The director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University in New York, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, says Hong Kong is ideally placed to benefit from a global shift towards sustainability, and to provide the financing needed for green projects.

Speaking on RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme, he said if Hong Kong teamed up with the rest of the Greater Bay Area, it could provide a useful template for sustainability around the world.

"I'm a big fan of the Greater Bay Area as a concept. Seventy million people, nine major cities, major global technology centres right next door in Shenzhen," he said.

"So it seems to me also developing a process for the Greater Bay Area is worthwhile for the 70 million people in the Greater Bay Area. But it's also going to provide a blueprint for how to go global."

But Sachs also said Hong Kong had work to do in order to meet its sustainability targets.

"Hong Kong - as a location, as a geography, as an SAR - has its own challenges," he said. "Changing the energy system, the issue of pollution, the issue of emergency response."

Last week the government put out a vision statement, pledging to develop a sustainability disclosure ecosystem. It said the SAR would become one of the first few jurisdictions to align local sustainability disclosure requirements with international standards.