Hong Kong’s water security: a governance perspective

Abstract

Traditional concerns regarding Hong Kong's water security have centred on water quantity, quality and pricing. In contrast, this article embraces an integrative conceptualization of water security from a governance perspective. A technocratic and supply-oriented water system may overlook challenges stemming from scalar mismatches at the territorial, institutional and discursive levels, as well as at the science-policy interface. Resilience thinking could identify new areas of concern and provide contextually sensitive insights into Hong Kong's water security, which will be subject to the restructuring of the water governance system, which concerns changing discourses, power relations and institutional mechanisms.

China's Water Governmentality and the Shaping of Hydrosocial Territories in the Lancang-Mekong Region

“…73 Biba 2014Hirsch 2016;Ho 2014. 74 Crow-Miller 2015Wang, Raymond Yu, and Dai 2021. different imaginaries which challenge the Chinese construction. These alternative narratives not only reveal the controversies, disadvantages and conflicts that are masked in the Chinese discursive framings but also cast China as a "hydrohegemon" that poses threats to downstream nations, highlighting the complex nature of and power struggles in the Lancang-Mekong region.…”

Sociocultural Dimensions in Water Resources Management

“…Water governance in Hong Kong, China has been found to be relatively weak when compared to similar cities by academic scholars (Li, von Eiff, and An 2021;Wang and Dai 2021). Throughout these studies one of the key underlying issues was the price of water, which is one of the lowest in the world (Inglis and le Clue 2017).…”

“…While studies of Hong Kong, China's water governance have found that they generally mange the physio-chemical (engineering) component of the supply well, they have generally found the ability to manage the overall water system to be weak (Wang and Dai 2021;Li, von Eiff, and An 2021). While there are several factors that influence the quality of water supply management, the long-term low price underlies many of these issues.…”

Selecting methods for water resources in coastal area: Comparative study cases of Hong Kong and Jakarta

“…Meanwhile, in the article "Hong Kong's water security: a governance perspective" written by (Wang and Dai, 2021), another challenge that Hong Kong faces in water security is in the science-policy sector, where the relationship between traditional technocracy and holistic and integrative policy development is not always the case-well coordinated. However, more important is that limited resources have been invested in the institutions and capacities to support policy reforms.…”