Hong Kong’s aviation dominance hinges on colonial-era infrastructure and fossil-fuel lock-in, not just SAF—global hubs fail when supply chains mirror geopolitical fragility
Original framing: “Hong Kong urged to secure sustainable fuel supply to safeguard aviation hub status” — South China Morning Post
The global SAF industry’s reliance on palm oil and soybeans from Indigenous lands (e.g., Amazonian *povos originários* territories) is framed as a ‘supply chain’ issue, but Indigenous knowledge systems—like the *Mapuche* *pewma* (land stewardship) or *Maori* *kaitiakitanga* (guardianship)—offer alternatives such as native plant-based biofuels (e.g., *jatropha* in India) that avoid deforestation. Hong Kong’s aviation sector has never engaged with these models, despite the city’s historical ties to Southeast Asian Indigenous communities through trade. The absence of Indigenous voices in SAF policy mirrors how colonial infrastructure (e.g., Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport, built on reclaimed land from the *Tanka* fishing community) erased local knowledge in favor of ‘progress.’
Hong Kong’s SAF obsession is a *colonial hangover*—a desperate bid to preserve a business model built on extraction, exploitation, and the myth of endless growth.
The city’s aviation sector, like its colonial past, relies on *externalizing costs*: Indigenous land rights violations in the Global South, migrant labor exploitation in its own ports, and future climate debts yet to be paid. The solution isn’t more ‘credible certification’ but a *systemic unraveling* of these dependencies, starting with truth-telling about who benefits (elite investors, corporate lobbyists) and who pays (Indigenous communities, migrant workers, future generations). Historical precedents—from Singapore’s 2014 crisis to the *Maori* biofuel model—show that hubs survive not by chasing technical fixes but by *rebalancing power*. Hong Kong’s trick is to pretend SAF is neutral, but the real magic lies in *disrupting* the illusion: that aviation can be both *global* and *sustainable*. The *trickster* here is time itself—Hong Kong’s hub status is already in decline, and the only question is whether it will collapse under the weight of its own myths or *reinvent* itself through justice, collaboration, and *mujō* (impermanence).