The Executive Yuan is adjusting its national regional plan and the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) is working on amendments to the Enforcement Rules for the Regional Plan Act (區域計畫法施行細則).
The authorities have made several attempts to consult with civic groups to reduce conflicts, but these matters have run up against the same problem: While the central government wants to devolve some of its powers and responsibilities to local governments, the local authorities do not enjoy people’s trust.
The Ministry of the Interior wants counties and municipalities to operate their own regional planning committees, and the EPA wants them to do a proper job of conducting environmental impact assessments. Environmental groups are worried that development projects will not be examined properly and that they will get pushed through due to vested interests.
Two examples, one positive and one negative, can show why such worries exist.
The controversy over environmental impact assessments for the Miramar Resort on the Taitung County coast has dragged on for 10 years with no resolution because the Taitung County Government’s assessments have not been done in accordance with the law. To begin with, the county government helped the resort’s developers evade an assessment. However, eventually, an assessment became unavoidable. Since then, there have been seven assessments, but none has been conducted legitimately.
The other example is that of the expansion of the Hsinchu Science Park using land in Miaoli County’s Houlong Township (後龍), which was rejected by the ministry’s Construction and Planning Agency in the face of protests by Wanbao Borough (灣寶) farmers. This is a rare example of a successful campaign against land expropriation.
Another reason for this success was that the department in charge of examining the expansion plan was the ministry’s Regional Planning Commission. If the Miaoli County Government comes to have a regional planning commission of its own, it is doubtful whether fertile farmland like that of Wanbao will continue to be preserved.
Part of the reason why the ministry and the EPA want to hand over some of their powers and responsibilities is that they often face protests and even administrative lawsuits, yet instead of tackling the underlying problems, they prefer to skirt around them. Civic groups are obviously not willing to let them get away with that.
At the same time, civic groups must admit that we cannot go on forever expecting the central government to be the arbiter of justice, sending its agents to receive local residents’ petitions and handle disputes.
There are two key reasons why people do not trust local governments. The first is a lack of information transparency and public participation in all kinds of procedures, and the second is the lack of effective checks and balances in interactions between executive and legislative departments, which results in a monolithic approach to policy decisions. The former reason represents a lack of participatory democracy, while the latter results from neglect of duty in a representative democracy.
Both these problems require the public to keep challenging the government to reform the system, to educate executive departments so that they will come to carry out procedures more smoothly.
Nationwide local elections will be held on Nov. 29. Are the above-mentioned expectations being raised as an electoral issue? Does sufficient pressure exist to make these changes happen? If these concerns are still not raised, the ministry and the EPA will have to go on acting as the last lines of defense.
Wang Chung-ming is a spokesperson for the Green Party Taiwan.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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