Practice and Meaning of Environmental Citizenship in Taiwan and China

Workshop Abstract

Panel 1: Taiwan

Chair: Ming-Sho Ho, Director of the RIHSS and Professor of Sociology, National Taiwan University
Discussant: Huei-Ling Lai, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, RIHSS

Paper 1

Defining Risk in the Environmental Litigation: Constructing Narratives of Harm in the Citizen Suit Against Formosa Plastics

Wen-Ling Tu and Chia-Liang Shih (National Chengchi University)

The No. 6 Naphtha Cracking Complex (No. 6 NCC) located in Yunlin County, Taiwan, is one of the largest petrochemical complexes worldwide. For over two decades, the numerous industrial accidents involving No. 6 NCC have terrified the people. In 2015, the people in Taisi Township located at the south of the complex filed a lawsuit against No. 6 NCC for its toxic emissions that have caused health hazards to the local residents. But over six years and 10 trials later, the progress is stagnant and remains at the first instance stage. Another case initiated by local citizens against Formosa Plastics in 2018 was ruled by the local court at the first instance stage in October 2020. The judge found the difficulty in approving the causal relationship between pollutants emission from the No. 6NCC and harms of the plaintiff, although he agreed that the factory did emit toxics and there were pollution evidences. This article aims at analyzing the court ruling in favor of the defendant (or the polluter) and understanding the main arguments in legal governance for the environmental health risk issues. Through first-hand court observations and context of the ruling, we found that the scientific uncertainty in identifying hazardous risks and causal attribution, the judge’s superstition of objective science to confirm the pollution exposures, the silence of lay knowledge under the authority of science and justice, etc., have made it difficult to achieve judicial progress. This study argues that the current official data collected by the air monitoring systems or health studies may not provide the sufficient evidences to support the claims of the victims. It is necessary to construct a new narrative of harms by emphasizing toxics exposure and new form of data interpretation to reshape the legal debates in the environmental litigations.

Paper 2

Revitalising Epistemologies: Fenceline Communities and New Environmental Subjectivities in Kaohsiung (Taiwan) and Taranto (Italy)

Raffaele Ippolito (University of Oxford), raffaele.ippolito@ouce.ox.ac.uk

Kaohsiung and Taranto are home to some of the largest steel mills and petrochemical refineries in Italy and Taiwan. Epidemiological investigations in these areas have established a correlation between exposure to industrial pollutants and an increased mortality due to various forms of cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Whilst on the one hand this awareness has led to the rise of small but active local environmental movements, the residents of the most polluted areas of the two cities seem to be disengaged with the issue of pollution at large. Some activists and artists have become increasingly aware of this issue and have started to mobilise by diverting their attention from pollution to the lack of economic and social alternatives in the area. Drawing on Ottinger’s notion of epistemic innovation (2021), this paper documents some grassroots initiatives that take the form of cultural events in neighbourhoods that have been socially, economically, and environmentally depleted by the process of industrialisation. Through these initiatives, a few residents are attempting to revitalize a shared environmentalist agenda by strengthening social cohesion and a shared sense of identity within the community. It is in the creation of this shared project that these citizens engage in a meaningful process of identity research and cultural engineering that goes beyond pollution as an environmental health issue.

Paper 3

Taiwan “Net Zero” Carbon Emissions and the Global Movement against Plastics

Paul Jobin, Erich Hellmer, Chee Wei Ying and Yu-An Kuo (Academia Sinica)

During the Trump administration, Taiwan’s economic and political elites showed no hurry to cope with the Paris Agreement on climate change, although the government has claimed to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The situation has quickly changed after the election of Joe Biden. As a new law is waiting for discussion at the parliament (Climate Change Action Act 氣候變遷行動法), several leading corporations now feel the pressure that carbon emissions could soon become a trade barrier for their exports to the European Union, US and Japan. The industry most at risk is the plastics and petrochemical industry, which accounts for 22% of Taiwan’s overall carbon emissions. This industry will also be the hardest of any sector to reduce and achieve “net-zero” by 2050. The reasons are multiple and plastics play a central role. These are 1) techno-industrial, as most emissions come directly from the cracking of hydrocarbons; 2) social, as consumerism drives the huge explosion of single-use plastics, the largest consumer of petrochemical outputs; 3) economic, as oil and gas companies lose ground in the energy and transport sectors, they increasingly look to plastics to stay afloat; and 4) political: petrochemical companies are some of the largest and most influential in the world, in particular here in Taiwan as Formosa Plastics ranks in world top ten of petrochemical companies, and as its corporate name reminds, plastics make its core line of products. Until recently plastics and climate change have often been treated as separate environmental disasters. However, there are now signs of change among the global movement against plastics, led by coalitions of NGOs such as the Break Free From Plastic. Along with ENGOs from fifty countries including China, Taiwanese environmental groups now play an active role in this movement, though it is still at the beginning. In parallel, a dynamic transnational mobilization against Formosa Plastics linking Taiwan, Vietnam and the US includes the opposition to the Sunshine Project, a large complex which Formosa Plastics aim to build in Louisiana—at the heart of the infamous ‘Cancer Alley’— for the production of plastics raw materials. Using quantitative and qualitative web analysis, interviews and participant observation, our paper will present some early findings of our research on the issue.

Paper 4

Pursuing Energy Democracy: The Role of Taiwan’s Anti-Nuclear Groups in Energy Transition

Chiu Hua-Mei (National Sun Yat-sen University)

Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement has gained its unprecedented momentum after the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Disaster and has successfully resulted in the termination of the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in April 2014. In 2016, Tsai Ing-wen from the DPP has won the presidential election. She pledged to make Taiwan a “Nuclear Free Homeland” and to increase the proportion of renewable energy up to 20% by 2025. Against this background, one can observe that the focus of the anti-nuclear groups have gradually shifted from against nuclear power to pursue energy transition. The leading anti-nuclear groups have their members participated in institutional channels opened under the DPP administration. Activists have frequently addressed the issue of energy democracy. The activists have collaborated with the government and other stakeholders in order to influence the country’s energy policy and to advocate the citizens’ version of energy transition. The research explores the efforts the anti-nuclear groups and activists have made since 2014. It finds that some groups and activists have participated in the formulation of new energy policy and promoted of the democratic form of energy governance. Meanwhile, some activists have converted themselves to be energy “prosumers”, such as collectively establishing citizen power Co-op or energy social enterprises. However, how to pursue a more democratic, decentralized and justice form of energy transition remained a big challenge. The role of the anti-nuclear groups in the recent conflict of greens provoked by the “Solar Panel Fish Farm” policy (漁電共生) will be discussed to show the challenge facing the anti-nuclear groups in Taiwan’s energy transition. 

Panel 2: China

Chair: Paul Jobin, Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Discussant: Chloé Froissart, Professor, National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO), Paris.

Paper 1

Becoming Citizen through Citizens Science Activities in China

Coraline Goron (Duke Kunshan University), Anna Lora-Wainwright (University of Oxford) and Shuling Huang (Bangor University)

This paper explores the citizenship dimension of citizens science by interrogating the role of Chinese college students involved in water quality measurement activities in rural villages. It argues that beyond the debatable value of the data collected, the experience of conducting research fieldtrips with the purpose of identifying and resolving water quality issues faced by rural populations participates in forging student’s understanding of not only environmental issues but broader social and governance issues. Far from the selfish image of post-millennial Chinese youth joining student associations with self-centered career building motivations, we find that students having participated in this program display both reflectivity about the possible use that could be made of the data they produce in the Chinese context, and a newly-acquired sense of responsibility towards vulnerable members of society. We also find that the program, by focusing on both data and governance, contributes to emancipating some of these students from their perceived powerlessness and inability to take action to resolve environmental problems. However, we also highlight the important barriers that remain and how NGOs try to fill the capacity gap. We discuss these findings in light with the debate on the meanings and practices of environmental citizenship in the Chinese authoritarian context.

Paper 2

Engaging in Environmental Governance in China: Environmental Groups’ Self-perceptions

Natalie W.M. Wong (National Chengchi University) and Yanmei Lin (Vermont Law School)

Since the Third Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2012, Xi Jinping has advocated the ‘Chinese Dream’ (Zhongguo Meng) as a new slogan to rejuvenate the Chinese nation with continuous reform and innovation. He has also emphasized the importance of environmental protection and promised to give it equal weighting with economic development by implementing stricter measures to tackle environmental challenges. The Chinese government also highlights the importance of social groups' participation in environmental governance in the Guiding Opinions on Building a Modern Environmental Governance System (2020) (Section 4, point 13). Given that, the paper explores how far the environmental groups engage in environmental governance under Xi’s administration by analyzing environmental groups’ self-perceptions. Using a survey to gather the environmental groups’ self-perceptions on their roles and assessments on China's environmental governance and found that the general public's environmental awareness is stronger than both central and local governments. Also, environmental groups believe policy advocacy and environmental education is the most effective way to raise concerns about environmental challenges in the country. However, lacking manpower and financial supports are the existing problems among the environmental groups. The research contributes to the narratives on the engagement of environmental governance in China from environmental groups' perspectives. 

Paper 3

NGOs’ Role in Shaping a Consensual Scripting of Sustainable Urbanization in Shanghai

Virginie Arantes (Université libre de Bruxelles)

This paper explores how NGOs working with urban communities in Shanghai participate in promoting forms of environmental citizenships based on imaginaries, arguments, desires, and policies that align with the governance goals of the CCP. Based on observations from ethnographic work carried out in Shanghai between 2016 and 2018, the paper argues that these grassroots NGOs, instead of pluralizing the public sphere, have become key agents in creating new green structures of community organization that are increasingly controlled by the Party-state. The way in which they become proxies of Xi’s new environmental turn is by prompting public participation and community-building form based notably on a discourse of shared responsibility (rén rén yǒu zé) which, on the one hand, help resolve governance issues and engage citizens, and on the other hand, serve to delegitimize and dissipate confrontational attitudes towards the state. In particular, the paper highlights how Xi’s ‘ecological civilization’ narrative impinges upon, and articulates, a variety of governmentalities overlapping party-building, community-building and community management.

Arantes, Virginie is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at ULB (Université libre de Bruxelles), Brussels, Belgium, at the Centre for East Asian Studies (EASt). Her research interests include environmental politics, urban life, environmental governance and civil society in Asia. She is now driving new attention to the processes through which ecological imaginaries and ideas become tools in the discursive struggle over legitimacy in authoritarian and democratic settings. <Virginie.Arantes@ulb.be>

Chiu, Hua-mei 邱花妹 is an Associate Professor in the department of sociology at National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan. Her research is focuses on environmental justice and environmental movement, energy transition and sustainability. Hua-mei is also an activist: she is a founding member of the Citizen of The Earth Taiwan (CET) and serves as its board member since. <fchiu@gmail.com>

Hellmer, Erich is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. His research focuses on the politics of urban space and urban planning from a comparative global/local perspective. He has conducted research in Europe, Latin America and East Asia. <efhellmer@gmail.com>

Froissart, Chloé is a Professor of Political Science in the Department of Chinese Studies at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (Inalco) in Paris, and an Associate Researcher at the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC) in Hong Kong. She previously served as the Director of Tsinghua University Sino-French Centre in Social Sciences in Beijing, a Senior Researcher at the CEFC, and an Associate Professor at the University of Rennes 2. Her research interests broadly pertain to state-society relations in China -with a focus on collective actions, citizenship, labor and environmental politics - and the transformations of the Chinese regime. She is the author of La Chine et ses migrants, la conquête d’une citoyenneté (PUR, 2013) and many articles published in China Journal, China Perspectives, Journal of Chinese Governance, Journal of Civil Society, etc. <chloefroissart@gmail.com>

Goron, Coraline is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy at Duke Kunshan University. In 2017, she obtained a double PhD Degree in Politics from the University of Warwick (UK) and the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). Before DKU, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Oxford University China Center in 2018-2019. She also holds an MA in European politics from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and an LLM in international and European Law as well as a Degree in Chinese law from the China-EU School of Law at the Chinese University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. <coraline.goron@dukekunshan.edu.cn>

Ho, Ming-sho 何明修 is Director of the Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan), and a Professor in the Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University. He researches social movements, labor, and environmental issues. He published Working Class Formation in Taiwan: Fractured Solidarity in State-Owned Enterprises (2014) and Challenging Beijing’s Mandate of Heaven: Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement (2019). His current research projects include the anti-extradition protest in Hong Kong and citizen’s involvement in energy transition in Taiwan and other East Asian nations. <mingshoho@gmail.com>

Ippolito, Raffaele is a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford, and currently visiting doctoral student at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica. He is studying the everyday experiences of industrial pollution and illness in fence-line communities in Italy and Taiwan. He holds a BA in Social Anthropology and Development Studies from SOAS, University of London and an MSc in Global Health from Taipei Medical University. Prior to starting his PhD, Raffaele carried out research on gender equality and global health at the United Nations University - International Institute for Global Health and on Chinese migrants in the UK at Regent's University London. <raffaele.ippolito@ouce.ox.ac.uk>

Jobin, Paul 彭保羅 is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica in Taiwan. His research focuses on environmental issues in Asia, particularly Taiwan and Japan. Recent publications include journal articles focusing on financial compensation for cases of industrial pollution in Taiwan (in Environmental Sociology and East Asian Science, Technology and Society), a contribution to Critical Zones, edited by Bruno Latour & Peter Weibel (MIT Press) and with Ming-sho Ho and Hsin-huang Michael Hsiao the co-edited book Environmental Movements and Politics of the Asian Anthropocene, at ISEAS (Singapore). https://www.ios.sinica.edu.tw/fellowE/pauljobin

Kuo, Yu-An 郭育安 is a Research Assistant at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica. Her master thesis in geography at National Taiwan University, which analyzed bird nests farming in Malaysia, was published as a journal article in the Taiwanese Journal for Studies of Science Technology & Medicine (co-authored with En-Chieh Chao). <as0202665@gate.sinica.edu.tw>

Lai, Huei-Ling 賴慧玲 is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan). She received her doctorate from the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands) and is specialized in political ecology, sustainability transition research, and human geography. She has published on grassroots innovations and other place-based activism regarding the energy and agricultural sectors in Taiwan. She also reports on environmental issues and climate change as an independent journalist for several Taiwanese online media since 2010. <okita1868@gmail.com>

Lora-Wainwright, Anna is a Professor of the Human Geography of China at the University of Oxford. She trained in anthropology and Chinese studies at Oxford and at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She was previously a Research Fellow at the Centre for Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. Her research has focused on experiences of illness, healing, development and pollution in rural China and on waste processing and recycling. In 2013 she was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Geography. https://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff/alorawainwright.html

Lin, Yanmei 林燕梅 is an Associate Director, U.S.-Asia Partnerships for Environmental Law and an Associate Professor of Law at Vermont Law School, U.S. Her research focuses on the rule of law development in China’s environmental governance. She is the author of over 30 academic articles both in Chinese and English in the area of comparative environmental law such as environmental public interest litigation, citizen suits, wetland protection and the access and benefit sharing of genetical resources and traditional knowledge. <YLIN@vermontlaw.edu>

Shih, Chia-Liang施佳良 is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Department of Public Administration at National Chengchi University, Taiwan. His research focuses on environmental and energy governance. He is a member of several environmental organizations, and has assisted them in the environmental and energy advocacy. <CLShih@mail2.nccu.tw>

Tu, Wen-Ling 杜文苓 is Dean of the International College of Innovation and Professor of the Department of Public Administration at National Chengchi University, Taiwan. Her research focuses on science and environmental governance, risk communication, and public participation. She is the coordinator of a popular science TV program “Open the S-File: When Science meets Social Controversies” which won the Golden Bell Award in 2019. She is also an active organizer of citizen deliberative forums on various kinds of policy issues in Taiwan. She has been involved in environmental movement in Taiwan since 1990s and is a founding member for several environmental organizations. She currently serves as the board director of the Environmental Right Foundation (ERF) and the national Central News Agency (CNA). <wtu@mail2.nccu.tw>

Wong, Natalie W.M. 王慧敏 is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Public Administration at National Cheng-chi University, Taiwan. Her research interest focuses on environmental governance, and state-society relations in the Greater China. Her research has been published in China Information, Environmental Planning and Management, and Voluntas. Among her recent publications is a book published at Routledge, The Politics of Waste Management in Greater China: Environmental Governance and Public Participation in Transition. <nataliew@nccu.edu.tw>

Ying, Chee Wei 殷志偉 is a PhD Candidate at the Graduate Institute of National Development, National Taiwan University. A recent journal article co-authored with Jeng Liu presents a big data analysis of the political implications of the nuclear issue in Taiwan, which he will further develops in his forthcoming PhD dissertation. <ying604704@gmail.com>