The Authority is also Director of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) of the Hong Kong SAR Government. The Authority is advised by the Country and Marine Parks Board whose chairman is a non-government official appointed by the Secretary for the Environment. At the policy level, therefore, the Authority is responsible

check details to the Secretary for the Environment. Importantly, however, the Country and Marine Parks Authority has no jurisdiction over areas that are not designated as protection areas under the Country Parks Ordinance. Nevertheless, the Government retains control over development via statutory town plans. Any unauthorized development would be subject to control under the Town Planning Ordinance and land lease. For development proposals on land adjacent to country parks, the Authority would be consulted, as appropriate, on their compatibility with the environment of the country and marine parks. The historical background to this debate and

problem lies in a Small House Policy that was introduced into the former Hong Kong Government’s portfolio in 1972. The originally laudable objective of the policy was to improve the prevailing low standard of living in the rural areas of JAK inhibition the New Territories of Hong Kong. It was created to simplify the demand by indigenous male villagers (but, importantly, wherever born) who, upon reaching the age of 18, to build a house for his own occupancy

in his ancestral village. Open to abuse, however, for many decades a blind eye has been turned to the slow but steady increase in village small house numbers, and the then colonial Government also ignored the misogynistic character of this ancestral right. In recent years, however, the consequences of the policy have become out of control and it is now the cause of widespread and illegal developments in rural areas, many of which are contiguous with the country parks and which, because of some village’s proximity to the sea, are imposing threats upon Fossariinae the marine parks too. The Hong Kong SAR Government has stated that no more government land will be provided for small houses in the New Territories as a whole so that when the unused village land runs out, theoretically, development will cease. Today, however, there is unprecedented pressure by villagers and developers, to whom many of the former have already surreptitiously sold their land, to develop their ancestral villages such that they are now crammed with wall-to-wall housing.