Policy Address 2026: Greenpeace criticises lack of wetland protection in Northern Metropolis development plan

Greenpeace Hong Kong has criticised plans for the Northern Metropolis development project, saying that the blueprint lacks protections for sensitive wetlands near the city’s border with mainland China.

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee (centre) attends a press conference after delivering the city’s first five-year plan and his annual Policy Address on September 16, 2026. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Details for the sprawling tech hub were unveiled in the Five-Year Plan (FYP) and annual Policy Address delivered by Chief Executive John Lee on Wednesday.

The green group said that the ecological protection goals set out in the FYP lagged far behind China’s national standards for preserving important wetlands.

Lee laid out Hong Kong’s first FYP at the legislature on Wednesday, in a move seen as aligning the freewheeling city more closely with China’s national development trajectory. On environmental protection, Lee said the city would “maintain” 40 per cent of its land and 20 per cent of its marine area as protected zones by 2030.

Hong Kong’s border areas near Shenzhen is set to be transformed into a 30,000-hectare Northern Metropolis. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Proposed in 2021, the Northern Metropolis is a sprawling infrastructure project set to transform 30,000 hectares land near the city’s rural border with mainland China. The tech hub promises to provide jobs, more homes, and deeper integration with neighbouring Shenzhen. However, critics have voiced concern over the HK$224 billion project’s scale and ambition, its impact on sensitive wetland habitats, and the loss of existing homes and farmland.

Greenpeace said the targets put forward in the plan omitted wetland protection and paled in comparison to neighbouring Shenzhen, which committed to a 50 per cent wetland protection rate by 2030 in its latest five-year plan. China also introduced a wetland protection law in 2022, the NGO added.

While both the FYP and the Policy Address discussed policy measures aimed at expediting the Northern Metropolis project at great length, environmental conservation policies for the area were largely lacking, the NGO said.

Large swathes of aquaculture farms inside a protected wetland area in Hong Kong’s Northern Metropolis. File Photo: Greenpeace.

“Greenpeace urges the Hong Kong government to catch up with national standards in establishing binding wetland protection targets,” the NGO said in a Chinese-language statement.

See also: Protected wetlands in Northern Metropolis damaged by ‘industrial-scale’ shrimp farms, Greenpeace says

The NGO also lamented the absence of measures in the two policy documents to curb over-tourism in the city’s rural areas. The FYP failed to outline the timeline to transition to green energy, Greenpeace added.

Separately, another green group, Friends of the Earth Hong Kong, welcomed the environmental measures outlined in Wednesday’s two policy blueprints.

In particular, the NGO applauded the government’s bid to leverage Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing in advancing cross-boundary carbon trading, a market-based mechanism that allows countries or businesses to buy and sell greenhouse gas emission quotas.

“Robust and credible carbon accounting and carbon pricing can support emissions reduction and technological innovation, accelerate decarbonisation investment, reinforce the integrity of the carbon market, and strengthen Hong Kong’s international position and leadership in this field,” the group’s vice-chair Anthony Cheung said in a statement.