News & Events

The seminar titled “Cross-Sector Dialogue: Climate Change and Poverty”, co-hosted by the China Global and Development Network (CGDN), Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Oxfam, Hong Kong, was held on 14 August 2025. The seminar aimed to bring together diverse perspectives from governments, academia, non-governmental organisations, and businesses to explore the unequal impacts of climate change on vulnerable groups and seek opportunities for cross-sector collaboration.

Prof. KU Hok Bun, Director of CGDN, delivered a presentation titled “Climate change and its impact on vulnerable groups”, emphasising the need for a Social Work Reconciliation (SWR) framework to address these issues and underscoring the importance of reconciling humans with the environment.

Prof. WONG Kam-sing, Chairman of Wu Zhi Qiao (Bridge to China) Charitable Foundation, underscored the urgent need to address climate change impacts, leveraging his experience as the former Secretary for the Environment and his current efforts to tackle these challenges. Mr Kevin MAY, Programme Manager of Oxfam, Hong Kong, shared their works which assisted the women to tackle the challenges caused by climate change in Bangladesh. The representatives of Sino Group, Bank Consortium Trust and Cathay Pacific shared their experiences on addressing the impacts of climate change.

A Q&A session with insightful discussion followed the seminar, attended by approximately 30 participants from the PolyU community and the public.