The national regional plan that the Ministry of the Interior announced in October last year created serious loopholes in the national land conservation and safety system. If it does not come up with solutions in a timely manner, land development projects will invade the system through these loopholes and hamper national land development or cause a complete meltdown in the same way that a virus does when it infects a computer.
The loopholes in the national land conservation and safety system lie in the ministry’s change of what it calls “restricted development areas” and “conditional development areas,” which were created for safety purposes to first and second-class “environmentally sensitive areas.” First-class environmentally sensitive areas correspond to the restricted development areas and development projects are banned within these areas. Second-class environmentally sensitive areas correspond to the conditional development areas and development projects are conditionally allowed in these areas. At first glance, there seems to be no substantial change except in name.
However, there is more to it than that, as the plan may be a trick to restrict the extent of restricted development areas. A closer comparison shows that following this integration, the number of items that should have been categorized as first-class environmentally sensitive areas has shrunk. For example, certain areas on the two sides of an active faultline, as well as the part of catchment areas at major reservoirs that provide water for nondomestic and public use, are excluded from the first-class areas.
Next, the power of designating environmentally sensitive areas has been given back to the local agencies concerned, and only environmentally sensitive areas that they identified and promulgated in accordance with the law are integrated into the ministry’s national regional plan. However, areas that are not identified and promulgated can become loopholes. This makes one wonder whether the concerned authorities will take the initiative to designate and promulgate valuable land as first-class environmentally sensitive areas.
Finally, to cooperate with the government’s policy to boost the economy, the agencies concerned have carried out far-reaching amendments of laws and regulations in order to loosen restrictions on land development. For example, the amendments to the Soil and Water Conservation Act (水土保持法) emasculated the designation of reservoir buffer zones, relaxed regulations so that most reservoir catchment areas do not have to be made designated soil and water conservation areas, and deleted or altered the articles that banned development in such catchment areas.
Moreover, the amendments to the Environmental Impact Assessment Enforcement Rules (環境影響評估法施行細則) loosened the restrictions on the development and expansion of pollutant industries, and they simplified the environmental impact assessment process. The National Property Administration even announced an administrative regulation to restart the application for public land rental and sales in reservoir catchment areas.
The loopholes in the national land conservation and safety system exposed by the national regional plan must be remedied. One of the remedies would be to centralize the power to designate all kinds of environmentally sensitive areas to the central government agency responsible for national land planning and charge it with planning, promulgating and managing homeland conservation and safety according to the nation’s needs.
Yang Chung-hsin is dean of Chinese Culture University’s College of Environmental Design.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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