.
2. Limited accountability:：the Country and Marine Parks Board, a statutory advisory body which makes recommendations to the AFCD director, has a limited capacity to propose change or evaluate management practice. This poses a huge obstacle for facilitating a multi-level governance.

Add to this the fact that biodiversity was never a key criterion when parks were first designated, and the cracks begin to show. According to the WWF 2025 report, less than 30% of species’ local range is located within protected areas, such as Country Parks, Special Areas or Restricted Areas), and the population is suspected, inferred, estimated or observed to be declining. Certain species, such as butterflies, ants and reptiles have been poorly represented.

It’s clear that the cracks in our system are widening. The question is: how do we move forward?

A New Way Forward: What is Adaptive Governance?

One possible answer is adaptive governance. First introduced for Hong Kong’s country parks by Civic Exchange in 2011, the concept has yet to be put into action — but remains highly relevant today.

Adaptive governance is broader than the common concept of “adaptive management.” While adaptive management came about from the understanding that the complexity and uncertainty involved in environmental and natural resource management requires a process that is holistic, integrates science, involves the public in a meaningful way, and administered via flexible policies and institutions, adaptive governance extends to policy and decision-making. It links actors across different scales — local, regional, and global — and across different sectors — state, private, and civil society. At its core, it emphasizes monitoring, experimentation, and collaboration, with intermediary organizations playing a key role in connecting stakeholders.

To see how this works in practice, we can look to South Africa.

Learning from South Africa

Legislation

Tracing back to the late 90s, when the apartheid had just ended, the South African National Parks (SANParks), a body responsible for managing national parks, started to adopt the planning and management approach of Strategic Adaptive Management (SAM). Following the adoption of this new model, a new National Parks Act was launched to replace the old one in 2003.

The new act was particularly successful in broadening and diversifying participation at multiple, inter-connected levels as it requires participatory development of park management plans and provides for co-management and development of diverse governance structures. They have also facilitated the setting up of a platform information flow and social learning. However, there was a mismatch between the level of details required in the plan and the level of approving authority. For example, the amendment of the plan requires the details of costing at the implementation level. This shows an assumption of stability, predictability and scale mismatches hampered compliance with legislation, which is not adaptive enough.

Despite the limitations of this new legislation, there are good points to learn from South Africa. One example of this is the co-management arrangement in the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere Reserve (K2C), which includes South Africa’s biggest national park – Kruger National Park (KNP) and the Marakele National Park. Yet, it is essential for us to learn from not only its success, but also its constraints.

K2C Biosphere Reserve (BR) – the Environmental Monitors program (EM)

Kruger to Canyons Biosphere

Back in the 90s, various conservation and development actors began to support the idea of a biosphere reserve (BR) in the region as a means for different communities to reach out over borders and to ensure a future for biodiversity conservation. In 2001, the K2C region became a BR.

A non-profit company with the same name (K2C) was established and tasked with pursuing actions to fulfill the BR mandate. As an organization, the K2C’s attempts to nurture partnerships and collaboration, and implement and support projects, with a view to reconciling biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.

What K2C did was different from the usual management approach, as they also addressed a range of interlinked sustainability challenges in the region, including the lack of economic opportunity, severe inequality, poaching, high levels of poverty and HIV/AIDS through engaging different stakeholders, including government, NGO, businesses and community actors. In other words, K2C is trying to enable a more holistic system change that impacts different levels in our society, rather than just focusing on the conservation aspect. The key is to integrate communities with nature.

One of the noteworthy programs that demonstrates the adoption of adaptive governance is the Environmental Monitor program (EM) in 2012. Its aim is to enhance the integrity of protected areas by combating poaching through monitoring programs, patrols and environmental education. This provides job and temporary work opportunities and skill development for the unemployed. Throughout the program, the K2C officers serve as the coordinators in the program, while the EMs are placed within Host Institutes (HIs) participating in the K2C stakeholder networks. Their work includes generating knowledge through collecting data under given themes (e.g. freshwater, rangelands, etc.), patrolling, training to use technical equipment, etc. After that, there would be information sharing to other parties through creation of a common database and spontaneous sharing of data. There are also networking events to attend, during which K2C facilitates discussions between different actors, such as officials, workers, NGOs, environmentalists and business representatives.

In short summary, the South African system is adaptive and polycentric in nature from legislation to implementation. People from different sectors are mobilised in various tasks and actions are designed based on the data and shared information collected on site. Despite the fact that there is still room for improvements in terms of information sharing and efficiency, South Africa serves as a model with significant reference value.

What This Means For Hong Kong

So, what can Hong Kong learn from South Africa?

First, adaptive governance is not limited to “high-level” Global North contexts — it can work in very different social and political environments. Second, while no model is flawless, adaptive governance offers tools to make conservation more transparent, inclusive, and flexible.

Yet, 14 years have passed since Civic Exchange first proposed this approach, and little has changed. Hong Kong still lacks a clear vision for its country parks. Transparency is minimal, and opportunities for community engagement are scarce — even though many NGOs are willing to play a bridging role.

It is time to move forward. Here are some steps Hong Kong should take:

1. Changes in Legislation:
   A systematic change always requires an amendment at the legislation level. First, the Country Park Ordinance should include a statutory obligation for the AFCD to regularly release country park management plans to the public. These plans must be open to revision and grounded in scientific research. This will allow NGOs, academics, and the public to hold authorities accountable. In other words, the AFCD should commit to a system of acquisition and transfer scientific knowledge into the design of operational goals. Second, the Country Park Ordinance should be revised to allow a greater autonomy of the Country and Marine Parks Board, such as giving them the ability to invite stakeholders like community groups and environmental NGOs to its meetings. This would strengthen partnerships and make governance more flexible and inclusive.
   
2. Build stakeholder networks:
   In the South African case, different social forces are mobilised in devising and revising the plans, with K2C company as the intermediary agent. However, the situation in Hong Kong is different: our country park network covers 50 times less area than the K2C region, and the distribution is scattered, which means each area affects different groups of communities. Therefore, instead of forming another NGO, the AFCD can serve as the mediating agent, but they will have to allow more engagement from local environmental NGOs, academia and communities. Public consultations, forums and events for which broad stakeholders debate, deliberate and learn from each other, should be organized regularly.
   
3. Value knowledge sharing:
   More cooperation should be facilitated among the authority, environmental NGOs and academia who have already been doing extensive research on various environmental issues. The authority should take more account into these researches and revise their management plans accordingly. Also, this information has to be spread across the stakeholder network through a shared database.
   

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that it is always easier said than done. Environmental NGOs and environmentalists have been advocating different conservation strategies for the government through decades, which have, unfortunately, always been ignored. The government has to take the lead here for safeguarding our environment by facilitating systematic changes to country park governance. More importantly, the government should not use the infamous “development” excuse to destroy our nature. Given the acceleration of climate change, we do not have another 14 years to wait. Actions have to be taken now.

Bibliography

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