Hong Kong's Gazetted Water Gathering Grounds — Avoided-Cost Protection of Local Catchment

Hong Kong is one of Asia's most water-stressed cities per capita and imports most of its raw water from Guangdong's Dongjiang (East River) under a costly bulk-supply agreement. To reduce this dependence, the Water Supplies Department gazettes about one-third of the territory — roughly 30,000 hectares — as legally protected Water Gathering Grounds under the Waterworks Ordinance, prohibiting entry, bathing and polluting land uses across the catchments feeding the city's 17 reservoirs. Sixteen of those 17 reservoirs and their surrounding gathering grounds sit inside government Country Parks, so forest conservation and water-source protection are managed together.

As of 2022, local catchment yield met about 19% of Hong Kong's water demand, directly reducing the volume purchased from Dongjiang each year. As with Vienna and Singapore, this is government land management and legal zoning rather than a cash-payment PES scheme; no independently monetized avoided-cost estimate was found, and the territory still relies on Dongjiang water for roughly four-fifths of supply.